Detroit is now home to the country's first chunk of road that can wirelessly charge an electric vehicle (EV), whether it's parked or moving.
Why it matters: Wireless charging on an electrified roadway could remove one of the biggest hassles of owning an EV: the need to stop and plug in regularly.
SquishyPandaDev@yiffit.net 11 months ago
Americans will literally do anything to not build trains
KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 months ago
Trains are amazing for small countries, or between cities. The problem comes when you take into consideration how spread out the US is. You will always have cases where a car is needed, it’s unavoidable.
EVs are not a perfect solution, by a long shot. And ideally we would move away from cars being ubiquitous in America, but that is many, many years off. It’s better to work towards that slowly than it is to say “well it’s not perfect so let’s just not.”
IamAnonymous@lemmy.world 11 months ago
You will always have cases where a car is needed, it’s unavoidable. That’s because it’s designed for cars. We have huge parking lots designed for cars but nothing for public transport. Whenever I travel to NYC or Chicago, I can go anywhere in trains and buses. In my city, I can’t even get milk without driving to a store.
Varyk@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
Oh pish posh. China is exactly as big as the US and you can get pretty much everywhere for a few bucks in high speed trains.
Trains are fantastic and the US should definitely be investing in them, it’s a huge disadvantage and a national embarrassment that we don’t have affordable and effective mass transportation.
vrighter@discuss.tchncs.de 11 months ago
isn’t that exactly what trains were designed for and are best at?
blazera@kbin.social 11 months ago
Trains famously bad at traveling long distances.
Grass@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
Just north of the us is a mainly freight railway system that spans the width of the continent…
Then there is this image in an article about that on Wikipedia Image The spread out reasoning just seems silly to me on the basis of that literally being what trains were even for in the first place, going distances not suitable for horses. If it connects cities, that is also a start that shouldn’t be passed on for being imperfect.
The only reason a car would be needed at all in north America is because of all the poorly designed car centric infrastructure that ends up not even being good for cars as demonstrated by the absolutely heinous traffic that only seems to get worse with every road “upgrade” I have ever seen the before and after of.
NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Trains have their bigger advantages on long distances. You get tired in a car, you can’t go pp or take a nap. Your costs rises proportionally with the distance etc.
frezik@midwest.social 11 months ago
There are tons of areas of the US that have the population density to support it, but still have horrible train service. We made deliberate decisions to favor highways over trains, and we can undo those decisions.
farcaster@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Nationwide, sure. But localized I wish we would do better, given the population densities. California has a population density of ~100 people/km2. Not far off France at ~120/km2. Yet we still are mainly reliant on cars to get around.
Magiccupcake@startrek.website 11 months ago
There are places that would be wonderfully served by trains, but just aren’t.
Cars are best in rural areas, but by far the majority of peoole live in cities where cars are the worst, yet we still build them for cars.
RagingRobot@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I would love to have both. Especially trains! The trains here are so bad though. They cost more than flying and are such a hassle to deal with. The train stations are sometimes far away from the city in some cases too. So you need a ride from the station.
I would support building that out if it was offered.
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 11 months ago
There’s public transport in large and dense cities. It doesn’t work to move around the country very well. These people that think something that works in a country that’s smaller than an individual state in the US should work fine are “special”.
negativeyoda@lemmy.world 11 months ago
… but this is Detroit which is a city that can support NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL teams. We’re not taking about the sticks here
isles@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Japan is the size of the entire east coast and has high speed interconnected rail.
Empricorn@feddit.nl 11 months ago
The roads are there. They ain’t moving skyscrapers in major cities! For better or worse, American travel is very road-based, and we’ll never have as many diverse options as some other countries…
Maalus@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Or just build trains. Which move tons of people, every day, for cheaper, safer, faster and overall more efficient ways. Don’t have space for a train track? Make it a tram. Problem solved by changing up a road for cars into a road for cars and trains.