[disillusioned]

Sweet jesus was anything stupider than the solar roadways idea? "Let's take a technology that can easily be aggregated in appropriate, economies-of-scale implementations and _distribute them_ and require them to be extraordinarily more durable while running voltage through a surface that's being contacted by random people thousands of times a day, with the miles and miles of additional distributed infrastructure necessary to boot!"

[HideousKojima]

My favorite part about the video was them talking about how much square footage roads take up and how that space could be used for solar panels, while showing footage of vast fields of open land right next to a road.

[ben_w]

Given how often I still see people dunking on PV due to the land usage, I unironically think that's one of the better points.

Yes, I know there's plenty of better land, but comparing the scale needed to something we've already got likely helps change people's minds about the practicality of PV.

[ben_w]

Loads of things are stupider in that sense and actually done.

They're a bad fit in practice on basically every count, but the idea was interesting enough to pass the elevator pitch sniff test. Ruggidised PV as footpaths might not even suck, though I suspect even then they'd be better as roofing over footpaths rather underfoot.