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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.

2 of 77 comments (clear)

  1. Re:What an incredibly stupid idea... by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    EV owner here. Even if this worked with 100% reliability it would still be pointless. There are there types of charging that matter:

    1. Home charging, which is 99%of what most people do.

    2. Destination charging. Doesn't matter if it takes a few hours, you are parked doing shopping or watching a movie or whatever.

    3. Rapid charging on motorways and main roads. For long distance trips only, and in the future few people will use them regularly because 300+ mile batteries will be the norm.

    The shear cost of installing inductive charging and the basically non-issue of having to stop for 30 minutes and charge every 3-4 hours on occasional long trips make it useless.

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  2. Re:What an incredibly stupid idea... by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's just too much power to transmit wirelessly. It's hard enough to charge your phone - the losses are quite bad even for that.

    They are talking about 50 KW and 85 percent efficiency! That's nuts.I can't imagine anything near that in real life. But 50 KW a couple inches below my sorry butt is not a tempting thought. I'm seeing RFI problems, Magnetization and other induction issues in places they don't want it. I wonder about pacemakers or insulin pumps as well. I wonder if there will even be diamagnetic effects as well. I've got titanium in my ankles. Problem is, at thos power levels and those distances, weird stuff sometimes happens.

    To get any sort of efficiency the charging AC is going to have to be pretty high in frequency as well. I'm smelling a lot of RFI.

    I loves me my EV's, but this sounds like something right up there with Broadband over Power Line, and Smartphone service right by the GPS frequencies.

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