# Siemen's 'E-Highway'



## railiner (Aug 12, 2014)

Came across this link


on another forum. Thought some of you here might be interested....

What the video does not say, is how expensive it would be to equip a highway, maintain, and operate it with that technology, not to mention the added cost to vehicle's that could utilize it.

It sure would help eliminate our dependence on foreign oil.

And there might be a better solution, with electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles's drawing power inductively from certain highways with coils buried in the roadway.....


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## rickycourtney (Aug 12, 2014)

The technology is somewhat different... but here in Seattle we have all-electric "trolleybuses" that pull their power from overhead lines.







It's really a neat technology. Zero emissions, lower maintenance costs and they are unrivaled when it comes to climbing Seattle's very steep hills. Metro recently ordered 141 new trolley buses that will be equipped with battery packs that will allow them to operate "off-wire" for about a mile at a time (in case of a emergency reroute.)


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## cirdan (Aug 12, 2014)

railiner said:


> Came across this link



Actually, burying stuff under the asphalt is more often than not the most expensive solution of all. Stringing overhead wires is comparatively inexpensive, especially if you can combine the uprights with lighting functions etc. When looking at buried induction coils, firstly you have to dig up and relay the entire roadway to install them, causing huge costs as well as disruption (not to mention the need to move or protect any other buried utilities, replace weak bridges etc). Secondly, every time something goes wrong you have to go back and dig it up again. Overhead wires are easy to inspect and installation can be phased to use relative short windows of closure, for example at night.

Furthermore, the less dead weight you need to move around (be it fuel tanks, battery banks etc etc) the less energy you need and the more space you have for the payload. In terms of efficiency and losses, a direct electrical contect is also far more efficient than any solution based on induction or requiring the charging and discharging of batteries or supercaps.

In fact electric trucks alread exist and have done so since at least the 1930s. There are several loctaions in Russia that still have them and also in China. What Siemens is proposing is thus not totally new but it is more flexible tjhan these previous approaches.


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