Solar Roadways - Working prototype and pictures!

[Chrisr400cc]

Donations to me doesn't seem like they'll help this company ( I know they wouldn't hurt). Maybe I'm being negative but isn't what this company needs is a Angel Investor? Like how Elon funded Tesla and saved it and guided it in the right direction. If a entrepreneur with some money stepped up and put up some capital so they could fund some driveways for customers ( The Tesla Roadster ). Then they could move to streets( Model S) then highways ( Gen 3). This would be a good company for an episode of Shark Tank. Seems like a lot more people would like to invest in this then to donate.

 

[FlasherZ]

Hey Everyone! Lets make this happen! This is something I think is really cool!
Solar Roadways | Indiegogo
Just for fun, if you feel comfortable, please post here if you donated and how much (If you feel comfortable!!) just so we can measure the Tesla community impact!

For the mods: I know this isn't really Tesla company related, but can we keep it here for traffic? As I know it will get lost in the dust in the Off topics area!

I'm a big fan of crowdsourcing campaigns for local community efforts and initial (cheap) prototyping and such, but what they're looking to do is more up investor alley. I make donations to social causes and charities, I make investments in most for-profit ventures. They already have made a LOT of money off the two taxpayer-funded contracts they won, and stand to make a huge windfall if their ideas make it further. It seems reasonable that they should share in that for anyone who gives them some resources, and so far the donations get you only a token piece of glass or their personal thanks in a video while they stand to make billions and keep them from the donated dollars.

tl;dr: Give me an equity option and I'll consider. Otherwise, no donations from me.

 

[TheTalkingMule]

I don't see any way this becomes viable for any roadways, but it could certainly be an excellent driveway in certain regions. I'm in Philly where the snow and ice are usually moderate, I bet plenty of rich folks would like these as a driveway option to generate electricity and melt ice.

 

[Jaff]

I agree with you on this being an equity play FlasherZ...I did donate $100 because I think the crowdsource campaign here might just be a "stepping stone" to a possible future equity play (which I would be interested in).

I see their product being financially viable using commercial parking lot and residential driveway installs alone (even if no actual public roadways are "solarized")

I'm a big fan of crowdsourcing campaigns for local community efforts and initial (cheap) prototyping and such, but what they're looking to do is more up investor alley. I make donations to social causes and charities, I make investments in most for-profit ventures. They already have made a LOT of money off the two taxpayer-funded contracts they won, and stand to make a huge windfall if their ideas make it further. It seems reasonable that they should share in that for anyone who gives them some resources, and so far the donations get you only a token piece of glass or their personal thanks in a video while they stand to make billions and keep them from the donated dollars.

tl;dr: Give me an equity option and I'll consider. Otherwise, no donations from me.

 

[techmaven]

I don't see any way this becomes viable for any roadways, but it could certainly be an excellent driveway in certain regions. I'm in Philly where the snow and ice are usually moderate, I bet plenty of rich folks would like these as a driveway option to generate electricity and melt ice.

I've been really excited by this idea, but I don't believe their implementation especially for public roads. I'd love to see energy input calculations for asphalt/concrete roads vs. their glass based roads (even w/o the solar + heating + LED parts). Further, I'd like to see how their glass holds up to snow plows.

Sidewalks may actually be far more interesting than roads for this design.

 

[sleepyhead]

I've been really excited by this idea, but I don't believe their implementation especially for public roads. I'd love to see energy input calculations for asphalt/concrete roads vs. their glass based roads (even w/o the solar + heating + LED parts). Further, I'd like to see how their glass holds up to snow plows.

Sidewalks may actually be far more interesting than roads for this design.

No snow plow necessary with built in heating. Snow melts away as soon as it hits the road.

 

[bsd]

Regarding the shape that is actually one of their next immediate project goals is figuring out how to shape them to handle curves in the road. Because hex works great until you need to turn the road. I am afraid that this shape thing will end up being like the space shuttle... where each panel was unique to the shuttle... if that happens, then there goes ANY chance for reduced cost...

They could "waste" some hexagons. My mockup skills are rudimentary but here goes:

 

[Pilot_51]

They could "waste" some hexagons. My mockup skills are rudimentary but here goes:

View attachment 50010

If they make half hexagons, it would reduce the waste and looks a lot better without requiring specialized pieces.

 

[doug]

If they make half hexagons, it would reduce the waste and looks a lot better without requiring specialized pieces.
View attachment 50041

Besides the basic parquet floor tile problem, how do you deal with hills?

 

[BobtheV]

Seems to me that the glass would be a bit slippery. How have they dealt with the issue of whether or not there would be slippage? Especially in rain?

 

[Robert.Boston]

Seems to me that the glass would be a bit slippery. How have they dealt with the issue of whether or not there would be slippage? Especially in rain?

Answered up-thread: Solar Roadways - Working prototype and pictures! - Page 6

The price of traction is noise and, ergo, rolling resistance.

 

[anticitizen13.7]

I'm skeptical that this could work, in part because the bumps on the surface of the glass would be really hard on tires, and dangerous for road bicycles. However, I'm keeping an eye on this one, because I think many problems can be solved if inventors are persistent and iterate through many revisions.

I was skeptical of the Tesla Roadster too... but I kept an open mind on Tesla, which turned out pretty well.

 

[bsd]

Besides the basic parquet floor tile problem, how do you deal with hills?

One solution might be to restrict the grade something like rail systems, which have a maximum grade of 2.2%. Maybe a bit less exciting for drivers though.

Or they could create specially shaped tiles for rises to a particular grade.

 

[roblab]

Seeing this makes my mind immediately jump to watching road repair over the California mountains on I80, and on I70 in Missouri, and NUMEROUS side roads in Missouri. The roads would get ground down several inches. You can see on I80 from Sacramento where the four inches of asphalt are gone, and the traffic (80,000 lb trucks) has eaten down to the rebar in the concrete. That's four more inches of concrete. Normal wear and tear, right? Let's say they ban winter chains, studded tires, etc., you still have dirt and gravel grinding under the rubber tires. In my mind, it won't work for very long on any heavily driven roadway.

Driveways, maybe so, but I don't get the magic of having it laid down on such a hostile environment as ANYthing that has to take constant abuse. What's wrong with putting solar panels as sun shades?? We are talking thousands of square feet in the average parking lot. On my drive to Phoenix, we see acres of solar arrays off in the desert distance, but no one has decided that the road way would be better.

If all we are trying to do is make a better (transparent) roadway, let's try that first, separately, not hooked up to solar panels to try to make something fly that doesn't have wings.

 

[Robert.Boston]

I still think the best use for this invention is in the huge parking lots surrounding malls, box stores, etc. Flat, relatively low traffic, and a clear alignment of ownership and benefit.

 

[doug]

One solution might be to restrict the grade something like rail systems, which have a maximum grade of 2.2%. Maybe a bit less exciting for drivers though.

Or they could create specially shaped tiles for rises to a particular grade.

The issue I'm referring to isn't the grade or slope, it's the curvature or the derivative of the slope.

 

[yobigd20]

I'm wondering what happens to the glass when a car blows a tire completely off the rim and it's grinding metal all over the glass. i'm assuming it'd be tearing the glass up and ripping the road a new one.

 

[scaesare]

I suspect the bumps as seen in the videos might be useful for low-speed surface like parking lots. For actual high-speed roadways, it would not surprise me to see them some up with something much more like a sand-paper like surface roughly matching the traction (and acoustic) properties of asphalt.

 

[yobigd20]

I'd like to see integration with Waze. Then you don't need to rely on other drivers to get critical information.

 

[AudubonB]

I am following the development of this concept with a good amount of sadness. Glass-tiled roadways appears to me to be close to the perfect example of a laboratory concept that - when the rubber meets the road, to use a wry metaphor - fails under the burdens of reality.

The overarching devil here is that roadways are dynamic, ever-deteriorating systems. This is not confined to their surfaces, a problem the tile creators have taken pains to address but which does not address deeper, structural elements. Very, very few roads (effectively zero) are constructed atop adamantine subsurfaces, and the incredible wavelike forces to which traffic subjects every road's surface, subsurface, and foundational elements means that decay can only be diminished - never eliminated. Thus, an appropriate surface is one that best combines such items as traction - which Solar Roadways very evidently does understand well - with ability to match and work with the wear, flexure, compressibility, elasticity and other parameters of the subsurface portions of the road.

Where I live, the enormous deformations that occur as a result of permafrost melting is a catastrophic outlier, but ground perturbations of all sorts - hydrodynamic fluctuations, soil creep, seismic events - all these are implacable enemies of roadways and determine the appropriate characteristics of road surface materials: they need be flexible and elastic (not the same) and they need be cheap. Asphalt in its myriad forms fits these criteria; smart glass tiles do not.

The further slings and arrows that roads are heir to also have been mentioned here: tire studs, tread-embedded gravel, blown sand and grit, dropped hitch receivers:wink:, blown tires' steel belting, crashes - catastrophic incidents can, of course, be repaired piecemeal. Systemic ones would be most appropriately addressed in the fashion as they already are: by periodic resurfacing of the entire road. A budgetary deathblow to these tiles.

By the way, I was thinking about the problem cyclists have brought up and suggest that if tests determine their fears justified, the most appropriate response would be to eliminate bike lanes from being tiled, or alter the tile surface accordingly.