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Gov't Researchers Develop Wireless Car Chargers That Are Faster Than Plug-ins (computerworld.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Computerworld: The U.S. Department of Energy has demonstrated a 20,000 watt (20KW) wireless car-charging system that offers three times the efficiency of today's plug-in systems for electric vehicles (EVs). The research is the first step in creating a 50KW wireless charging system that may someday allow roadways to charge vehicles while they are being driven. The DOE's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee demonstrated the new system in partnership with Toyota, Cisco Systems, Evatran and the Clemson University International Center for Automotive Research. ORNL said the 20KW charging system for passenger cars is the world's highest power wireless system. It was developed in less than three years using a "unique architecture that included an ORNL-built inverter, isolation transformer, vehicle-side electronics and coupling technologies."
Can't find any clue as to what frequency is being used for the charger. The prospect of 50 kW of power in your garage or wherever is worrying, despite being "well shielded". Even if it's a lower frequency (in the kHz range), there will be harmonics all over the spectrum, putting radio amateurs and anyone else using sensitive radio gear in a bind.
Fiat Lux.
There's an abundance of research showing that strong electric and magnetic fields can be hazardous.
No there isn't.
It's also been shown that too much exposure [to MRI] causes cancer.
Total BS.
If it charges at 3x the rate, that implies it's ability to pull power is at least 3x what the wired charger is pulling, and it would have to pull that from... a wired connection. This implies the main problem is that the car interface is simply designed to run at a lower power level than this wireless design, and this could be corrected by bumping up the wired interface charge capacity. This is just a case of leapfrogging specs, nothing more.
This is awesome news, but there is a threat here:
I'm fairly certain, that future technology will not allow anonymous charging. It could, but it will not — for the same gratuitous reasons you can't use and recharge a toll-paying transponder anonymously (the way you could use a phone-calling card, for example), but must associate it with both yourself and your car. (Well, New Hampshire, sort of, makes it possible to avoid providing your name, but the cars must still be listed in advance.)
And it is increasingly impossible to drive in certain places without such a transponder, which is, of course, routinely used for surveillance.
As happened with electronic toll-paying, the on-the-road charging too will go from optional to mandatory. Manufacturers will reduce the battery-sizes in many models to save weight and space — and how much of a charge do you need to get from the powered highway to your home (over unpowered streets), right? Effective tracking of your car will become possible. Worse, it may also become possible to remotely disable your car by revoking your access to these chargers.
Today's concerns over license-plate readers may then appear naively quaint...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.