Slashdot Mirror
Universities, Gov't Testing Magnetic Resonance Charging For EVs In Transit (computerworld.com)
Lucas123 writes: At least two universities are testing the use of magnetic resonance and mobile receivers to charge electric vehicles while they're on roadways. Partially funded by a multi-million dollar DOE grant, Clemson University's International Center for Automotive Research has been testing stationary wireless vehicle charging and is now preparing to test mobile wireless recharging for vehicles.In the U.K., the government is expected to perform off-road trials of dynamic wireless charging that it acquired from researchers at North Carolina State University. The idea behind dynamic wireless charging is to create a series of embedded highway stations that can incrementally recharge EV carrying mobile receivers as the vehicles drive by. The vehicles would use a Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC) technology to communicate with roadway chargers. DSRC can support both stationary wireless charging and in-motion wireless charging with the same system architecture. DSRC is already being used in crash avoidance systems and is expected to be required over the next five years, so the charging technology could piggyback on the DSRC modules already installed.
You could make some really sweet invisible speed-bumps with this technology.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Just put a live power source next to the roadway so we can charge directly while driving like a subway.
Haven't we had electrified railroads and electric busses that use overhead wires? Why do we insist on trying to re-invent stuff that already works?
(sarcasm)
Better yet, why don't you use the magnets to Push/Pull the vehicles down the road and just use regenitive breaking to charge the battery or something that doesn't require you to redesign everything almost from scratch?
Here's another idea... Build tracks with steel rails that you can drive your car onto. Charge the rails (or a third rail if you want) to both power the cars and charge the batteries. Self driving cars would be easy because you'd only need to bother with what's on the tracks in front of you so the automation is easier. Cost would be similar to light rail systems, without the stations or trains. In fact, the local rapid transit authority could provide on demand public vehicles which could use the same infrastructure to provide point to point transit within the covered area. You'd schedule and pay for the vehicle using something akin to UBER. All this requires is a public standard for rail widths and how to extract power from the system, plus some public protocols to handle communicating with the automation in the vehicles using the system and for some manufacturer to start selling cars that implement all this....
(/sarcasm)
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
... even with mod points to burn I can't resist weighing in on this one. Some ideas are just too dumb for words. Just what sort of energy efficiencies do they think that they are going to manage? Who is going to pay for this "free" (incredibly inefficient) energy? Just how much power will they have to deliver to even break even on a moving vehicle, and how much power will their "transmitter" have to radiate in order for the car's pickup to be able to receive enough power?
Shades of Nikolai Tesla! Why not just put up megawatt Tesla coils ever fifty meters and leave them on all the time! This is an idea that was proven stupid 100 years ago.
But hey, the government has lots of (my) money. I'll just try to think of it as scientific welfare, sort of like climate science. Too bad they aren't spending it on something that isn't quite so obviously a boondoggle, though.
rgb
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
Give or take a couple orders of magnitude!
"Currently, at peak efficiency, the new system can transmit energy at a rate of 0.5 kilowatts (kW)"
Aiming for 50.
LOL, at the moment it looks like it barely covers the lane change to get to the charger!
Not blown away by this. Stationary inductive charging already exists. it's not quite commercialized, but there are several demos going on including at Monterey-Salinas Transit and at Utah Transit. There's a company called WAVE out of Utah that is doing this. Their current system is 50 kW, but they say they're working on a 250 kW version (vaporware at this point).
In-motion inductive charging seems a bit more far fetched.
Do we all have to drive the same car? How does this deal with different ride heights? Won't that make a HUGE difference in how much power you get?
Will I fry my car if I lower the ride height?
One word "Slot car racing" That is the future.
Why not just put these at stop lights? You get a bit of charge while you wait. On average, everyone would get some charge. And it would encourage people to actually stop. I guess the question is how much charge can you get in a minute?
And who is going to pay for the infrastructure and electricity?
Surprise! More worthless impractical use cases to justify forcing DSRC surveillance on everyone.
There are two alternatives:
1. Build the stator of a linear motor into the highway and pull cars by a moving
magnetic field
2. Use a ``third rail'' and shoe contact as for slot cars.
Both should have way less losses and better realisation chances
than on-the-go charging.
Embed permanent magnets in the roadway, so that vehicles moving over them move through the field and use that to charge their batteries that propel them forward down the road. Finally, a practical use for perpetual motion.
For those of you attacking the technical viability of this, I suggest that reality is beside the point.
The summary already has the real reason:
"Partially funded by a multi-million dollar DOE grant"
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
... that even Slashdot knows this idea is dumb. It is that dumb.