I don't think the technology is there to do cost effective road surfaces for driving on. Sidewalks, maybe...not surfaces that will be plowed and driven on by all kinds of vehicles.

Maybe in the future, but I don't think it's ready now.

need to be plowed. They will have the ability to heat the road surface in order to melt snow and ice.

Since the roadways will be generating solar energy for all to use, it will be generating income which will offset the costs fo building and maintaining the roads. Drainage, which will take the water run off to water treatment is to be built right in to the roads. Thus, air and water pollution are addressed.

I believe it is possible even if there are bugs to be worked out.

But I KNOW we we will never get there now or in the future if we don't work on it now.

And that is what the crowd source funding campaign was all about: raising money to work out the problems and make it work.

Do you have a better idea?

The amount of electricity required to heat the roads enough to melt snow and ice would dwarf the total energy output of these things. If it were that easy to clear snow off the roadway, every city in the snowy parts of America would already have heated roads. There have been hundreds attempts to heat roads over the past century, and all have failed for one of two reasons: 1) The amount of electricity required is colossal. As in hundreds of watts per foot. 2) The water tends to quickly re-freeze once it flows off the roadway. This rapidly forms ice dams along the road edges, eventually flooding the roadway. Do you know what happens when you flood a roadway in below-freezing temps?

These people have been floating this idea for years, and seem to get a little press every few years or so. It's an appealing idea to those who don't know any better, but the concept has been generally dismissed by real engineers. It would end up being a very expensive net-loss to our electrical grid, require massive upkeep costs, and make roadways more dangerous.

It's a neat idea for driveways, but you'll never see this technology used on any major roadways.

Put conventional solar panels ABOVE the roadways.

The OT idea is unworkable because thick, high strength glass is required for the surface... and not only is that impossible to heat efficiently, but also bound to suffer diminished capacity from scuffing.

This is one of those examples where 'cool' is a form of stupidity.

DUMB idea. Whole thing smells like a scam. At best, the guy is not terribly bright.

EXACTLY!! That is all that needs to be said...This is being crowd funded so those trying to poo-poo the research with their "opinions' & acting as if they are based in science are SAD. Science is NOT "SCIENCE" without RESEARCH!

Science does not work on opinion.

He is beside himself at the amount of Crowd Funding & attention this project is getting...And letting his EMOTIONS take over!

Let the research take place & see what comes of it...THUNDERFOOT is going NUTS over this! LOL!

I like the guy but he is putting a bit too much effort into trying to poo-poo the research before it even starts. Probably because he can't generate the same BUZZ for his CROWD FUNDED projects!!!

He can be a bit of a whiner at times.

Learn the physics.

Do the math.

Physics and math don't lie.

Let's start with these physical properties:

Figure the coefficient of friction of rubber on wet glass as compared to rubber on wet asphault. Do an experiment with a rubber object slipping across wet glass, then across wet asphault. Which rubber moves more easily? A lower coefficient of friction means a car with rubber tires simply is less able to stop on wet glass than it is on wet pavement. That alone makes glass an impractical substance for a roadway.

(And that's just wet glass, not glass with ice or snow on it.)

Next, research how much electrically generated heat is produced by solarvoltaic cells.

Figure the amount of solar energy produced at peak times of day, per sqare unit of measure, in the number of watts. (Figures vary for location on the planet and time of day, but roughly 8.5 watts ...8.5 watts per square foot is optimal peak in July at noon on the equator.) Try heating and keeping above freezing a square foot of glass with a 8.5 watt lightbulb, (or any heating device using 8.5 watts) for 24 hours, while snow is falling, and temperatures are several degrees below the freezing point. (Incidentally, that's why most solarvoltaic arrays we see on houses or other structures are several dozen or hundreds of square feet in size, we need lots of sqare feet of sun exposure to produce a decent amount of electricity worthy of harvesting.)

If this idea were physically reasonably possibe, (according to the laws of physics), all sorts of legitimate research into the concept would have happened by many nations, many research and development facilities, many scientists and road engineers since the beginning of solarvoltaic power.

Solar power, while cheap, is hardly efficient under all weather conditions, hardly inexpensive to build and produces a quantity of power that is best, adapted to supplementing electric power to homes and other facilities where lots of sunshine falls for many hours a day.

The concept will never become a way to heat a roadway, to light a roadway in daylight hours, nor to substitute glass as a stable road surface. The physics of the issue and the mathematics already prove the impractical nature of the concept.

Do some research into the physics of the concept and calculations for yourself, don't trust anyone else to tell you why or why not.

As for how long it will take for the technology to be fully developed, we'll have to see. My grandfather was a physicist and developed a patent for converting garbage to fill potholes. If he was alive, I'd be very interested in what he thinks about this kind of project.