It’s amazing how it always boils down to “Now that I’ve got mine, fuck you!”, at any level. These same shit-stains would have screamed and cried bloody fucking murder if the game was so fixed 10-20 years ago, that they had effectively no chance. Fuck every single one of them to death with a rusty, AIDS infected,…

Um. No, they’re not chickenshit. They’re the current winners, and they want to lock themselves into the winning slot while they’ve still got the money to fend off any pretenders.

That’s a good point... at least for ICE engines. Hybrid or electric cars in the downhill and deceleration scenarios would still be having their energy recapturing ability reduced by the added resistance of the road.

There is no way on earth* that this doesn’t increase the rolling resistance on the cars. I suppose the question is whether or not the system can be made efficient enough that the energy gained is worth it.

Seriously, they might as well issue free water-to-hydrogen generators and intake-vortex-swirly-things while they’re at it.

I imagine your down-hill solution would make the most sense from an energy-efficiency perspective. However, for testing purposes, they will probably find a perfectly level and straight surface on which to test.

Great question. This considered I’d only be okay with them doing this on downhill sections of road where motorists are typically applying their brakes anyway. Think about the massive downhills from the Sierras, for example.

That is exactly the question I came here to ask. Asphalt deforms under stress a certain amount anyway, so the energy absorbed by that deformation normally just becomes heat. If these piezoelectric roadways have less rolling resistance than asphalt, then they’re just taking energy that would otherwise be wasted as heat…

Yes, thank you. The force is not “wasted” normally on the road as the article states. Sure, some of the force probably goes to breaking down the roadway which it would certainly be nice to avoid, but this will almost certianly cause cars’ engines to work incrementally harder, cancelling out any gains. If anything,…

Yeah, they will have to make sure the piezoelectric installations behave the same mechanically as the asphalt or there will be fuel consumption consequences. The trick is to take some of the energy that normally gets converted into heat in the roadway and tire noise and convert it into electricity instead.…

They should be more correctly called “Power Stealing roads”. Cars running on this road will transfer some of their energy to the road thus allow them to generate power. How much this affects the cars MPG is unknown but these roads will affect rolling resistance and in turn the cars traveling across it. Conservation of…

Ah, but read the company’s page describing that. They also say it’s a great option as your only insurance when you can’t afford anything better! Which is mainly how they were used.

Unless you were going too slowly, then you’d get... BUFFERING! No, please don’t bring back the bane of 2006.

I’ve been on the consumer end with an adjuster or two, while they may not be out to screw people over, they are on the side of keeping payouts low for their employer at the expense of the end customer.

Scummiest thing an airline ever did to me was bump my toddler from a flight.