The ADR™ always slopes in the direction you want to go. Using electromagnets under the road, or hydraulics lifting up the tarmac behind you, or a matrix of buttered toast slices fixed underneath sloping 45° forward, or an array of dean drives in the trunk suitably oriented, the way you wanna go is always downhill and you do not need an engine in your car.
The starter and battery will have to remain. Since the driveway would slope only one way, you will need to engage the starter to either get out to the road, or to get back in, or, if you have a very level driveway, both.
The battery will be kept charged by a generator driven from the wheels.
Road tax will include the bill for propulsion.
Speed limits will be automatically enforced by the road itself. To accelerate, overtake etc you will have to steer to the middle lanes. To slow down or stop, you just steer towards the edge of the road.
Running out of gas will be a thing of the past. However, occasionally you would run out of road and then will have to get out and push.-- neelandan, Mar 02 2002 NO Fuel consumption http://www.halfbake...fuel_20consumption!Oi! I thought of this first (see annotation). Living at the top of a hill to avoid fuel consumption, and buttered-toast-powered cars are both my ideas. My patent lawyers will be calling shortly. [pottedstu, Mar 04 2002, last modified Oct 17 2004] Surf's up, dude!-- jutta, Mar 02 2002 Why is this better than conveyor belts, the typical form of the "power the roads, not the cars" idea?-- bookworm, Mar 02 2002 I still need a way to change lanes, accelerate and decelerate. Besides, I thought this was baked by those folks who jack up the rear end of their cars...-- phoenix, Mar 02 2002 bookworm: 'cause it's gnarlier.-- bristolz, Mar 02 2002 Bookworm: Because you can keep stuff in your car that you can't on the usual 'Roads Must Roll' type transportation...-- StarChaser, Mar 02 2002 Just put bigger tires on in the back than in the front. Then the car's pointing downhill everywhere it goes.*
*(except when climbing a steep slope, but then you just need bigger wheels in the back)-- beauxeault, Mar 02 2002 why can't the driveways all be downhill as well?-- po, Mar 02 2002 Dragging the depths of memory, I seem to recall that there's a road in Wales (?) where, due to a trick of the local topography, you always seem to be going downhill.-- DrBob, Mar 02 2002 Snowdon??-- po, Mar 02 2002 //hydraulics of buttered toast//
Since buttered toast always falls buttered side down, there is obviously a force on the buttered side which, acting radially downwards towards the earth's centre, causes the said toast to turn while in free fall in the air so that it is orientated such that the observed behaviour is obtained.
When the array of slices of buttered toast is fastened such that they are oriented sloping 45° forward, the force towards the centre of the earth, acting normal to the plane of the side of the buttered side, can be resolved into two components, one component acting along the road in the desired direction of travel and thus modifying the gravitational force acting on the car such that the local topography in the vicinity of the car is favourably orientated so as to simulate the occurrance of a downward sloping road.
<disclaimer> I don't always write like this. I've been reading Vernon. </disclaimer>
Research needs to be carried out with slices of french fries, obtained from McD's along the way. Once I get the necessary money and equipment and time together, that is going to be done. By me.-- neelandan, Mar 04 2002 'stu: no cats, no turning gravity by 90°, no case.-- neelandan, Mar 04 2002 [po]: "Snowdon?"
That's right. Visitors to the Snowdonia National Park are often surprised to see people rolling up the mountain at high speed. The fact is, Snowdon is not a mountain at all, but a big, pointy hole in the ground. Clever lighting makes it appear inverted.-- Saveloy, Mar 04 2002 UB: so we could tie the small nut or bolt to a sturdy 1-2 ft. cable and hang it from the car's rear bumper. This should indeed propel the car forward. Genius!
I bet it'd work even better with a rare and valuable coin or something truly irreplaceable like a grandmother's wedding ring.
In fact, using the wedding ring gambit, instead of tying it to the rear bumper, I bet you could tie it to the front bumper and it would tow the car to the nearest storm drain. Then you'd merely have to fish the ring out of the drain with the cable and seal up the drain, whereupon you'd be off again in the direction of the next nearest drain.-- beauxeault, Mar 04 2002 And do you have a large enough lever, and a place to stand on, UB, to drive the earth away?-- neelandan, Mar 04 2002 That's kind of a personal question, isn't it?
Dropped parts or tools don't go to the geometric center of the car, they go to the area where they'll be most difficult to find and retrieve...-- StarChaser, Mar 04 2002 . . . which is under the geometric centre of the car.-- neelandan, Mar 04 2002 yes, it is a most interesting concept, the type that UB - well enough of that, I wondered if it were an Australian thing like water going down the plughole in a different direction to the rest of the universe.-- po, Mar 04 2002 like I said, interesting concept, the type that UB - well enough of that - does very well!-- po, Mar 04 2002 What you want, I do believe, is a controllable pleat in the fabric of reality. You set up the Pleat Generator in the car so that it creates a small, gentle hill under the rear tires. As the car rolls down the hill and forward, the pleat moves forward as well. That way, the car will always be rolling downhill off the pleat that it trails behind it, like a surfboard on a wave. This requires no changes to the roads at all. Since the Pleat Generator changes the very nature of reality, i.e., the road surface, as required; and, after which, the road is returned to its original condition (i.e., not pleated).-- quarterbaker, Mar 04 2002 Magic doesn't work, quarterbaker...
Neelandan, if you're on the left side of the car and you drop something, and it goes to the center it's easier to reach from the left side than it would be if it was on the right side of the car. If you're in front of it and it goes to the back, same thing. The center is NOT the hardest place to reach...-- StarChaser, Mar 05 2002 Ahhh, StarChaser is right, you know. This could sort out the steering! Have the driver moved to the back of the car, on a seat which can slide sideways. The nut is attached to a piece of string (tied to the rear bumper) which is not quite long enough to allow the nut to reach the front center of the car, which according to StarChaser is where it will be compelled to move. If the driver shifts left or right in their seat, the nut will be driven to the opposite corner, thus taking the car in that direction. Maybe. No more steering wheels, means no more steering column to hurt yourself on in a collision.-- Saveloy, Mar 05 2002 You're missing the point that small valuable objects and buttered toast only go to places you don't want them to go because they're places you don't want them to go to. If you start wanting them to go to those places, they'll stop going to those places. Murphy's law is all-powerful. Your only hope is that someone else wants it to go to another place more than you want it to go to the place you want it to go to, and even then the essential solipsism of the universe will probably screw it up for you.-- pottedstu, Mar 05 2002 it will go to where neither of you want it to go to - oh don't go there.-- po, Mar 05 2002 [+] I used to bike to university in Jerusalem. Its a city with steep hills. I had both ways going down with only a slight climb on the way there! (My first lessons where usually at the bottom of the mountain, and then slowly between the lessons I would bring my bicycle up... till the end of the day.-- pashute, Aug 19 2010 random, halfbakery