How the World's Fastest Electric Car Is Pushing Wireless Charging Tech

An anonymous reader writes With the first ever season of Formula E revving up in China next month, it's clear there's more to electric cars than Tesla. But the race cars hitting the track in Beijing don't have anything on the speed of Drayson Racing Technology's Lola B12 69/EV, which holds the record for the world's fastest lightweight electric car, and which uses the kind of power technologies that could one day have applications off the track too—like charging your phone wirelessly.

Comments

Quite warm beneath the car, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's do the numbers: if you want this 30 kWh battery charged in one hour (you're in a race, remember?) you'll have to supply 30 kW. At an efficiency of 80% (TFA -- I know, I know) you're looking at losses of 30 * (1/.8 -1) kW = 30 * .25 kW = 7.5 kW. That's a friggin' garage heater!

I'd still go with a thick copper plug, really.

Re: Quite warm beneath the car, right?

[MMC Monster]

Is replacing the batteries illegal during a race? If not, why not just do that? Tesla previewed fast battery exchange a year ago as a model for fueling stations.

Re:Quite warm beneath the car, right?

[geogob]

Quite warm, yes! It's already quite warm under may car, where the battery is, when charging it with 22 kW over a good ol' copper thick copper wire. At this charging rate, the cooling fans and the car's AC automatically jump in to cool the cells.
Although I never tried it, I could also charge at 44 kW... that's sure going to produce a lot of heat.

Now I imagine doing so at 80% transfer efficiency. I am convinced heat would be a major issue; It's not yet a technical issue, but definitely a comfort issue. Furthermore, paying now about 0.28€/kWh, I wouldn't be happy to lose 20% of it to melt the snow on the road. That's only good for Quebec, where I used to pay under 0.04$/kWh.

Re: Quite warm beneath the car, right?

[NotDrWho]

That's what I was thinking too. Just set up pit stops and the design the cars so that the battery can be popped out and replaced just like the tires. Maybe have pit stops like oil change garages with dug-outs that the car can drive over, with the guys under the car pulling and replacing the battery at the same time the guy up top is replacing the tires. Easy peasy.

Re:LOL

[dkf]

How about if could charge your car wireleslly a bit at a time at each stop light.

If you think that's viable, you're spending too much of your life waiting at stop lights.

Not worth it.

[MrL0G1C]

For $$$ amount of electricity lost buy using this method of charging a car would pay for a holiday after a decade. (25Kwh * 20%loss * 10c * 365days * 10years = $1825)

Why is plugging in a charger difficult? With my phone I'd say plug-in is more convenient because I don't have to worry about dedicating a flat surface for charging, the phone get plugged in and chucked wherever at whatever angle.

Re:Not worth it.

[geogob]

It's not a question of difficulty, but of convenience. Imagine you could charge at every red light you stop.

I drive an electrical car every day to work. The charging time for one leg from home to work is typically 15 minutes. Driving time is about 40 minutes. In those 30 minutes. I cross about 20 intersections with traffic lights; about 10 of those are major intersections, where I often wait 30 seconds to 1 minute. So assuming my luck is bad, I get to wait 10 minutes at red lights on my way to work.

With a charging system embedded in the road only at major intersection, I would already recharge most my day's use, mitigating the need to charge full every 2 days or so. As range is still the biggest limitation of electrical cars, I believe this would be an important step forward.

Re:Not worth it.

[markass530]

Are you planning on using this electric super car as your daily driver?

Re:Not worth it.

[evilviper]

Why is plugging in a charger difficult?

Because any of a million things can happen to render a microUSB port useless... And the failure of that tiny part makes your $1,000 smartphone similarly useless and worthless.

I'd go for something like a magnetic surface-mount charging cord, if I got to make all the R&D decisions. But since I don't, an induction coil with some power loss is better than having to fiddle with fragile microUSB jacks all the time.

Re:Not worth it.

[LordLimecat]

It's not a question of difficulty, but of convenience. Imagine you could charge at every red light you stop.

Seems to me that if theres a push to "green everything" and several places are having power supply issues, tacking on yet another 25% loss is a pretty piss poor idea.

Re:Not worth it.

[geogob]

Although I agree that the 25% loss is not acceptable, I can't rally to your argumentation based on "several place are having power supply issues". What if I live in an area that doesn't have issues at all?

I've heard the same argumentation before for water. Fresh water is short in server place, so we need to save water said the politic. Followed large (and expensive) initiatives to save water - even in region where fresh water was not an issue. Followed that in those region, the water saving was so efficient, that the consumption dropped below critical threshold for the infrastructure. To maintain it, it now needs to be flushed out on regular basis, which in turn lead to a higher overall water need as before the initiatives. I'm not saying that this is case for electricity, but it just illustrate how this kind of argumentation can be a two-edged sword.

Re:Not worth it.

[MrL0G1C]

I have come a bit too close to breaking a microUSB by plugin a usb cable the wrong way round, but the new USB3 reversible port fixes that problem. To be fair, the gadget I had trouble with had a poor surface mount that made it difficult to see which way round to plug the lead... still a problem for partially sighted regardless though.

Re:Not worth it.

[NotDrWho]

If the point of electrical cars is to SAVE energy and reduce emmissions (as proponents claim), then a tech that wastes 25% of said energy (and the coal that produces it) just for a little convenience sort of defeats the purpose. May as well drive a fuel-efficient hybrid.

These cars are SUPPOSED to save the planet, remember? They're not supposed to be just be status symbols for smug assholes.

Re:LOL

[CeasedCaring]

London has installed wireless charging points at bus stops for its new hybrid bus fleet.

Race tracks like slot car tracks

[swb]

Why couldn't they make a race track similar to a slot car track, although without the slot?

Just stop it with the 'zero emissons' claims

[jenningsthecat]

One of the articles cited says the car "produces zero emissions". Perhaps we can coin a new phrase for electric cars: "zero direct emissions".

Most people reading this implicitly understand that if an electric car is charged using electricity from a coal- or gas-fired power plant it really doesn't have zero emissions. But a very large percentage of the public simply doesn't get that, and thinks of electric cars as an immediate way to address the greenhouse gas problem.

Sure, electric cars probably, (depending on a host of factors), result in fewer emissions per mile driven. But if every car in North America magically became an electric vehicle overnight, we'd need a huge amount of electricity to charge them all, and the energy would have to come from fossil fuel, (not zero emissions), or nuclear, (huge political problem) - never mind the insane costs of the required infrastructure buildout in either scenario. The general public needs more information to help them understand these things, not more "zero emissions" spin.

Re:Just stop it with the 'zero emissons' claims

[Rei]

You act like there's no research papers on this subject. There have been tons, and the conclusions in each case are the same:

1) CO2 emissions would decline even on the US's current grid (which is, I should add, getting cleaner every year, while the amount of emissions associated with oil production keep rising)

2) On a generation basis, every region in the US has enough space capacity for a full switchover of the passenger fleet today, without any new plant construction, except the Pacific Northwest. Most charging is done at night when most power plants lie idle, but the Pacific Northwest is an exception because their heavy use of hydro means time of use isn't important, only net consumption.

3) The only thing that there's not enough of at present is simply local distribution capacity, to peoples' homes.

Of course, that's for a complete, instantaneous switchover, which is of course an impossiblity. Your average car is driven for about two decades before it goes to scrap, only a small fraction rotate out of service every year. And that's assuming that everyone bought EVs as replacement, which if course is an impossiblity because even if everyone was suddenly sold on the concept of EVs it'd take a decade or more to ramp up production to that level. And of course everyone is not suddenly sold on the concept of EVs. You're looking at maybe a 30-40 year transition time period here. If power companies can't keep up with a trend that's stretched out over the scale of several decades, they deserve to fail.

Our Three Cars

[Anonymous Coward]

Our 2012 Nissan Leaf was purchased used from a rental fleet for $15,600 with 8,100 miles. After the down payment and at 2.4%, the monthly payments are ~ $245 per month. Electricity costs about $50 / month when the car "Trickle" charges at home nightly at 120V / 12A. Added together, we are looking at $295 per month for the first 60 months, followed by $50 per month after that. If the battery wears out before eight years, Nissan will replace it for free. After that, Nissan will offer a replacement battery for $5000 or less, and prices will continue to drop thanks to Tesla and Panasonic. There is virtually no maintenance besides rotating tires and filling windshield washer fluid.

Our 2004 SUV used to go through $60 per week in gasoline to make the same daily trip to work. Even though the SUV is paid for, the monthly cost is approximately ((52*$60) / 12) $260 not including repairs, oil changes, etc. We keep it for long trips, but it costs much more to operate than the Leaf.

Our Porsche has a really nice top end speed, so I'm told. It shows its true power between 3000 and 4000 RPM. However, from 0-30 MPH, where it counts in city driving, it can't come close to the accelleration of the Leaf. I have taken both up to 80 MPH, and the difference is in decibels.

Every person that I have had test drive the Leaf is blown away. My wife had a list of cars that she wanted to test drive, but after driving the Leaf she said, "I don't need to test drive anything else." In every respect except for range, the Leaf is a superior vehicle to anything that I have ever driven. Then again, the 2015 Leaf already has improved the range.

My advice, don't sell your ICE car, just garage it for the long trips. Use the Leaf for the daily commute.

20kW is not fast enough

[lupine]

Tesla superchargers charge at 120kW with a wired connection. 20kW is not fast enough to quickly charge an electric vehicle that has enough batteries to provide adequate range. Even the Fast DC chademo chargers for the leaf can charge at 50kW.

Fast wireless charging will never happen because wasting 10% of your power as heat under the vehicle will cause things to melt at high power rates.