- That road you drive on?
It's about to get a whole lot smarter.
(electronic music)
We talk a lot about cars on this show.
Flying cars, autonomous cars, electric cars,
hybrid cars, fuel cell cars,
but today I'm not going to talk about cars.
I'm going to talk about roads.
Roads are actually technological creations.
The roads of ancient Rome were engineering marvels
and allowed a level of communication and trade
that had not been attainable up to that point.
Back then all roads really did lead to Rome.
When future historians look back on the roads
we built today, will they have equally flattering
things to say?
Well, if we're willing to try a few new things,
they just might.
One idea we need to address is solar roadways.
Now have you ever looked down at the road and seen
heat waves rising up and thought that's a lot of energy
that we're wasting.
What if we could harness that?
Well that's the idea behind the Solar Roadways Project.
It would replace all of the roads in America
with hexagonal solar panels.
According to the people behind the project,
these panels would provide enough electricity
to power the entire country,
plus embedded LEDs in these solar panels
could provide dynamic lane changes.
You could change the road according to traffic conditions
at any given time, and they would have heating elements
in them, so the roads would be too warm for ice to form
in the winter.
Critics have pointed out that there may be
some big obstacles to making solar roadways happen.
We're not really sure how well these solar panels
would hold up to abuse of cars endlessly
driving over them.
We could still employ solar energy
in our road infrastructure.
We might use road covers with solar panels on top of them
to generate electricity, and that electricity
could power stuff along the roadways,
like dynamic streetlights that only light up
whenever there's a car driving by.
Let's see what a day of driving around town looks like
on the road to the future.
First of all, you don't have to worry after a big ice storm
because the streets and bridges themselves are treated
with a semi-permanent deicing overlay.
Also in the future, you might not have to worry about
potholes and other car damage,
and that's because, if early reports are to be believed,
the roads of the future will be made
of self-healing materials.
One example of this self-healing material is a type
of concrete that packs a lot of bacteria in it,
and when a crack forms, the bacteria produce
a biogenic calcite plugging up the gap
before it can create a bigger problem.
I'm a big fan of electric and hybrid vehicles,
and I expect the roads of the future
to be swarming with them, but one thing that does
tend to give some customers pause is the idea
of battery charge.
Will my battery go the distance if I want to do
a long road trip or if I've gotta drive around town
all day long?
Well, in the future, the roads themselves might be the
answer to that question with wireless induction charging.
These would be underground electromagnets tuned
to a specific magnetic field.
And they could be located under parking spaces,
or next to bus stops for electric bus charging,
or maybe even at intersections, so when your car comes
to a stop, it can recharge until the light turns green.
What happens is your car aligns with that magnetic field
and the wireless charging receiver underneath your car
receives power from the grid without the need for a plug.
In fact, researchers have discovered using simulations
that this system could even work while the car is in motion.
So we could design roads that have these wireless
induction chargers all along the length of the street,
meaning that your car is charging while you drive it.
Your battery could have a bigger charge
when you get to where you're going than it did
when you left the house.
This approach would remove that obstacle
from adopting electric vehicles and it means
you could drive around indefinitely,
or at least until you needed a little potty break.
But I have a question for you guys this week.
If you could redesign anything in your city,
transportation infrastructure included,
what would it be and why?
Let me know in the comments below.
Thanks to Toyota for sponsoring our show
and making it possible.
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