Highway Generated Energy

Where would that energy come from? Cars, trucks, vans, busses? And where do they get their energy? From petrol and diesel! Have you thought of that?

As your system -- however implemented -- would be deriving its energy from vehicle motion, the vehicles themselves would have to expend additional energy to compensate. This translates into reduced mileage and additional fuel expense for the vehicles' owners. Worse yet, you would have additional losses due to the less-than-perfect system conversion efficiency.

Bad news for all.

You'd be far better off burning the fuel directly to power turbines at a generating station, as is done now.

Energy always comes from somewhere. Vehicle motion does not come without cost!

Question on this fascinating subject: Could a piezo carpet carpet be installed in a high volume gas station and generate enough current to be usable? Any ideas how large a carpet would be required and how much energy could be generated? Is the concept practical?

Thanks!

mta

I have often wondered if the heat from the sun, and traffic, that accumulates in the road surface could be utilised for electrical generation, or overhead tram lines for trucks. think of all them miles and kilometers of hot road surface?

Regards JD.

I think we could go far in reducing fuel consumption in urban areas by installing intelligent traffic signals.

I encounter a number of traffic lights on the way to work. Many of them are completely pointless because there is so little cross-traffic. Lights will be red with no cross-street cars in sight. And this is on a major artery into town. Multiply these by probably millions of like intersections and you collectively waste a tremendous amount of fuel just idling for no good reason.

On the bright side, it helped Exxon make $110 billion dollars in just one quarter a few years ago.

Every cloud has its silver lining...

Don't know what it like in Texas, but here in Australia, the side roads have traffic light sensors built into the road, and operate at irregular intervals, giving the main road trafic premium time. But I agree they can be a real pain.

Regards JD.

Why is it the U.S. always seems to be the last to "get it?" If you want great cell phones, go to Japan or maybe Europe. In the U.S.? They're crap.

Want advanced traffic control systems? Go to Australia.

Want to see a 9629091 sq. kilometre technological museum? Go visit the U.S.

Why is it the U.S. always seems to be the last to "get it?" If you want great cell phones, go to Japan or maybe Europe. In the U.S.? They're crap.

with maybe the exception of motorola I thought our cell phones were made or assembled in china.

What COO (Country Of Origin) is europe's cell phones made. pacific rim maybe, or ...........the u.s.a.?

phoenix911

Yes, Cellular phones originated in the USA and they failed to progress in the USA due to the way in which cell territories were handed out. All you needed was a small territory in between, say Houston and Dallas and everyone who travvelled into and out of your area and made a call got dinged with a $1 roam fee.

No standards wall to wall, like Europe did. No interoperability. That is why the USA and their manufacurers have lagged. Canada suffers from this as well. I get to pay $200-300 per month. I could pay less, but I would then need to dial an accss line for cheaper long distance..

if there's a dollar to be made, and an easy one at that, same with the texting. phoenix911

GA

There is a pilot project in, I recall (badly, perhaps), the Netherlands, where energy from the sun is absorbed by a network of water filled tubes under a parking lot that pump the water into local wells. The heat from air conditioning is also ported in. In the winter the process is reversed and the pavement kept snow free by the warm water and the buildings partially heated by the same water.

That is the only form of energy reclamation from a roadway that I know of.

Getting energy from the motion of vehicles is, as has been stated, only going to require more energy to be generated by the vehicle. Can't win there.

You're all dissing this idea, but if the highways were constructed out of, say, a slightly elastic material such as ground up used tires matrixed in a flexible base, could they push enough wave energy ahead of them to generate energy without seriously impeding their gas mileage?

Gas mileage is bad enough as it is, and IC engines are notoriously inefficient. Better than expending energy to push a wave along, how's about using a vehicle's braking action to pump energy into the Grid. This is one bit of automotive kinetic energy that is truly wasted wholesale.

I drive a Honda Civic Hybrid which uses regenerative braking to pump charge back into the battery (a 155 volt NiMH affair behind the back seat). This may be the better approach and probably should be more widely adopted, as that energy is going to be needed again by the vehicle for acceleration later on.

The idea is dissed because it would not be a net energy saver. All cars would work harder against the bow wave and the recovery would be inefficient

It has been talked to death on another forum

I'm just wondering what studies were done to substantiate this claim?

I don't personally feel that this would be an efficient manner to generate energy but I also don't like to see people shooting down ideas without a solid reasoning.

Perhaps instead of utilizing a compression wave a magnetic? system where the car passing over pavement with a coil system that generates an electrical charge from the passing vehicles. I realize this too will place some minimal (IMO) drag on the vehicles, but the vehicle inertia should be more then enough to compensate?

Literally millions of studies.

I have told you millions of times not to exagerate....

... but perhaps someone can at least share one or two of those millions of studies as an example?

OK

http://www.springerlink.com/content/l74t3r550m8u2120/

a link to some Theoretical and mathematical physics on Proof of energy conservation for automorphic wave equation isn't exactly the most revealing proof you could have provided. In fact I don't understand half of what was written on that page.

In your words, what does this page say? Humor me, I'm not nearly up to snuff on this stuff as you are.

Thanks

That just happened to be the first one that popped up. They're all gonna look similar. Science is now about 150 years past basic "Yes, energy is conserved." This is what science now looks like - thousands of papers a year, each confirming the truth of energy conservation.

Hi, TVP45!

I agree with you that "every one of these items [in the list of energy applications] has been shown to be available in some way already".

As such, they are of limited interest to this discussion except as they can be used to translate between vehicle/roadbed interaction and a lightbulb somewhere.

In considering the question, the nature/physics of all three variables needs to be closely examined and a bridge found that enables their combined interactions while minimizing the downside.

So as a group favoured by the existence of CR4, we list the possibilities and eliminate them one by one. As the discussion progresses, the ideas get further and further away from the ordinary and move closer and closer to the possible and untried.

Great fun, isn't it? Especially for those of us who love the engineering ethos.

Do I have any ideas myself along the lines of this topic yet? Nope. No joining of serendipitous synapses have thus far occurred in my thinking. [But I'm loving the pursuit. That must be why there are other people in this world besides myself: More synapses. More thinking that is completely oblique to my own approaches.] It's like getting paid to enjoy myself when I read blogs in here.

What more could I ask for? (Well...actually there is a lot more, but those things concern themselves with other aspects of life than the pursuit of new engineering ideas. )

Mark

Besides the obvious problem with conservation of energy, there's the physiological problem. We have a bridge here in western PA (Hulton) that responds to weight and motion. Many drivers will not go onto it or else drive very slowly. It's quite disconcerting.

I don't think half an inch of 'give' in a highway surface would even be noticed by a driver. Put a mat of half-inch rubber tubing (placed across the road) beneath the flexible surface. Then rig a simple tiny diaphragm to direct air intake and expulsion. Granted, this would be a small force in itself, but each vehicle has numerous wheels, and it would be triggered tens of thousands of times each day. Or maybe there is some other device that would capture this same energy. Got an idea?

The car would be doing more work, and the mileage would suffer. Look at is this way, you can roll much father on smooth pavement, than you can on a grassy field. So, on the grass, or rubber mat, you'd have to put in more energy to roll the same distance.

However, I like the idea of, in some way, exploiting the heat absorption properties of roads in hot climates.

Yes, I agree. I flexible surface would act much the same as low inflation on tires: it would reduce the gas mileage.

I have read sometime ago about suspensions that would act like moving transformers, to help as an active system, but also allowing some energy recovering from the movement impeding response in the electric circuit. The idea is not bad. Could transform an oscilation in the car body (that would occur anyway...) in some energy. But I'm affraid we are still some time far from getting this level of energy recovery...

"I have read sometime ago about suspensions that would act like moving transformers, ..."

Linear alternators which convert translational motion into electricity would be good candidates for this kind of application.

Linear alternators are used in an experimental non-contact, free-piston, Sterling-cycle engine to convert heat from a stack of plutonium pellets into electricity. The system is upwards of 28% efficient, compared to only a few percent for conventional thermoelectric ²³⁸Pu-based generators. The system is currently under development and will be deployed on deep-space probes as the primary power source. Such probes cannot depend on solar arrays because sunlight is simply too feeble to be considered a viable power source at the distances involved (Solar intensity @ Jupiter: 3.7% of solar intensity @ Earth, Saturn: 1.1%, Uranus: 0.27%, Neptune: 0.11%, Pluto: 0.06%).

There's no reason hot asphalt cannot vaporize a low-boiling-point liquid to drive a Stirling engine. This configuration would be far more efficient than an array of solar cells of equal pavement area. This idea is the basis for solar ponds. Excellent idea, Bricktop.

Just put some copper wires in the asphalt and make all cars carry magnets in their undercarriages. :)

And the motion of these cars comes at no expense? Again, that energy ultimately comes from petrol. For my part, I'm not too keen on buying more fuel simply to power someone else's kitchen toaster.

i think kizmet is right. . . the traffic in the highway is something that will stay as it is, and the petrol being use will stay as it is . . . the idea of getting something from something thats already there. This doesnt mean that we are to add up in the consumption of the petrol and it doesnt mean that we should divert the petrol being used for cars and so into another application like a diesel power plant. Your suggesting that we used that petrol being used by vehicles in a power plant to harvest that energy? we cannot eliminate transport and kismet's idea is to harvest the by products of that traffic. . . . . without taking out the vehicles for transportation.......

a different idea . . . . . .

"Your suggesting that we used that petrol being used by vehicles in a power plant to harvest that energy?"

That was not my suggestion at all and, yes, I understand what Kizmet was saying.

That is petrol that would be used regardless of the idea being proposed. How much do you think it would degrade your fuel efficiency? Enough to make it unfeasible?

Lighten up the motion of the cars is a "given", or are you postulating the motion would not occur otherwise. No?

If you can keep the fields from messing up the average of 32 computer in the vehicle, Steep down hill grades the magnets could induce currents into the road bed. External regenerative braking.

The problem is you would have to use electromagnets or soon you would be carrying a lot of extra ferrous metals and black sand under your car. Also the coils would add weight to the vehicle.

Brad

Your answer is noway no matter how big you make the down hill you have to get back to the top and you can't get more out than you put in. Take two hills of the same height using the same machine at the first hill let the machine run using the down hill as it's power it will pick up speed to reach the top of the next hill less the drag of the weight of the machine. Get a run at the first hill and it would not be a true test. The same works with any source of power going down the hill the machine uses power of it's weight to generate power less the drag of using the generator to generate that power which means you have a positive and a negative power source so you would not make it to the top of the next hill. You can never get more out of anything than you put in you can never even get all of what you put in out. For many years man has wanted something for nothing and tried many things it just don't happen. The big shots in Washington want the car companies to make cars that have unreal gas millage but gasoline only has so much energy and we have reached that point if not we're very close. If you want more mpg lower the weight and design of the machine. I hope I have been of a little bit of help.

Possibly place vertical axis windmills in the median and use the continuous air flow to generate electricity. One could also install photovoltaic arrays in between the windmills to supplement and store power.

The median is not an area that anyone would complain about the noise of the generators, or the obstruction of the scenery.

Regards Dragon

Good idea. Now we're thinking productively!

GA for you.

Bulls eye. I am amazed by the scale of energy waste we generate and as a nation seemingly are oblivious to it. The general waste of industrial generated heat energy is disgusting nation wide

Take heat for example, when in the Midwest one may observe a plume of superheated air rising from and carried by wind at ethanol plants and depending upon the temperature the plume may be 1500' long. you'd think we could get some return of subsidy $$.

Easily enough done. There is a device patented in 1911 that would allow the capturing of waste heat from almost any source, such as ethanol plants, steel plants, wasted heat energy from electrical plants of all kinds, in other words: if the energy from any process is not completely used in the process it can be recovered.

How much energy? My math may be off a bit, erring on the conservative side, but it is somewhere in the neighborhood of 50,000,000,000 HP annually nationwide. And yes, I have the correct number of zeros. Since I do not get out much, I am not aware of all the manufacturing plants in the country, therefore the 50 BILLION figure may be low.

Regards Dragon

Many years ago, I heard of such a device, on a radio program. I think the program was "As it happens", A CBC canada radio station. It would be installed in the downhill lane of the highway where braking of a vehicle would be required. This device would be used to generate energy while the vehicle would run at a preset speed. There would be less wear and tear on the brakes of the vechicle, and prevent runaways. In the area where I live, this would save the trucker thousands in brake cost and allow the truck to go down the hill at a faster rate. This would be a win-win device here in the mountains.

Vic

Hi, vtbgiraud!

Welcome to you, as well. It's great to have you aboard here in the CR4 blogsite!

As a fellow Canuck, I agree that "As It Happens" is a very informative radio program. I wonder whether they might have a record of when that particular broadcast occurred? What sort of gear would have to be installed on the trucks and the roads to take advantage of the lost energy?

Mark

Yes, in any of the methods suggested in 23 post till now, except those talking about regeneration braking (Traffic saving is not regeneration, but it is saving method), everywhere the energy comes ultimately from Petrol or diesel being consumed in vehical.

I am putting another idea, I am not 100% sure if it will ultimately using fuel from vehical or not, is using piezos on the road. If we could lay piezos and get the output, I hope it will not load on fuel in the vehical. The voltage generated will be only due to loading on the piezos. Experts....Please comment

Great minds work alike. Look at the time and date of our posts, almost exact. The energy that is creating heat in the road surface that is attributable to the vehicle and not the sun etc is the gravitational pull on the vehicle which is overcome by the energy supplied by the IC engine or whatever drives the vehicle forward. This energy could be harvested with piezoelectric crystals reducing energy wasted otherwise as heat. I think in terms of drag on the vehicle, the net change in fuel expense would not change, but the heat energy would not be wasted as much into the heating of the road.

While we brainstorm this, how about piezoelectric roads that generate from the weight applied as cars travel over the crystals. I get that this is not cost effective presently, same for the solar panel road idea, but that could change. I am greatly intrigued about the heat banking aspect of roads, could be more workable.

why couldn't shocks be used to generate electricity to recharge electric car batteries .

The energy is wasted to create the desired dampening affect so why couldn't it be considered "free" energy

Remember British lever action shocks they could easily convert to mini generators .

Just an idea

Take the main idea of the blog as ridiculous: just as efficient as the fifth wheel powering a generator which powers the main engine of the vehicle.

But some nice idea's passed by: adding windmills to the lighting poles on the median. No-one can argue the sound they make, the visual aspects and the power density problem.

• The sound is already there.
• The poles are already there.
• The closer you come to a city, the more freeway's. = more energy supplied
• The median is also ideal to pass by with the needed cabling.

The free area surrounding freeway's would also improve the efficiency.

Don't think that it will be the cars and trucks who power the windmills: the natural wind will do it as vehicle generated wind is a very local phenomenon (some meters)

Using the heat of the sun on the road: good idea which will be used in a pilot project in holland: store the heat for winter use.

Intelligent traffic lights: is widely implemented in holland. They go really far in experimenting and from time to time a good system is developed.

A study has showed that traffic jams would be seriously reduced if you really use intelligent coordinated traffic light systems.

Our traffic lights in the big city's help the public transport to speed up. (the rest has to wait longer) They also react on the fire brigade and will go to green when a fire truck approaches (an extra reason to follow them closely)

Vehicle engines are very inefficient. About 85% (guessing) is lost in the form of heat. This heat is disapated to the atmosphere. We should be looking toward using more efficient forms of power like electric motors which can approach 90% efficiency (again guessing). If you want to retain the infernal combustion engine, you need to find a way to harness the waste heat.

Maybe waste heat could run a generator in a similar fashion a turbocharger is run, but instead of compressing air, it would spin a generator.

Could proximity devices located under the roadway generate a small amount of current every time a vehicle passes and feed it into a power grid?

Just two thoughts here to contribute:

One, it might be worth a study grant to a university to actually measure the electricity produced by the incoming and outgoing cars of said school, as they travelled over a specially prepared section of roadway on the school grounds, with numerous induction loops embedded in said pavement, laterally to the direction of travel. The idea being that, while only a little power might be generated under such a short roadway section, a lot of power might be generate-able under a much longer section similarly instrumented. After all, the cars are going to travel the roads anyway, whether such electrical power is harnessed or not... And maybe enough power will be generated to fund proper roadway maintenance, for a change... Then, the roads would sort of be paying for themselves...

Two, it has been found, in congested traffic situations, that eliminating left turn lanes, at signalized intersections, is actually more effective than keeping them. Then, nobody idles in waiting for the left turn signal to finally come on, freeing up a little bit more time for each of the other (two, usually) cycles, which then allows more vehicles to pass through said intersection during each remaining cycle. The challenge then becomes getting people to get used to thinking in terms of having to make three right turns, to go around a block, in order to make one left turn... This is especially workable where the streets are in a generally orthogonal grid pattern...

I offer no answers, just problems.

A resilient roadway surface for capturing wave energy would have a very limited life and require frequent replacement which would cost more than the energy extracted and the road closures for the replacement would be intolerable.

Windmills in the median would be unacceptably ugly and the great amount of service they require would require frequent road closures. Having a very wide median would help reduce but not eliminate road closures.

I don't agree with your statement: windmills are ugly.

The cooling towers, chimney's and pollution generated by traditional electricity production are ugly.

Maintenance problems can easily be solved by us, the engineers.

Don't forget: If you can install a windmill every 50m along a highway, you don't have to work with 100m high 4MW units. It is sufficient to have units producing 30 to 50 kW on 30m high poles. Vertical axis turbines could do a magnificent job here and the size makes it feasible to design them until 50m/sec or higher wind speeds.

In this model it is the quantity which makes the difference, not the quality.

Right on, Gwen.

Hi, Gwen.Stouthuysen!

I have long been fascinated by vertical axis windmills ; and I'm trying to find a command on autocadd 2005 that would elongate and twist the basic design so I can design one. As to placing them in highway medians (or even alongside the highways provided there is some way to keep kids off them), they could double for the tall highway light standards now in use, albeit a little broader around the middle, and serve a dual use.

I agree standard windmills are space hogs and not pretty to look at. Besides when they weather-vane, they might hit the passing traffic .

Mark

I use ProE and there it can be done easily.

When evaluating alternative energy sourcing the encountered problems are roughly the same as with traditional electricity generation: how to serve the audience which is unpredictable.

For traditional systems no investment is to huge to cope with the faced problems. Alternative projects are simply cancelled.

GA

As I stated in post #19.

Dragon

As the saying goes "one may travel the interstate highway from coast to coast without seeing anything".

After the novelty wore off I don't think anyone would take notice.

Hi All,

Nothing to do with energy saving but interesting, that in the UK
research has shown that a traffic flow is much better without
traffic light control than with it.

Even in my own town they have removed the t.lights to speed up
the flow. This means no enforced idling or waiting, just giving way
to the offside oncoming traffic. It works.

Lights have proved to be an "obstruction" to the flow, and wasteful.

In regard to energy saving; better not to use it, than try to save it.
Admittedly not easy, but I think that principle is a good guide.

jt.

We all like a freebie, but what's free?

Hi, jt!

Wow! It's gotta be a pretty close use of energy to compare folks waiting to make a left with going straight through and then turning right twice (maybe with stops at each turn as well), and possibly having to wait for the same light again before finally getting to go in the originally wished direction.

I have to say this is a difficult one to swallow.

Wouldn't it be more efficient to have advanced green signals?

Mark

Whoops!

Make that turning right THREE times.

Higher mathematics, don'cha know...

Mark

I think you misunderstood me Mark.

The traffic takes a normal route; i.e. everyone moves
in the direction they wish to, there is no re-direction.
Those turning left, or right, or ahead, do so as desired.

The difference is, there is no control, (lights) and everyone
gives "right of way" to any vehicles on their right. (in the UK.)
Simply, one waits for ones turn to move; an unavoidable delay.

Strange as this first seems, it works very well.
This means there is no unnecessary stops or waiting at red lights,
only of politeness to the road rule. (give way to traffic on the right)
There is no blind "obedience" to annoying lights, no frustrations of
being "held back" waiting for seemingly over-long light changes. etc.
(and no "racing" or jumping the lights!)

One moves when possible, to a like minded traffic flow. Self control.

jt.

Makes the traffic lights seem almost Draconian!

One final comment on this matter

It was suggested vehicle's would need to carry magnets to generate electricity but in fact they are metal and the magnets could be under the roadway the system .

These could be used in downhill or steep areas and act as a braking system imagine the enormous forces that could be harnessed in the rocky mountain's , while saving the brakes on trucks and cars .

Just a thought

Sooo...the consensus, here, is that there is no viable way to utilize an urban, hot, noisy six lane highway loaded with vehicles going 70 mph and churning out wind and heat? That seems wrong. Morally, I mean.

Correctly stated: there is no way that we can harvest energy without lowering fuel efficiency of the cars.

The only reasonable thing that can be done is installing a safety system on long downhill roads. but the trucks have to take a magnet uphill first.

The only way it would be beneficial to recover energy from vehicle traffic is on long down grades where braking of one sort or another is already required. This would take no energy from the vehicles that they were not going to waste anyway, except for those few using regenerative braking. At any other time, it would qualify as theft of service for the additional wear and fuel usage of the vehicles on the roadway.

Hello Turbotroll3,

This would probably be done best by the pressure on the pavement to produce power because of the issues for magnetic induction I posted at 23.

I agree that any parasitic load to the car to produce power for others is theft. (this includes Taxes not used for roads) The down hill braking would be a wear reduction service. The real trick would be for the process to be exaggerated to slow run away trucks.

Brad

Then absorption of the wash of a passing vehicle is not parasitic, yes?

I don't know.

It could be neutral, beneficial or parasitic.

Parasitic if it in cures more drag by increasing the drop in air pressure behind the vehicle.

Neutral as no noticeable effect.

Or helpful by cutting/shortening the wake/vortices from the rear of vehicle.

Brad

I do know the wash will occur regardless whether the energy is used or not so I conclude is neutral and or beneficial...

Highways are natural wind corridors as well as artificial ones.

Dragon

interesting, I did not think of that, your right,

I wonder if we can tap into and collect this energy from each overpass.

velocity's do pick up there

phoenix911

Correctly stated: there is no way that we can harvest energy without lowering fuel efficiency of the cars.

Of course unless the cars were already in motion and creation of the wind were a common side effect the of current situation.

If a bush on the roadside can grow without dust gathering on it's leaves because of wind generated from passing traffic a wind collection device need not change the scenario.

Ya think an engineer could design a system to syphon this wasted energy without changing the existing scenario??

Not quite. Please reread post #19.

Regards Dragon

Hi Kizmet,

Raising a subject I think is morally correct, people stop and think, a think tank, it may not immediately solve the problem, and there are those of us who do like to think out side the box, and we may not come up with the answer, but once the ball is rolling, who knows? Good question.

Rgards JD.

I'm sure this is possible but with today's tecnoligy it is not practical. If you were to go to an issue of "Rock Products " from several months back you will find a lot of the large mining operations that need to move rock to lower levels for processing are using generators on conveyor belts to keep the speed of the product at a safe speed and in the process generate enough power for a small town.

As technoligy progresses I can see potential for harnessing the power from large trucks to keep them slow and provide power but short of large conveyor belts I don't see how it will happen ( possibly a cable system like the old trollys ? )

Here is one from left field:

What if we were to plumb some of the highways with a few pipes under each lane that contain a liquid that can in someway be influenced by the passing vehicle (magnetic?)

Think of the thousands of vehicles that pass through some metropolitan centers during rush hours. Would the volume of vehicles be able to influence the flow sufficiently to harvest some of the energy from the flow?

These could also serve as a method of keeping highways clear of snow in northern climates possibly.

At intervals on the highway place stations that can harvest the flow created by the passing vehicles?

Like I said left field.

Hi, GroovyCBR!

What is it about left field????

That seems to be a place where some amazing thoughts come from. Is it the actual location of "out of the box"? Or is that too narrow a concept to cover its area of influence?

Wherever and whatever left field is, it ought to be the subject of careful study. It certainly seems to be a source of interesting phenomena and original thought.

Like your observation. Think of the fluids we now have that respond to magnetic and electrical influences. Liquid crystal, even water subjected to microwave influence, etc. We have memory metals and memory fluids, and our quantum studies are producing good technology as well as delving ever more deeply into the stuff of the stars and ourselves [my amazing, sainted dad equated the two when he explained to me that afterlife was re-combination of our physical beings with the stuff of the stars ].

There are four or five engineering disciplines who could now postulate a question in their own areas of interest to paraphrase your own. And maybe even tell you about the topic as far as they have explored it to date, in case they already have.

Try posing the question in another blog for the chemical & materials guys, as an example. What's the point of CR4 if you can't use it to cross-discipline a good question?

Mark

I wanted to mention that one of the reasons I submitted this question is because (fortunately) the US has just elected a very progressive, environmentally friendly, president who is planning on putting a chunk of money into new infrastructure. A really good new idea submitted right now might actually have a chance of being considered seriously by someone who could implement it. I'm not going to be submitting anything, but I thought this discussion might inspire someone else to. P.S. I love left field.

OK, Lets put this one to rest. Build the highways so each vehicle must spend a few minutes trapped in a cage with the drive wheels coupled to a generator. It will then charge the grid. After it's time in prison, it is freed to drive with zero fetters.

The rich can pay a fee to skip this, and an extra fee to make the poor owned cars spend more time feeding the grid. As time goes on, we will work from home and from the car and not need to get any where at all.

Hi Mark.

True an open discussion (think tank) is always useful. (pleasant)

I still believe a better system is available: Years ago a more
qualified engineer advocated a vacuum tram system. Due to the
(lack of) technology at the time it was not universally adopted.
Perhaps someone who knows this (vacuums) could advise me?

Instead of wasting millions of gallons of fuel inefficiently, it
was considered to be far more beneficial to have a centrally
generated vacuum, which was piped below the road, and onto
which the trams would "attach" themselves to be moved.

The original provision successfully moved trams, so the weight
and size (e.g. for lorries.) should not be a problem. and a "flexible"
attachment should not be too difficult. (e.g like electric buses.)

Alternatively, perhaps some form of vacuum powered conveyor?

Admittedly this is not "living with what we have" but I still think it
better to save energy, than to recover it. Could vacuum be way?

jt.

Okay, here's one...we'll put the highways under translucent canopies that feed into a top supportive tube. All rising heat and exhaust enter the tube. Presto, use the heat, filter out the pollutants, all in one step.

The people could be the pollutant filters

We'll support this whole unholy structure on windmill standards that operate vacuums to suck all that bad air out of there.

Kizmet,

I think your concept is misguided but I think some energy could be derived from vehicle movement on roadways yes.

During the course of a year I drive about 60,000 miles and I notice the action of grasses and small trees etc.. at the roadway edge as they are buffeted by wash and wonder if those intermittent blasts of air could be harnessed?