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Volvo's Electric Roads Concept Points To Battery-Free EV Future
Zothecula writes "While quick charging technology installed at strategic points along a planned route might be a good fit for inner city buses, it's not going to be of much use to electric vehicles that stop infrequently. Volvo sees our future long-haul trucks and buses drawing the juice they need from the road itself, making large onboard batteries a thing of the past. 'The two power rails/lines run along the road's entire length. One is a positive pole, and the other is used to return the current. The lines are sectioned so that live current is only delivered to a collector mounted at the rear of, or under, the truck if an appropriate signal is detected. As an additional safety measure, the current flows only when the vehicle is moving at speeds greater than 60 km/h (37 mph). "The vehicle is equipped with a radio emitter, which the road segments can sense," explains Volvo's Per-Martin Johnansson. "If an electric vehicle passes a road segment with a proper encrypted signal, then the road will energize the segments that sense the vehicle.'"
You go change it.
I'm not going to change it, I'll get fried.
We are stopped, no juice.
Yeah, right. Then you change the tire.
No Way!
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
You need an appropriate device on your car to activate the power to the rails on your section of the road. This gives a great opportunity to track your vehicle, where it is, what speed it's travelling, how much energy it's using and then send you a bill as a sort of dynamic road toll for the use of the road, a bill for the energy you used and the fines for exceeding the speed limit all without actually having an officer present.
Wouldn't mind it, though, if the system were intelligent enough that I could tell the car where I wanted to stop and then it could take care of the details of getting me there and wake me up from my nap once we get within a few miles of the destination. If the car's driving while I'm napping then they can send any moving violations to the company that built the car and its software.
Volvo, the truck company (The one we are talking about), spun off Volvo, the car company, a long time ago.
complete with all the limitation thereof.
While quick charging technology installed at strategic points along a planned route might be a good fit for inner city buses, it's not going to be of much use to electric vehicles that stop infrequently.
Ya, that sort of thing hasn't really worked out for petrol-type vehicles at all. If only there were places I could buy gasoline (or electricity) along the way... Oh well, one can dream.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
If one assumes that this is the solution for electric cars, then a logical extension is that everybody will adopt it. Intercity truck hauling is the low hanging fruit so that is where you start. Then it cascades down to everybody. In 20 years half the cars driving would use the technology.
Initially costs would have to be subsidized by the taxpayers, but as usage grows then subsides would disappear with costs being recouped by charging for the electricity.
It’s a long shot but there could be huge wins. That is how I would evaluate it.
Sadly probably no. Piezoelectric works because of an elastic spring when pressure is applied. Increasing the elastic spring of a road increases rolling resistance, which decreases the efficiency of the car, resulting in a net energy loss.
while i agree finding affordable solutions to retrofit existing vehicles for alternative energy should be a near-term priority, I detest the idea of the long-haul truck as being anything sustainable. we have an entire infrastructure of bought-and-paid-for rail that stretches across the nation to deliver goods. its already partially electric by virtue of its diesel to electric locomotive propulsion system, and could be almost trivial to convert to a hybrid electric system that returns energy to the grid. eventually going full electric would be largely feasible and we'd take some of the largest polluters off the roads in the process.
volvo might use this technology to create rechargeable cities. for example: san diego is a charging city, but once on the freeway you're "wireless" and running off the battery. upon entering say, downtown los angeles, you're in a charging city and running off the grid. grid fees are integrated with parking fees, etc..
Good people go to bed earlier.
You could call them "rails" or something... and connect multiple trucks together when they were all going the same direction.
Brilliant!
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
There's nothing new under the sun.
F-Zero
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No free lunch. Any electricity you make by passing a a coil over a magnet is coming from loss of forward velocity.
There are wireless charging methods, but they again require outside power.
This has been tried before. It's called a ground level power supply. Trams in Bordeaux use it. The sections are powered on and off in 8-meter sections. When a section is off, it's grounded. For safety, there are two levels of switching. The 8-meter sections each have their own power control box, and there's a second level of control which monitors a number of sections and will cut power for many sections if something is live that shouldn't be. The trams have battery backup so they can get through dead sections. Bordeaux only uses the system in their scenic historic area. Once out of that area, the trams raise pantographs to connect to overhead wire. Two other small cities in France have installed that system, but only short sections in the city center use that system. Dubai is putting in 14km of a similar system.
Drainage, water, and ice are big problems. (Not in Dubai, though.) So is cost. There's a lot of high-voltage switchgear involved.
So we're talking about Volvo, not Volvo. It's hard to see how AC got confused.
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I will agree with you that batteries (or better yet, ultracapacitors) are the more likely solution, but they have gaps.
Cars work. Busses that travel along prearranged routs work either by battery swapping or fast charges at bus stops.
Trucks don’t work, or at least not as well. I different solution is going to be needed. If this is the solution for trucks (which I am not sure of) then would think it would be a simple add on for cars. Batteries for short trips, power from the road when on the highway. They would not be incompatible, but there would be some tradeoff for the extra weight..
Ultimately it's not going to work because rebuilding roads to fit all this crap underneath them would be insanely expensive compared to pretty much any other alternative. It might be viable in towns where the roads are close to capacity all the time, but stringing up overhead electrical cables would almost certainly be much cheaper. The idea that you'd rip up hundreds of miles of road between two North American cities to fit complex electrical systems under them so a few dozen trucks an hour could drive along there using electricity rather than diesel is simply laughable.
If one assumes that this is the solution for electric cars, then a logical extension is that everybody will adopt it. Intercity truck hauling is the low hanging fruit so that is where you start. Then it cascades down to everybody. In 20 years half the cars driving would use the technology.
Initially costs would have to be subsidized by the taxpayers, but as usage grows then subsides would disappear with costs being recouped by charging for the electricity.
It’s a long shot but there could be huge wins. That is how I would evaluate it.
I can see a couple of 'gotchas' already.
First, those are conductors embedded in the road. They'll be exposed to the weather and climate. What happens when a snow plow drives over it scraping snow away from the road bed? Won't the blade short out the strip? Can it get all the snow and ice off the conductors? Will there be shorts when a vehicle activates a strip? What happens if a strip goes dead for a bit? Are they going to be designed short enough that momentum will take the vehicle to the next strip?
How are you going to power this sucker?
This is an interesting concept, though, a way to get engineers thinking outside the box. But why use strips embedded in a road surface when you can build maser towers and beam power to a rectenna installed on the vehicle?
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
What they could do is have the trucks drive on the rails so they have to put them in. The upside is that there will be lower rolling resistance so it'll be more efficient anyway.
Ok so let's put metal rails between major cities and use electric vehicles on them.
What if I want to go somewhere there is no infrastructure to power the car? What if I don't want my tax dollars going to the probably trillions of dollars necessary to install this everywhere? What if I don't think it's a good idea to have powered rails carrying hundreds (maybe thousands) of volts along major roads? If there's a glitch somewhere, then everyone on that road is stranded? I could go on. I think this is a really dumb idea. Focus on better, higher-density, longer-lifespan battery technology instead.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Because that would impose staggering losses in the energy transfer. Inductive (magnetic) transfer of energy is not very efficient when there are air gaps involved. You can do it, but you are going to waste a LOT of energy. You do solve the problem of having large voltages touchable by the public.
Of course... One could just produce a magnetic system to push the cars forward in a linear motor setup and avoid much of the transfer losses. Just imagine the automated traffic control you could have with being able to control the speed of cars on your road system...
Or... Just do what we've done for years and put wires up in the air over the road.
Perhaps we had better just go find some more Oil and burn gasoline...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
What they could do is have the trucks drive on the rails so they have to put them in. The upside is that there will be lower rolling resistance so it'll be more efficient anyway.
Ok so let's put metal rails between major cities and use electric vehicles on them.
I think they normally call that a train.
Well, the reason that immediately comes to mind is because you and I might not be going to the same place.
I'm not so sure about that, the cars already cause the ground to vibrate a bit. Absorbing some of that and converting it to electricity would be a net win. Especially in places like Athens where the vibrations are damaging ancient buildings.
Ya know what? They could put a diesel enginr in the vehicle to generate electricity to drive the electric motor. Then they wouldn't even need to run dangerous electrical cables .
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
having electrical systems under the highways would be well worth the money
The Tesla Model S with a 85kWh battery has a claimed range of 500km travelling at 90kph (55mph). That means it uses about 15 kilowatts to travel at 90kph.
Thus to charge the 85kWh battery within 1 hour while driving at 90kph, you'd have to supply 85 kilowatts (to charge the car) + 15 kilowatts (just to keep the car moving) for one hour. After including transmission and battery charging losses it'll be well over 100 kilowatts.
Assuming the cars aren't tailgating each other and forming a road train, you'd have to supply 100+ kilowatts x the number of cars on at least 90 km of expensive high tech road. You'd need at least 90 km of road unless your travel plan includes driving in circles for 1 hour :).
100 cars = more than 10 megawatts. If you are using physical contact technology there's going to be wear and tear and associated problems (how do you change lanes etc). If you are using directed wireless, 100 kilowatt or higher power beams look like a weapon. If you are using some fancy nondirected resonance tech, how do you stop people from stealing electricity? Which brings us to the other big issue, how do you pay/bill for it?
An electric train doesn't need to change lanes very much, has lower losses. And even then rail is very expensive upfront.
I think volvo, and most people, forget that the benefit of fuels (solid, liquid, or gaseous) is that they are very cheap to transport. Electricity, on the other hand, is insanely expensive to transport. Think about a 10% loss for every major hop. The middle of the road in a large city is likely 4 major hops from the power plant. That takes 100 down to 65. That's up to a 35% total loss.
It took me all of thirty seconds to find a quote on that:
Transmission and distribution losses in the USA were estimated at 6.6% in 1997[10] and 6.5% in 2007.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission
This is a fair cry from the 35% losses you are postulating.
And let's not forget that an electric motor is 90%+ efficient, while an ICE is somewhere around 18%-20%.
This is a very clever idea.
To those making fun of it, it is *not* a railroad/railway, nor is it slot cars. The vehicle is not on a fixed track.
Railways have had "third rail" power supply systems for a very long time. The biggest issue with them is safety; miles and miles of exposed high voltage terminal that will fry you if you touch them. Ouch. The mitigating factor that makes them a sensible option for a railway is that the railway is dangerous enough even without them that it needs to be fenced off.
This invention is basically giving this system to the roads.
The important point here is that the power is only activated for very short stretches of track at once, when that stretch is directly underneath the vehicle. This makes it safe enough to put it onto the public roads where you can't fence it off.
What it *won't* do is give us battery-less cars any time soon. We might be able to get away with smaller batteries, but we will still need them. The summary states that it won't provide power if you're going at low speed. That means city drivers could go an entire journey without being able to use the system, and even for journeys where you can use it, you'll still have low-speed parts of your journey. Even if we decided to start building it now, it will be many decades before it has widescale coverage; there will be plenty of minor roads that are likely never to be upgraded (there are plenty today that are still dirt-roads). And of course, your own driveway probably won't be connected to the grid either.
The beauty of this is that it is entirely compatible with the existing road network and could be implemented piecemeal. Roads could be upgraded with the system. Cars that can use it would benefit, but older cars could carry on using the same roads just the same as they always have. Likewise, if the electric cars also have a battery, they would be free to continue using roads that didn't have the electric rail as well as those that do.
My prediction is that it will be used initially for bus routes. If all the bus routes in a city like London were converted, it would amount to a significant amount of track. The fuel savings to the bus operator would make it very easy to pitch to the city. Existing electric and hybrid cars owned by the public could then be retro-fitted with power pickups for the system, and where the bus routes are public roads, people could benefit from the same fuel savings. If this was subsidised on the grounds of reducing pollution in the city, then the public take-up for the project would likely be quite big.
As the number of vehicles capable of using the system increases, the road network could be further upgraded beyond just the bus routes.
So yes, it is a clever system. However, don't be fooled into thinking it's a new idea. This system was first used a decade ago for a tram line in France. It was the first electric tram line in the world not to need overhead power cables. Ground-based power lines had never previously safe enough for a tram line that needed to run through city streets. This system has been in use for a decade now and has proved itself well. Building it into the regular road network seems to be the next sensible step.
Here's the wikipedia page about the existing tram system: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-level_power_supply
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