News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Waymo's Self-Driving Cars Are Near: Meet a Teen Who Rides One Every Day. Parent comment

Re:Waymo's Self-Driving Cars Are Near: Meet a Teen Who Rides... by mrep on Tuesday July 31, 2018 @07:25PM (#17658223)
No idea on the cost of this but I always thought it would be neat if we had heated roads (you can get your driveway heated). That would solve the ground visibility problem, the need for snowplows/salt and save tons of money that is normally spent on cleaning up/repairing accidents. It also might get rid of potholes caused by freezing ice saving on maintenance.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Waymo's Self-Driving Cars Are Near: Meet a Teen Who Rides... by function_seven on Tuesday July 31, 2018 @07:38PM (#17658309)
> No idea on the cost of this

Driveway systems require about 35W per square foot when operating. Imagine a 36' wide road, and you're looking at around 6MW per mile.

That's a lot.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Waymo's Self-Driving Cars Are Near: Meet a Teen Who Rides... by bluedino on Tuesday July 31, 2018 @09:59PM (#17659052)
Add more power and have the roads charge the car like in F-Zero
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Waymo's Self-Driving Cars Are Near: Meet a Teen Who Rides... by PeterisP on Wednesday August 01, 2018 @06:21AM (#17661197)
It may be done if there's a cheap mass source of e.g. geothermal energy. IIRC the main streets on Reykjavik, Iceland are heated this way to avoid cleaning snow, but that's because they're pretty much sitting on top of volcanoes.
[ Parent | on HN ]