What a massive waste of human energy. And money. And time. Including mine.
Except that runaway acceleration was bogus No electronic issue has ever been found. It was just a beat up on Toyota.
What a wast of a perfectly good car! makes me cry!
Great, so what happens when the roller coaster can't stop?
...sorry I had to...
Honestly though, what's the point? The Prius technology isn't going have anything in common with a decent regenerative braking roller coaster. For one, no one is going to put batteries on the carts that would be silly. So that leaves the tracks up to the task of supplying braking which wouldn't resemble a Prius drive train in any meaningful way.
Can you imagine what would happen if this roller coaster had a runaway acceleration problem too!?
@sleeper91tsi Just like the prius. . .
and how will the regenerated electricity get out of the cars and to a place where it can do some good?
they'd have to be hard wired to something
roller coasters work on gravity, adding un-needed weight in batteries and motors just means the lift system will have to work harder, the track system will have to be much sturdier to support the heavier cars as well.
just a dumb engineering exercise with no practical applications
Agreed. This technology already exists in electric motor systems that become generators when slowing. General Electric has had this for at least 30 years in the LCI system for large electric motors.
This will be one poorly built,slow and boring rollercoaster.