Technology
The ground level power supply system is well known by children playing with cars at miniature racing tracks using vehicles with rubber tires and DC-power rails (which have also a guiding function). Because of the health risks with higher voltages in real systems, the power rail is only switched on when a vehicle is covering the section thus preventing pedestrians from being injured. This system is used in Bordeaux with trams and is called Alimentation par Sol . The French Wikipedia article states that it is three times more expensive than the Catenary system.
Hybrid vehicles differ from dual-mode vehicles because they may not be fed by another energy source during operation (there might be an exemption for a hypothetical hybrid solar vehicle).
Read more about this topic: Dual-mode Vehicle
Famous quotes containing the word technology:
“One can prove or refute anything at all with words. Soon people will perfect language technology to such an extent that they’ll be proving with mathematical precision that twice two is seven.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“If the technology cannot shoulder the entire burden of strategic change, it nevertheless can set into motion a series of dynamics that present an important challenge to imperative control and the industrial division of labor. The more blurred the distinction between what workers know and what managers know, the more fragile and pointless any traditional relationships of domination and subordination between them will become.”
—Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)
“The real accomplishment of modern science and technology consists in taking ordinary men, informing them narrowly and deeply and then, through appropriate organization, arranging to have their knowledge combined with that of other specialized but equally ordinary men. This dispenses with the need for genius. The resulting performance, though less inspiring, is far more predictable.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)