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Sustainable Transportation;

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Jim Berergi

Apr 12, 2012
07:00

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What will it take to stop burning fossil fuels and start driving electric cars? Would Freedom Transit work? Freedom Transit™ is a transformational energy technology enabling unlimited travel for electric cars. This breakthrough energy technology if successfully developed can eliminate the need to import oil, changing the world’s economic patterns. Billions of dollars now spent on importing oil will be spent locally providing jobs and improving the financial health of the community. Solar and utility energy will be used to provide power to electric vehicles on a multi level regional and national automated roadway. Dual mode electric cars, vans, SUVs, and trucks can be driven manually on streets and used in an automated driving mode on elevated roadways. The Freedom Transit™ system has three levels: manual mode level 1 is existing streets, automated mode level 2 provides a low speed (50 mph) elevated roadway covering a metropolitan area with an 8 to 4 mile grid, and automated mode level 3 with high speed (140 mph) elevated roadways connecting metropolitan areas. See: http://freedomtransit.com/

Brian Chow

Apr 16, 2012
07:39

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The automated functions are certainly appealing for the higher speeds, but 140 mph is going to fight a lot of aerodynamic drag - especially for trucks, vans, and SUVs. However, will the PVs be able to provide adequate fractions of the transportation power needed? The utilities - on which this system will almost certainly rely on in the earlier stages - still derive a majority of their fuel from fossil fuels. That being said I believe that 50 mph is the most appropriate speed limit for metropolitan areas (I myself am from Los Angeles County), given the risk of congestion at higher speeds due to longitudinal rarefaction and accidents.

Jim Berergi

Jul 25, 2013
07:42

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I did not see your comment. Yes 140mph does create a lot of drag. First the 140 mph is only for long distance travel - between metropolitan areas. 50 mph is for metropolitan area grids. The effect cost of the drag at 140 mph is spread over multiple vehicles. For long distance travel trains of 4 to 6 vehicle are created and travel as a set. While the lead vehicle takes the drag hit, the total cost of energy for the set is averaged for each vehicle in the set. The patented speed and spacing control system allows very close vehicle spacing thus supporting trains of vehicles. The PV has more than enough power to handle high traffic volumes provide trains or sets of at least 4 vehicles are used. Feel free to contact me if you are still interested.

Galen Wilkerson

Aug 8, 2013
08:56

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Hi, regarding this, I think a different approach is interesting. No matter what energy source automobiles use, they will probably tend to be occupied by less than 2 people on average, due to their usage model and information sharing. But now we have mobile devices, which - using available technology and the current vehicle fleet - could enable more efficient real-time sharing and mobility efficiency. Even a modest increase in average vehicle occupancy from 1.5 to just 1.6 people per car, with the same number of origin to destination trips by individuals, could represent a great reduction in energy consumption and CO2 emissions. This represents the "carrot" to the "stick" of energy-based recession, climate change, and perhaps much worse. https://www.climatecolab.org/web/guest/plans/-/plans/contestId/7/planId/1303903