Slashdot Mirror
Wireless Car Charger Test Starts In London
judgecorp writes "A test of wireless chargers for electric vehicles has started in London. The Halo system owned by Qualcomm is one of several competing technologies designed to deliver power to charge car batteries without having to plug the vehicles in. At this stage, Qualcomm is apparently worried about frying cats."
"At this stage, Qualcomm is apparently worried about frying cats."
It's not a bug, it is a feature!
I would like to know how much electricity is lost when using a wireless then a wire.... that seams important to me. Especially that people who drive plug-in car normally care about environment and efficiency. My guess? It's there is a huge chuck of electricity lost. Who care when your charging your iPhone but about a car that seems important to me.
And kids on the lawn!
For me they seem like they are trying to solve the wrong problem. For the Electric Car, it is having locations where we can plug in the wire, which is the same as having locations to park your wireless charger. Will work pay the power bill if you park your car at work and plug it in or wireless charge it? Probably Not.
The big problem is infrastructure, not pushing a button and plugging in a big wire. Besides if the goal with electric cars is to be green, why waste so much power on transferring it wirelessly?
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
It should be a pretty typical month in London, so their test should get accurate results.
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Qualcomm clearly didn't understand my voice mail.
If it is anything like wireless gasoline fueling the loss is near 100%. I'm often in a hurry and poking the gas nozzle into my car's gashole is way too time consuming, so I usually just squeeze the handle in its general direction and hope for the best.
Instead of wirelessly. The car should have below the bumper at regulation height, a set of plugs, that allow to pivot up to 30 degrees and slide left and right a few cm. when it parks, it slides into a set of grooves with triangle guides on the corner, that will power the car. Once contact is made the car does a full stop, and will only go in reverse, until unplugged.
More power efficient, minimum loss of user friendless, easy to install, no fried animals, kids, or stupid adults.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The most interesting aspect of the article was reading that Qualcomm regularly invests in technology that may not pay back for 10 years.
Nice to see a company that is looking long term rather than maximizing the profits for this quarter.
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
My guess? It's there is a huge chuck of electricity lost.
Run the numbers and compare to a space heater. If its much above single digits loss you'll melt the car. Its really quite a bit of power.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
My dog doesn't poop everywhere! He's trained to use your sidewalk.
Quick skim on Wikipedia makes it look like 60-86%, which...isn't terrible. Not great, but not terrible. I'd be more worried about the possibilities of stray EM fields frying electronic devices (or cats, as the summary mentions). It's quite a lot of power to transfer wirelessly.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
"All of that energy floating around" is a magnetic field. I only affects iron materials.
"That's either incredibly asinine or the most brilliant troll I've ever read. Not sure which." -Anonymous Coward
And I'm trained to shove it into to your car grill at night.
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Let me get this straight, you want the morons that you see trying to walk in the "exit only" doors at Walmart be allowed to handling highly flammable and explosive liquids on a daily basis? Brave call.
"All that energy" is in the form of a time-varying magnetic field. The effects are well-known: electrical currents (eddy currents) are induced in nearby conductive objects. The bulk of the current (probably around 85%) is generated in the receiving pad and gets siphoned off to charge the car's battery; the rest goes to heating up other objects. Since magnetic fields fall off as the third power of distance, the only "other object" that's likely to see much temperature rise is the lower frame of the car, and the only testing that's needed is to make sure the heating is uniform rather than generating hot spots.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
Nope, strong inductive coupling is efficient and reliable. But it only works at a short distance and requires coils to be aligned. That's perfect for recharging buses at bus stops, but too cumbersome for other uses.
Resonant coupling can still be efficient at larger distances but: it stores a huge amount of energy in LC tanks (currents and voltages roughly 100 times larger than in non-resonant coupling), produces proportionally stronger magnetic field, is very sensitive to losses in the environment (paddles, metal objects), and is not suitable for high power recharging (think more of 100W-order trickle charging).
So, we are talking about an expensive, difficult to install, weak, inefficient, unreliable, interfering and dangerous solution to a very pressing problem, which is sticking a plug into a socket. I can see (inductive) wireless charging being deployed in fixed-route buses but other than that this technology is only a distraction from solving truly important problems (batteries, specialized range extending ICEs etc.).
I really don't see the problem with plugging in my car when I park it.