All talk of “electrified roads” – for a broad definition – is complete fantasy, the kind of thing people talk about to get themselves in the news or for a bit of greenwashing.
But battery vehicles with quick recharge seems to work already. There are several bus routes in Nice that are operated by electric buses. At the termini they put up a kind of pantograph thingy and give themselves a quick slurp of electrons before setting off again. One of the tram lines works the same way too, battery powered trams that recharge at the termini.
I don’t know any of the details of current and so on, but for sure it works, on a daily basis, not just some one-off demo.
johnh wrote:
All talk of “electrified roads” – for a broad definition – is complete fantasy,
This is the company that manufactured the fantasy in Visby: https://electreon.com
Airborne_Again wrote:
This is the company that manufactured the fantasy in Visby: https://electreon.com
Yes, they make a small demonstration setup to prove that the principal works. That is not in dispute.
The fantasy is that it could be rolled out universally and become a widespread solution to the charging problem.
johnh wrote:
I don’t know any of the details of current and so on, but for sure it works, on a daily basis, not just some one-off demo.
Limited to that scenario where they are back at the terminal for a recharge at frequent, fixed intervals.
You can always make these things work in scenarios where you don’t need significant range, the ability to go anywhere, and where dedicated infrastructure to serve one locality can reasonably be installed and paid for.
What you can’t do is make it a viable competitor, for range and unrestricted use, to carrying a tank of petrol or diesel around.
Had a look at https://electreon.com/technology
It is largely fundraising BS, especially
Only if nobody will drive anything heavier than a scooter over it, the ambient temperature doesn’t change much, it doesn’t rain and freeze, etc 
The Daily Dirt Digger has an interesting article, which tells me the blindingly obvious: with no new petrol/diesel cars, the people who have no parking+charging opportunity will be left with running cars which will get progressively older and more decrepit.
It will be fine for some years (today’s new cars will probably do 20 years before falling apart) but most of these people are likely to be in the lower socio-economic groups and they probably aren’t driving new cars anyway.
I’ve not seen research on the relevant % of the population but obviously it must have been researched. I am sure it is well above 50%.
It will be fine for some years (today’s new cars will probably do 20 years before falling apart) but most of these people are likely to be in the lower socio-economic groups and they probably aren’t driving new cars anyway.
My daily driver until recently was a ‘72 VW, which is still going strong. I upgraded to a Golf and hope it will outlast me, it certainly is better built than the ‘72 Beetle.
Sam Walton drove a 1979 F-150, and I think his wife drove an old Buick :) (net worth $200 billion)
In the article he also mentions Sustainable Aircraft Fuel as something he’ll comment on in the near future, look forward to that.
In the comments section Paul turns a little sour.. :
So what, exactly, is a “balanced, realistic approach?” If you own an airplane and you fly it, say, 75 hours a year, you’re burning maybe 600 gallons of gas a year. (Six tons of CO2) That’s a third more than the typical car uses and if you fly more or burn more, it could be twice or three times as much.
If you accept anthropogenic warming as a thing, you’ll know that the effects of it are asymmetrically suffered by the third world and by Pacific and other islanders in rising sea levels, even though they contribute a fraction of greenhouse gases that cause it. So for our amusement and hobby, we have Big Foot carbon footprints about which we are doing very little. I don’t see how a person can be an environmentalist or a believer in GHG warming and fly airplanes for pleasure without embracing the hypocrisy. That’s the only way I justify it.
One other approach is simple denial. You know the spiel. Anthropomorphic warming doesn’t exist, therefore it can’t be happening and aviation has nothing to with it. This is pretty much where GA is. Alphabet industry groups ignore the issue entirely. The airlines can’t afford to do this, however, thus SAF is getting a big push.
I’ve followed the climate data and especially the ice melt data and closely as a reasonable non-expert might. I don’t see any “balance” for people flying small airplanes. Either do it or don’t do it. Maybe do less of it if that provides a fig leaf. Buy a Tesla. Delude yourself with offsets. As I pointed out, the GA contribution is tiny, so making it less is likely to have zero impact.
I’m pessimistic about this. I think we’ve already passed the tipping point of wrecking the planet
Well, he has a point.
Personally, I look at it like this.
I believe climate change is real and man made. I accept that I am contributing to it and that’s not right. So I should do something about it.
Most of my CO2 emissions probably come from my 2.5L petrol car and my gas home heating (I don’t eat much meat).
So my plan is to replace my petrol car with a battery electric car. I accept that it largely just moving my emissions from the tail pipe to the power station, but nationally we’re making big strides to make the power stations be largely wind powered (Many days that’s already the case and we’re working on improving it so that we become 100% green and a net exporter of green energy).
I plan to retrofit my home to insulate it a lot more which will cut down my heating costs/emissions and to fit some solar panels (which will also help with the car).
That will leave flying as my last big CO2 emitter. But that should already leave me with a relatively low carbon footprint and certainly lower than the previous generations carbon footprint. Until there is a better solution for GA, that’s as much as I can practically do without giving up flying. If a solution comes along for GA, I’ll consider that too.
I’ll shall not let the perfect get in the way of the good (the good which is possible for me to do and still be happy).
If you own an airplane and you fly it, say, 75 hours a year, you’re burning maybe 600 gallons of gas a year. (Six tons of CO2) That’s a third more than the typical car uses and if you fly more or burn more, it could be twice or three times as much.
Just to pick up one small point: this may well not be true and probably isn’t true for the wealthier bits of the world. I drive a diesel VW (we have two identical ones at home, but obviously mine has a bigger turbo than Justine’s) and my long term average is almost 60mpg. Incidentally my cost per mile is same as a neighbour’s electric Kona, charged from public points, which is a terrible indictment of EVs. My TB20 does a similar mpg to the entry level vehicle for a private school school run a petrol 4×4 like say a Range Rover, which “half” the country is driving, ~99% of them completely pointlessly. As Clarkson likes to say, the nearest these get to “off road” is up a kerb at Oxford Street. So how does say 100hrs/year relate to a 4×4? It is several hundred hours in the 4×4, and probably 1hr/day driving that BTR is not far off for most users. I work next to the A23 so could do more research
The thing which has pretty well pumped up the hydrocarbon burning scene is the fashion for driving tanks… It’s not even airline travel and certainly not GA.
From the article:
while Daher, Safran and Airbus are signaling forward march.
There is absolutely zero need to try to work out why. The money they spend on these projects buys media coverage which no money in the world could buy. Almost nobody reads printed media; the universe is all about multimedia. Much of the developed world’s population gets its entire world view from multimedia; youtube, twatter, tictoc, even facebook for the over-60s, you name it. And this stuff comes up on there, mostly for free. Most sites carry advertising and have a full time “media trawler” who scans a range of websites for news, to pick up stories from. It all feeds on itself.
