Dealing with ‘range anxiety’: wireless highways to charge electric cars

[meyersnole]

Okay, bigger batteries would be nice but this is a very cool solution to the range problem.

 

http://www.kurzweilai.net/dealing-with-range-anxiety-wireless-highways-to-charge-electric-cars

 

I went looking to see if this was discussed anywhere when I saw that Volkswagen could offer wireless charging on its electric vehicles by 2017.

[Russael]

This was something I had mentioned in another thread some time back.  I figured they could either embed a cable in the road to transfer power, or somehow do an antenna network along major roadways (batteries could stay with a small capacity like the ones currently in our Fusion Energi(s)... or over a road network that was malfunctioning, etc).

 

But then comes the question - how do you bill it?  Each car would have to have some sort of wireless power meter, and then each power company would have to have reciprocal agreements with each other as a vehicle traverses from one network to another (if the bills were coming from only your power provider).  If they didn't... I suppose your car could show you the electric rate of whatever company you're crossing over, giving you a choice to connect with that company or not.  Wouldn't it be an enormous surprise going from 10 cents to 35 cents per kwh? :) 

 

As far as wireless charging goes, Rolls Royce had an EV concept that had wireless charging built in.  You drove over a pad on the floor and it'd start charging for you.  I think some vehicles have such a system as an aftermarket modification.  It's expensive though.

 

There's also the concern of long-term effects.  My toothbrush does wireless charging, cell phones do wireless charging... but of course, that's pretty weak.  What happens when you start pushing 10kw through 6 feet of air/objects?  I know it uses magnetic resonance and I'm not too familiar with how that effects metallic objects around it... or biological items either.

[meyersnole]

My guess is that this would be in a lane similar to HOV today and would be metered. I would seriously doubt that you would get the electricity at cost, so there would be some type of rate that would include enough to maintain the infrastructure but not too high to prevent use. We have the technology today to meter this, the issue is that there are currently not enough electric cars to undertake this project. I could see something like this being piloted on US 5 (oops I meant to say the 5) in California, given that States commitment to alternative energy.

[murphy]

Since my electric cost for March will be about 0.9 cents ($0.009) per kWh that would not appeal to me very much.  I would much rather have a 100 kWh battery. :)

[Kybuck]

Unfortunately, this would require quite an infrastructure improvement - and a bit of a chicken or egg scenario (why build the infrastructure if cars don't have the feature, and why build/offer the feature if the roads don't exist yet).  I think battery and/or high-speed charging technologies will evolve quicker than this technology could be implemented.  I see a bigger market for having the option for a wireless charge in a garage at home, or in public parking spots.  Those are much easier to implement - the vehicle isn't moving, and the vehicle side of the charger could be lowered into a charge mode position (distance between the coils is the worst enemy of these technologies).  It also is easier to meter and easier to turn on/off.  As an option for "opportunity charging", this may have a future, but I just don't see it taking off for long stretches of the highway.  

 

I've previously studied inductive power transfer, although the "resonance" part of this sounds like a slightly different spin on the same concept.  The base technology itself isn't really that new, and has actually been used in a handful of auto manufacturing plants to move around partial vehicles or sub-systems for at least the last 10+ years.

Edited April 5, 2014 at 05:41 AM by Kybuck