Cooperation with Electrical Road Vehicles and Hybrid Cars

Always borrow money from pessimists -- they don't expect to get it back.

Electrically powered road vehicles are seen as a partial solution to the commuting problem in the city. It does not alleviate the traffic congestion, but it does tackle the problems of noise, pollution and inefficient use of gas. Electrical vehicles, using today's state-of-the-art batteries, still cannot travel very far, as compared to gasoline-propelled cars. Nor can they travel as fast nor accelerate as quick as drivers of ordinary cars are accustomed to. (Actually, electrical cars can be made to accelerate faster than combustion-engine cars, but that would deplete the battery too quickly. Trolley-buses, which did not have to conserve energy, were known for their ability to get ahead of other traffic as soon as traffic lights at intersections switched to green.) Figure 1: An early electrical car; a "de Dion-Bouton 1900" from the year 1900.

The inconvenience is largerly a psychological one. The driver of an electric car has to keep a closer watch on the milage left before it's time for reloading the battery, than the driver of an ordinary motorcar has to check his gas meter. Getting stuck in the middle of nowhere with a flat battery is not an appealing thought. Figure 2 But the beam traffic system could come to the aid of the electrical vehicle, rather than being a competitior! Let the long and quick transports in urban areas be handled by the beam traffic system. Using a new type of batteries, electrical cars could be transported on beamcars resembling flatcars, and have their batteries recharged from the beams during transport. The car would most of the time only have to travel in the areas where the owner lives and where he has his job or other destination. The long-haul transports in-between these localities could be handled by the beam system. The use of electrical cars would thus be more attractive, as their action radius could be greatly enhanced. The presence of the beam network would make it possible to use cars with smaller batteries, which would ease the load on the engine (by making the car lighter) and also make the car cheaper.

These 2 illustrations below show what we mean. A family living at A would need a car with an action radius shown by the circle in the illustration at left, to get to their various destinations without replacing or recharging the battery on the way. The car would reach the places of work (at C and D respectively) and, by recharging the battery, the car would also reach home again at the end of day. Yet, this family does not reach their summer vacation site (depicted by B). Figure 3

But if they live in a city with a fairly extensive beam network, as shown by the blue lines in the right illustration, they could use a car having only the action radius corresponding to the largest of the depicted circles, which each indicate the distance between a destination and the nearest beam traffic station. If the beam network has a line to a neighboring city, the family could even get to their vacation site without requiring a larger battery (or a conventional motor car). Figure 4

Figure 5 Another way of enlightening the same thing: If you live at D in figure 7, in a metropolitan area much larger than in previous figures, your electric vehicle´s relative action radius would be much smaller. Changing your motor car to an electric vehicle, with the indicated action radius (the blue area) is not really an option, if you relatively easy want to reach the whole area. Even considering that there might be recharging stations throughout the area, or places for swapping your battery for a charged one, it is not an appealing alternative. It´s simply too awkward, when you are used to the comfort of your motorcar. Enter the beamcarried traffic system, with FlyWay´s dual-mode service, and the picture changes radically (figure 8). You can now, without much trouble reach the whole area serviced by the beams.

Figure 7	Figure 8

Figure 9

Privately owned electrical cars could be transported on flatcars, but one could also build special electrical- and hybrid cars (By definition; hybrid cars are those which have both electrical and gasoline engines, and where the driver can switch between the two systems according to circumstances). They could be of varying sizes and having reinforced roofs that could carry the wight of the car and its load. The roofs would have L-shaped bars attached to them, as shown in the illustration at right.

This would enable these vehicles to be transported along the beams, hanging in beamcars having specially adapted grappling hooks. These hooks would be mobile in and out, as the double-pointed arrows indicate, in order to get a firm grip on the car to be transported.

And they could also be equipped with electrical contacts (the red dots in the picture) to reload the car's batteries during transport. As these adapted electrical cars might be expensive to begin with, the ideal would be for these cars to be available for rent or lease, or kept in carpools for short-time use. They would be a boon for the beam network, extending its reach. And the beam network would be a boon for the electrical cars, as stated above.