Yeah, this sounds stupid, and I'm worried about the amount of power wasted by induction charging. Anyone who's wirelessly charged a phone knows it can get quite hot; that's wasted energy. And Indiana's generation is still mostly natural gas and coal, so at some point, with enough losses in transmission and charging, you'll end up with a higher-carbon vehicle than a diesel truck...

I am not sure what that point is, but the efficiency of charging is an important consideration in my mind.

I didn't realize until I read your linked article that wireless charging is essentially induction. Contactless. I have never had one of these devices. Now I want modern earbuds even less. Thanks for sharing that article!

That's end stage capitalism. Supply side economics. We make product, you buy product.

Do we know yet what the energy loss is?

I think if it's like <= 10%, it's fine. If we're talking about 50%, this is beyond unacceptable.

This article claims 90% efficiency has been achieved for moving vehicles, but it should likely be taken with some grains of salt. On the other hand, with phones it's unimportant on the level of the individual using it, so perhaps the phone wireless chargers aren't particularly optimized and it's possible to do better?

Or you know; trains for long haul freight…

Lovely idea and I'm very much in support of trains, but in a lot of countries the railroad infra just isn't there and can't be built on all routes. In my country, the 2nd, 4th and 6th largest cities by population likely can't be connected by rail. It'd be a popular route for passengers for sure, and likely useful for cargo too given that I've for sure seen plenty of trucks driving between those cities, but there's TWO large areas of wetlands in between. Super simple on a map, just draw a line east to west pretty much, but just isn't happening in real life. Easiest way to take a train is to go through the capital. So 4-5 hours by train vs 1-2.5 hours of driving depending on what route you're doing (actually one of the train routes to the capital is closed too right now, for a number of years already, but it'll be replaced by Rail Baltica eventually at least so that's nice). And that's despite the trains being faster than cars (speaking passenger cars and trains here - I wouldn't know about cargo)

It's not a super long route end to end, but you could save on weight of batteries, which in turns increases maximum weight of cargo, since the total weight is limited. And charging would be a pain for long haul truckers in Europe because of the regulations on driving hours. E.g if because of a charge, your allowed 9 hours of daily driving time ends at midnight, well now you can't start driving again before 9 AM and that's if you haven't used up your weekly allowance of 3 9+3 hour split rests yet - otherwise you'd have to wait 11 hours. I've heard tales of long haul truckers in Europe skipping their piss breaks just so they could make it to a good rest station in time instead of having to stop at a random roadside parking lot. The system sucks in some ways and truckers hate it, but it prevents their employers from coercing them into driving dangerous hours (and "hero" truckers can't willingly do it either).

Many science fiction stories fall back to using rail for transporting goods. Because it's efficient. Unless we come up with literal magic like anti-gravity, rail it is.

Haha i just said the same thing. I can't get over how shit their product is/was. Even after all these years i'm shocked how little you actually heard about that.

I’m convinced semi truck hauling is a government jobs program at this point.

Solar freaking roadways.

Warp charging™

Probably cancer.

It explodes.

In related news, dropping your phone is now considered terrorism in Indiana.