• credo@lemmy.world
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    27 days ago

    IIRC there was a real world test of this idea some time ago and the results weren’t great. But imagine you do this in a tunnel- that will help improve the results and answer your question.

    If you’ve ever been in a subway you’ve probably noticed the train pushes a wall of air ahead of itself. This is the energy you would need to capture. But by “capturing” it, you would inherently increase resistance on the airflow, and therefore the vehicle.

    The reason you can’t imagine this being an issue in a typical roadside is the same reason the effect yields poor results. There is little in the way of channeling the air across the turbines, which also means there is little resistance on the passing vehicles. Of course the air in the atmosphere, pushing against the air your car moves ahead of itself, is the classic example of this overall effect.