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New York City To Get Manhole Covers That Wirelessly Charge Electric Vehicles
Lucas123 writes "A new project between NYU and start-up HEVO Power will disguise wireless charging stations in manhole covers. The wireless charging stations are aimed at providing fleets of delivery vehicles with power in parking spaces around the city. Next year, Toyota plans to test a wireless charging Prius in Japan, Europe. And, U.S. Auto electronics giant Delphi is developing technology for electric vehicles that could be used industrywide. The charging stations could be embedded in asphalt or pads that lay on garage floors. Wireless charging, however, still has many obstacles to overcome, including the time it takes to recharge a vehicle, cost to deploy the technology and power loss during electrical transfer."
I recall news stories from over a decade ago lamenting the fact that ConEd manhole covers were being used to charge dogs. Inadvertently, and sadly fatally, but this technology has been around for a while.
You're looking for quotes? See my journal.
Will the nutjobs afraid of wireless routers be able to survive walking down the sidewalk in NYC now?
So who pays for this? Is it everyone or just those that own electric vehicles?
I have a diesel car and nobody is helping to pay for my fuel consumption.
They forgot to mention the potential issue with all those alternating magnetic fields everywhere. What happens when they start resonating? We could end up with a building pulled down like that old Tacoma bridge example.
Cool, my Manhole cover recycling business will get a boost from all the extra tech I can resell!
What? If they don't want me to take them, why do they leave them lying on the ground?
I was really curious about the need to "disguise" the chargers as manhole covers - it's not like they'd be an eyesore, and they'll be "public enough" that they won't be secret, either. Unfortunately it was poetic licence in TFS, not in TFA...
Ever since the early days, this place has had a sick fixation with man-holes.
Color me skeptical -- between the energy losses in electricity generation, transmission to the wireless charger, the wireless charging process, storage in the car's battery, and finally conversion to mechanical energy, it is hard to imagine this being a win in terms of overall energy efficiency or emissions reduction. If NYC had a big surplus of low-cost, zero-carbon energy sources, of course, this would make perfect sense. I suspect they'll instead end up burning more fossil fuels to charge the electric cars than they would to just drive equivalent diesel or internal-combustion vehicles.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Wireless charging is hugely wasteful; even the best only get around 85% efficiency, with the rest radiating away into the air (is there any chance this would mess with nearby wifi/cell/etc coverage?). Plus, the stations themselves are more expensive to install and maintain than a simple power cord. Plus plus, I assume most electric cars would need to have a wireless charging unit strapped to the bottom, which I assume weighs more than a negligent amount and will waste even more electricity.
Is there a good reason to be, essentially, throwing this (public!) money away? Can people not take the 15 seconds it takes to put a physical plug in?
Or is this being done strictly to make electric cars "sexier?"
Whose money is backing these experiments?
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
This.
What is needed is a simple mechanical design standard to 'plug in' the car that doesn't require extra steps for the driver. Like, when you drive into a car wash, you feel the wheels come to rest in a track. Use the weight of the car to raise a positive contact under one side and a negative on the other. The contacts drop when you back off. Something simple like that.
I guess manholes just happen to be located in those same places that rechargeable vehicles tend to park. And for those that aren't, we'll just move em!
How much power will this add to manhole explosions? Will the explosions be triggered more often with live wires in the manholes (and the loose connectors that manholes would require)? Was Michael Bay involved in the design?
Because that oil just magically turns into gasoline in your gas tank without all the associated costs and losses you just mentioned. Electricity wouldn't be cheaper if what you've said is true. Put that in your second law pipe and smoke it.
Oh and a diesel engine is an internal combustion engine. Car energy sources haven't been external combustion since the Stanley Steamer lost it's first race.
Every couple hundred miles along major freeways so customers can drive more than 200 miles a day. I suspected they will be affiliated with food venders, so drivers can take a break during the 30-60 minute charging period. These will be high capcity compared to the overnight chargers they may have at home. If long distance EVS catches on,then more companies & governments will install these.
They already have ones that wirelessly charge people and their dogs.
http://www.examiner.com/article/new-yorkers-and-dogs-risk-electrocution-on-city-streets-how-to-be-safe
And will they accept Visa?
So are electic cars really better, manufacturing included? And does the even lower efficiency of this system change that ratio?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
NYC had a big surplus of low-cost, zero-carbon energy sources
Um, NYC is primarily powered by the Niagra Falls.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
The cost comparison between electric vehicles and fuel-burning vehicles is a lot more complicated than "electricity is cheaper." Those costs are at least as influenced by fuel taxes and electricity-rate regulation as they are by the relative costs of energy production, distribution, and storage.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Electricity wouldn't be cheaper if what you've said is true.
The difference is that the cost of coal is much lower than the cost of oil. Coal costs $58/ metric ton a barrel of oil costs about $100/bbl. Heat energy in coal is about 34GJ/ton or about $1.70/GJ. Heat energy in oil is about 6.34gJ/barrel or $15.77/GJ. In raw heat energy costs oil is 9 times as expensive as coal. You also burn a lot more coal and produce a lot more C02 when burning coal than when burning oil.
This cannot possibly work:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/green-tech/advanced-cars/korean-bus-charges-itself-while-driving
Will I be able to charge my phone for free?
Paul: Father... father, the sleeper has awakened! - Dune
You pull into the designated space, a robotic arm deploys from the pavement underneath and plugs you into the grid. You start your vehicle, the arm retracts. And of course you'd design the connection to easily detach if the vehicle suddenly peeled away. More efficient connection, less people freaking out about EM.
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Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
Um, NYC is primarily powered by the Niagra Falls.
[citation needed]. Niagara Falls is a long way from NYC and doesn't generate that much power. Ravenswood Generating Station in Queens generates almost as much power as the Niagara Falls hydroelectric station. It burns natural gas and a variety of petroleum products, and is far from the only such power plant in NYC.
Furthermore, Indian Point (nuclear) generates ~30% of the electricity that NYC and Westchester County consume (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/04/nyregion/04indian.html?_r=0).
My grandfather, now 92 years old, has been screaming at his condo building for two decades now. They have a pool, and a sauna. It's an electric sauna. Because it takes time to warm up, people turn it on, go for a quick swim, and come back to it 15 minutes later when it's hot. In the end, the electric sauna runs electric current through a resistor for an hour to heat up and stay hot for the people inside. It winds up being something rediculous like 10 kWh for a 1 hour sauna, where just a few drops of liquid fuel would easily achieve the same levels of heat, at a tiny fraction of the cost.
The energy loss across the electrical grid is staggering when you look at it from cradle to grave. It winds up being close to or over 40%, and it's absurd.
I can't wait to park for four hours over a regular manhole cover, fuming over the slow charge time. Stupid #$@%#$ machine!
"Oh, and we'll have to bill you for charging your vehicle of course. Just sign here to authorize us to obtain your credentials wirelessly anytime your vehicle passes over a manhole cover."
Who needs old fashioned tracking devices that have to be surreptitiously installed under a vehicle? You just gave them permission to track you full time.
"The ferrets, they're every where I tell you!"
From the US Energy Information Administration:
According to EIA data, national, annual electricity transmission and distribution losses average about 7% of the electricity that is transmitted in the United States.
Sounds pretty good to me.
(And please realize that liquid fuel doesn't happen for free, either. And that all electric heaters are damn near 100% efficient at converting electricity into heat.)
Kid-proof tablet..
I don't spill much gas when I fill my tank.
Now, for people who like to hold the nozzle a couple feet away from their car and aim it generally in the right direction, you've got a point.
Many link me to those numbers. But they miss 90% of the cradle-to-grave. Think about before and after those measurements are taken. Think about repairing all of those lines after storms and damage.
We're not comparing grid-efficiency to fuel-efficiency. We're comparing grid-efficiency to nothing and fuel-efficiency to nothing. We'll then compare those final numbers.
The nice part about fuel like gasolene, is that the explosive force carries quite well into turning an axel. Most electric motors work through magnets. That's like working through a belt; there's a lot of slippage.
No, liquid fuel doesn't happen for free. Transport requires fuel. But that fuel is only spent while it's being transported. Liquid fuel sits still for reasonable periods of time at virtually 100% efficiency.
Look at electricity. See how business lights remain on at night. It's not for fun. It's not for safety. It's because if all lights turned on or off at the same time, the grid would choke. So in the end, lights stay on way longer than needed. That too is a big huge part of the waste. That's not in these numbers though. These numbers are purely end-to-end along the network. They don't take into account the accessorial needs of the network. Batteries lose charge just sitting still. Batteries lose electricity as they charge.
Liquid fuel can be transferred from tank to trunk to pump to car with effectively zero loss of fuel -- except for the few drops that you spilled onto the ground, and paid for anyway, all of the other transfer-loss simply gets gained again on the next use.
All I'm saying is that you need to look at it cradle-to-grave, end-to-end, start-to-finish. From a point where there is no electricity in existence to the point where your car moves that first micron. If you left your car in the garage overnight, it discharged 1%. There's your first 1%, and you haven't done anything yet. There's a small loss within the electric motor itself. There's a big loss when you charge the battery from the wall. Your wall has the 7% loss from the power plant that you mentioned. That 7% doesn't count the efforts to repair power lines when they break. Does it include charging the battery in the power plant? I doubt it, because most don't have any batteries. But that too will change. It'll need to change in order to support fleets of electric vehicles.
So for the electricity of the future to charge electric cars, we're in and out of batteries probably three times between the solar panel and the axel. That means six transfers. Then you have three transmissions -- to the plant, to the curb, to the garage. Then you have repair on all of those systems. See liquid fuel skips the garage step entirely, and the many curbs are replaced with the fewer pumps. So the number of transmissions drops precipitously.
Oh, I almost forgot. Yes electric heaters are near 100% to convert electricity into heat. But that doesn't mean it gets very hot very fast. Combustion, on the other hand, is the very definition of hot fast.
"Quick, let's hide down here..."
Table-ized A.I.
My grandfather, now 92 years old, has been screaming at his condo building for two decades now. They have a pool, and a sauna. It's an electric sauna. Because it takes time to warm up, people turn it on, go for a quick swim, and come back to it 15 minutes later when it's hot. In the end, the electric sauna runs electric current through a resistor for an hour to heat up and stay hot for the people inside. It winds up being something rediculous like 10 kWh for a 1 hour sauna, where just a few drops of liquid fuel would easily achieve the same levels of heat, at a tiny fraction of the cost.
The energy loss across the electrical grid is staggering when you look at it from cradle to grave. It winds up being close to or over 40%, and it's absurd.
Since we're supposed to blame Edison, maybe we should also blame your grandfather for not punching him in the nose when he had a chance?
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
(: I'm not sure that the two were both alive and able to speak at the same time. I'm also not sure that saunas existed during that overlap. I do know that they were not in the same country.
I see: making excuses for your ancestor not punching out Thomas Edison.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
it is hard to imagine
So is relativity of simultaneity, but that doesn't automatically make it not true.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I don't spill much gas when I fill my tank.
From http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/evtech.shtml:
Electric vehicles convert about 59–62% of the electrical energy from the grid to power at the wheels—conventional gasoline vehicles only convert about 17–21% of the energy stored in gasoline to power at the wheels.
So you may not lose anything on filling up, but it sounds like plenty of it gets wasted for nothing in other ways.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
My grandfather, now 92 years old, has been screaming at his condo building for two decades now.
Mine used to yell at clouds.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Electric vehicles convert about 59–62% of the electrical energy from the grid to power at the wheels—conventional gasoline vehicles only convert about 17–21% of the energy stored in gasoline to power at the wheels.
"From the grid" is the key flaw in your argument. In the electricity production line there are similar losses upstream before it even gets to the power outlet. In fact, if only 60% of the electricity taken by the car reaches the wheel, that is disgracefully inefficient - no doubt much of it due to the poor air connection between "manhole cover" and car.
Personally, I don't get this obsession with avoiding the need to plug in a charging lead. People have managed for years with fuel pumps. It seems someone was pipe-dreaming and said "wouldn't it be nice if ..." and the idea has got out of hand from that point. It is not the silver bullet for electric car adoption; in fact tying electric car adoption to solving contactless charging is putting an unnecessary obstacle in the way of their success.
"From the grid" is the key flaw in your argument. In the electricity production line there are similar losses upstream before it even gets to the power outlet.
It's not really my argument, but doesn't the same go for fuel? You need to burn it to transport it, after all.
In fact, if only 60% of the electricity taken by the car reaches the wheel, that is disgracefully inefficient
But still far better than petrol.
no doubt much of it due to the poor air connection between "manhole cover" and car.
The quote I took is only about electric cars in general, so I suspect the losses it's talking about are nothing to do with induction, and presumably more to do with powering the lights, the AC, the power steering, the DVD player, and the dashboard waffle iron.
Personally, I don't get this obsession with avoiding the need to plug in a charging lead. People have managed for years with fuel pumps.
If there was any way to do away with the physical connection, it would be done, but that's always been impossible when your fuel only came in material form. Now, for a 10% increase in efficiency I'd happily plug in, but then the installers of these systems will also have to deal with the extra maintenance (and possibilities for quick and easy abuse) that's always inherent in anything with moving/connecting parts.
Also wireless is always cooler.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
They lay... power-up eggs that the pac-man vans pick up? This makes no sense.
"From the grid" is the key flaw in your argument. In the electricity production line there are similar losses upstream before it even gets to the power outlet.
It's not really my argument, but doesn't the same go for fuel? You need to burn it to transport it, after all.
Oh dear, where do I start. The electric car is only the last stage in a system starting with a power station. To consider the efficiency of that system you must consider the efficiency of all stages combined, and the lower efficiencies (the weak links in the chain) of that system will be upsteam, at the power station and in the transmission of that electricity to the car batteries, including through the "manhole covers". Even if the electric cars were 100% efficient in themselves, if the power station burns fossil fuels the efficiency of the whole system will be lower than that of an internal combustion engine car. That is even allowing for the efficiency losses of liquid fuel refining and distribution.
Don't get me wrong - I am an elecricity enthusiast. In fact I am a power station engineer. But let's face facts. Electricity does have many other advantages however, such as being derivable from sources not practicable on board a car or train - such as nuclear and tidal, as well as being lower maintenance.
In fact, if only 60% of the electricity taken by the car reaches the wheel, that is disgracefully inefficient
But still far better than petrol.
I am shocked at how low this 60% is. An electric motor should be around 90% efficient,and the gear train (if needed) better than 95%, so total ~85%. What are they doing with the rest - are the batteries that lousy? But as I said, even if it were 100% the total system efficiency remains low.
Personally, I don't get this obsession with avoiding the need to plug in a charging lead. People have managed for years with fuel pumps.
If there was any way to do away with the physical connection, it would be done, ... the installers of these systems will also have to deal with the extra maintenance (and possibilities for quick and easy abuse) that's always inherent in anything with moving/connecting parts.>
Maintenance?! I have been plugging an unplugging all sorts of electrical appliances (eg vacuum cleaner) for years with negligable maintenance required. Ditto for heavier industrial stuff (I'm a power station engineer remember) OTOH for "manhole cover" charging we are hearing of devices to lower a coil from the underside of the car and devices to guide the car into exact position; they will need maintenance.
To consider the efficiency of that system you must consider the efficiency of all stages combined, and the lower efficiencies (the weak links in the chain) of that system will be upsteam, at the power station and in the transmission of that electricity to the car batteries, including through the "manhole covers".
And exactly the same goes for the transport of fossil fuels, doesn't it? It doesn't get from under the ground to the gas station for free.
if the power station burns fossil fuels the efficiency of the whole system will be lower than that of an internal combustion engine car.
Emphasis mine, in order to ask: why must this be true?
In fact, I'm not exactly sure what you're comparing here. Are you saying the efficiency of the whole (power station-electricity grid-electric car) system will be lower than that of just the ICE car? Or lower than that of the whole (oil platform-transport system-gas station-ICE car) system?
I am shocked at how low this 60% is. An electric motor should be around 90% efficient,and the gear train (if needed) better than 95%, so total ~85%. What are they doing with the rest - are the batteries that lousy?
But it's still far more efficient than petrol, isn't it? I assume that what they're doing with at least some of the rest is powering all the other things a modern car needs to do - just as you would have to burn petrol for in a regular car (minus having to keep the engine ticking over in idle).
But as I said, even if it were 100% the total system efficiency remains low.
Lower than the current system? Or not?
Ditto for heavier industrial stuff (I'm a power station engineer remember)
I trust myself to plug in and use household appliances. I wouldn't trust a succession of random members of the public to use my charging installation without expecting them to break it in several unexpected and expensive ways.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.