Thank you for your expertise! Would it be practical to build a linear motor such that half the motor is in the road bed and the lighter half would be on the bottom on the car? Possibly any car could be turned into a hybrid by mounting a permanent magnet on the bottom then have the road bed pull the car along magnetically. Another option is pass electric power from the road bed to the car inductively. That way the car doesn't need a 700 lb. battery on board for power. It could use its conventional motor when not on a high volume specially equipped highway. If the future is electric cars we're going to have to build more power distribution, so why not built it right into the road bed?
I seriously doubt the practicality of distributing power via the road surface. Not only that, but as a conservative type, having my mobility that easily controlled by the government, is severely disconcerting.
I think we aren’t there yet on electrics, not because of drive technologies and magnet materials, but energy storage. It is the big blocker. Rare earth elements and their low speed motor efficiency wouldn’t even be a consideration if we could store a large amount of power in a battery or capacitor bank in the car. Not even the weight of the battery would be a factor, if it could easily store enough power to make it’s own mass and the accompanying inertial factor be negligible.
The advancement that makes that happen could happen tomorrow, or it could be decades from now. But my theory is...
It will result as a by product of the companies currently making rechargeable vehicles driving their development teams to outdue their competitors. I actually think this will be the biggest point of innovation in batteries, and good electric vehicles will eventually come on the market and take over, and it won’t be dramatic, it’s just that eventually your next car, and the best car, will the electric one because of steady plodding advances.
That is, if electric vehicles can survive when the subsidies for electric vehicles are removed, and keep refining the technology on a regular pace.
I don’t think electric vehicle technology should be government subsidized. Of course, there are some that say we are subsidizing oil now, and if we are, those incentives should be removed as well, then oil vs. electricity in the transportation sector could compete on their actual costs, not their government modified costs.