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Oslo Will Build Wireless Chargers For Electric Taxis in Zero-Emissions Push (cnet.com)
Norway is helping lead the charge toward complete electrification, and it will soon have a whole network of wireless chargers for its capital city's fleet of taxis. From a report: The city of Oslo, in conjunction with Finnish utility company Fortum and American manufacturer Momentum Dynamics, announced last week that the three will work together to create a wireless-charging infrastructure for Oslo's growing zero-emission taxi fleet. The charging plates will be installed at places where taxis park and wait for fares.
The city will use Momentum Dynamics' wireless charging technology, which is claimed to work at speeds up to 75 kilowatts, which is in the neighborhood of most current DC Fast Charge stations. Taxis will have the requisite hardware installed, so all they need to do is park over a charging station and accumulate electrons before shuffling off somewhere else. "We believe this project will provide the world with the model it needs for keeping electric taxis in continuous 24/7 operation," said Andrew Daga, CEO of Momentum Dynamics, in a statement. "It will build on the success we have demonstrated with electric buses, which also need to be automatically charged throughout the day in order to stay in operation. Momentum is very excited to be working with the people of Oslo and with our partner Fortum."
The city will use Momentum Dynamics' wireless charging technology, which is claimed to work at speeds up to 75 kilowatts, which is in the neighborhood of most current DC Fast Charge stations. Taxis will have the requisite hardware installed, so all they need to do is park over a charging station and accumulate electrons before shuffling off somewhere else. "We believe this project will provide the world with the model it needs for keeping electric taxis in continuous 24/7 operation," said Andrew Daga, CEO of Momentum Dynamics, in a statement. "It will build on the success we have demonstrated with electric buses, which also need to be automatically charged throughout the day in order to stay in operation. Momentum is very excited to be working with the people of Oslo and with our partner Fortum."
This is a super smart way of starting to build out infrastructure. Geez, can we get some of this smart, forward thinking government that benefits people over here in the US, please?
I don't respond to AC's.
Unlike our current scheme to pad Musk's pockets, electric taxis and buses make sense.
Wouldn't it be cheaper/easier to have the buses tow a trailer with their battery pack? That way they can swap out the drained one in a couple of minutes.
Would it be just too damn hard to make a robot arm that attaches and detaches a cable to charge? I don't think so.
Probably not, because then you'd have to train all the drivers on how to move with a trailer behind them.
On the other hand, if you're buying hundreds of electric buses, have the battery pack be modular, between the wheels on the bottom where it enhances stability, then swap using a dedicated swap station, or even a forklift. Some electronics in the bus and you could even have the bus itself unhook the battery and rehook the new one.
https://www.tesla.com/videos/b... - showing that an in-chassis battery swap is indeed possible.
I don't read AC A human right
To me it makes more sense long term, to try and figure out how to do on-road charging of vehicles in motion - some kind of heavy support van with massive electrical storage, that drives alongside or behind an electric vehicle and charges it as it goes about the day delivering people. Then you don't have the problem of vehicles having dead time to charge, which would seem to get worse using a wireless charging solution which is bound to be a lot slower than a cabled charge.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
98% from Hydro, geothermal, and wind, 2% from fossil fuels.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
Okay, I've seen a number of similar "smart build outs" through history, and the problem that you can run into is that you can miss the direction technology is actually moving in and the infrastructure ends up wasted, never used. Or you end up with a sub-optimal beta solution that needs custom engineering for anything new, because you're literally the only install.
Guess right and it's glorious. Guess wrong and it's an expensive boondoggle.
It's like companies and governments coming together to design universal EV plugs - but there's three "universal" plug systems in common use worldwide, none of them are wireless, and Tesla came along and has probably the most charging stations, which are largely proprietary*, which succeed because they're like 4X as powerful as any of the universal designs, and sleeker to boot.
*As I understand it, nearly all Tesla stations have some universal heads, and Tesla actually released their specifications to the public domain, so if I want a tesla charge plug, I can put a tesla-compatible charge plug into my EV, but I'd have to pay at the superchargers, and no EV maker has made their EV "tesla supercharger capable" yet.
I don't read AC A human right
Electric everything does not mean zero emissions if your electrical production facilities are pumping our emissions like crazy. Nuclear is the only current answer for this that is consistent and sustainable
Wireless charging is less efficient and more expensive generally. Wouldn't the increased energy costs at least partially offset benefits to the environment? Why not use a universal standard adapter to directly charge them?
Battery buses that drive behind cars delivering power, why didn't the engineers think of that? OH YEAH BECAUSE IT'S FUCKING RETARDED, COLORADO INCEL GET A JOB ALREADY MORON.
First up, you're operating under a misconception. A properly designed wireless charging solution can be every bit as fast as a cabled charge. In many cases, faster, if you're, for example, comparing a 110V@15A cable compared to a induction system designed for 10kW.
It's actually very interesting. At the sizes and power levels we're looking at for induction charging EVs, the 6" or so between the wires doesn't give you much loss. Indeed, if designed properly, the system can act as a voltage changing transformer, eliminating the need to have one elsewhere. So they're actually efficient as well.
As for your van solution -
Problem 1 I see with a "heavy support van" is that you've just doubled the number of vehicles you need to drive around, you can fit fewer buses and battery vans into an area than just buses, etc...
Problem 2 Is that you're doubling the number of vehicles you drive around, which doubles the number of drivers you need(for now) or if self-driving, you're still doubling the number of vehicles and drivetrains you need to maintain.
Problem 3 is that it is currently entirely possible to fit an entire day's worth of energy into batteries that fit within a standard bus frame, at least for buses that spend most of their day stopped or at low speeds. IE downtown loops more than greyhound between town. This eliminates the need for the battery van completely.
Problem 4 is that the van will probably end up costing as much as a bus, so just buying twice as many buses actually gives you more flexibility. Have a problem? Swap the bus.
Most cities/towns run fewer buses at night, so you can charge most of them then. Even at the most severe use scenarios, you need to haul a bus in occasionally just for cleaning and other maintenance, so if the need is great enough you can simply swap out with a fresh bus, giving them 8 hours while on a charging station while they also clean/disinfect the bus, perform any repairs needed, etc... Or they can build a battery swap station, swap the batteries out, and be good for another 12 hours without charging at all.
Then, depending on route and all that, you can put charging pads under the bus stop spots, and depending upon the ratios, never really need to come in due to running out of energy, if the use tends to be 5 minutes of charging for every 10 minutes of driving.
If you want to get really, really, fancy, it's also possible to put a series of induction loops into the road surface and use electronics to charge the vehicle from the road even as it moves down the road at speeds in excess of 60 mph. You could have a system where, over the course of a mile, every EV running over the road gains a mile of charge. Though I'll admit that spots where the average speed is less or stops are expected can give you more charge ability with fewer loops, and are therefore cheaper. So, first you put it where the buses are stopping to load/unload. Then you put them in at redlights and such. Then you start building what I'd call 'runways' where the bus can accelerate using power from induction loops rather than its battery packs, preserving them. This is more useful than trying to give the bus power when it's stopping due to regenerative braking.
All this stuff is possible, of course, but the question is whether it's cheaper than just adding more batteries, cutting some weight from the bus, swapping out buses more frequently, or putting in a more efficient electric motor?
I don't read AC A human right
Solar Freakin' Roadways!
I'd be careful with presuming that there's extra inefficiency with inductive charging.
For example, Cleantechnia
says,
Wireless EV charging is just as efficient — or more efficient — than plugging in. Most people think they have to plug in an electric car to get the most efficient charging possible, but that’s not true. No charging method is 100% efficient. Conventional chargers are typically 88% to 95% efficient. Wireless charging is right in the middle of that range at 90% to 93% efficiency. That means it does as good a job of transferring electricity from the charger to a car’s battery as most conventional charging equipment that uses a cord.
This is largely because a wired charging system still needs to use a transformer to match voltage to the battery, while with a wireless charger, the inductive loop IS the transformer.
Even wikipedia notes that inefficiency is primarily a problem for systems under 100W, and becomes inapplicable over 5 kW. Which is interesting that it is more efficient to plug our small devices - IE smartphones and such, in, but better to charge our huge devices (electric vehicles) wirelessly.
I don't read AC A human right
It's not that it's too hard, it's that it's too creepy for most people.
Tesla built one.
That said, consider the matching prices, and maintenance. With a robot arm, you have to maintain the robot arm. An inductive charger is at least solid state. You need some sensors for both the robot and the inductive charger, but the sensors for the robot arm are going to be more complicated, sensitive, and subject to breakage. With the inductive charger, you can build it INTO the road, build it so that it can be run over. What happens if somebody runs into the robot arm cable? I've seen enough stuff hit in parking lots. Take a look some time. Odds are that if it is in a parking lot and sticks up, it WILL be hit eventually. In a lot of them many times a year. One greenhouse owner has a state-mandated "watch out for pedestrians!" sign in his parking lot in the pedestrian zone, on a concrete block between the lanes. He runs a video camera livestream of it, and has a collection of video from people hitting it. He has to go out regularly to drag it back to its proper spot.
In addition, if we're looking at quick charge boosts to give an electric taxi or bus that extra hour of driving to make it through the day at regular pick-up points, fast connection and disconnection is essential. It took the tesla robot about 30 seconds to hook in and start charging. An inductive pad can be doing the same in under a second.
I don't read AC A human right
Actually, I was just checking up on this, it seems that inductive charging tends to be most wasteful at under 100W, and more efficient above around 5kW. EV charging being closer to 5kW than 100W....
That said, you have the problem that universal standards themselves tend to be cludges and thus slightly less efficient, but a wired charger might not encourage people to use them as much as wireless as they'd require the driver to not only get out to hook them up, but they'd have to remember to get out and unhook before driving away. While with a wireless they just pull up to the proper spot and everything else is automatic.
Would also be more compatible with driverless systems down the road, as it is easier to make an AI car pull into a wireless charging station and line everything up correctly than it is to add a robot to plug the wire in.
I don't read AC A human right
This drops the energy efficiency of EVs below that of ICEs.
The EPA lists the Nissan Leaf at 30 kWh per 100 miles. This is energy stored in the battery. Getting the energy into the battery involves a charging efficiency of about 80% (i.e. only 80% of the electricity coming out the wall socket makes it into the battery, the other 20% becomes waste heat). Transmission over power lines is about 95% efficient. And electricity generated from coal plants is about 37% efficient, about 58% efficient for natural gas plants. Split the difference and call it 47.5%. So to move an EV 100 miles requires (30 kWh) / (0.8 * 0.95 * 0.475) = 83.1 kWh = 299 MJ worth of fuel if you're generating the electricity from fossil fuels.
The Nissan Versa hatchback (ICE equivalent to the Leaf) uses 2.9 gallons of gasoline per 100 miles. Gasoline has an energy density of 34.2 MJ per liter, or 129.5 MJ per gallon. So 2.9 gallons holds 375.4 MJ. Making the ICE vehicle slightly less energy-efficient than the EV (uses about 25% more energy than the EV).
Wireless inductive chargers have been built over 90% efficient in labs, but the typical chargers in commercial production are only 75%-80% efficient. That moves the EV's 299 MJ per 100 mile energy consumption up to 374-399 MJ per 100 miles. Meaning the EV consumes more energy than an equivalent ICE vehicle to travel the same distance.
Norway can get away with it because they get almost all their electricity from hydroelectric. But this idea won't work in countries heavily reliant on fossil fuels to generate electricity (most of the world). The EV still gets the advantage of being able to better filter out particulate emissions at the power plant using big effective filters, instead of poor transportable filters at the tailpipe of every car. But it would result in EVs generating more CO2 per mile than ICE vehicles, defeating much of the purpose of switching to EVs.
I think you made a couple mistakes though. First up, the inductive charger would REPLACE the 80% charging efficiency of the leaf's charger, not be in addition to it. In short, a wash. This is what I've found when I researched it myself, for EVs wireless and wired charging are effectively equal in efficiency.
Second, you make absolutely no adjustment for the energy costs involved in extracting, refining, shipping, and pumping gasoline.
I don't read AC A human right
Please include all the calculations for the electric side of the house in the gasoline side of the house to ensure you are comparing apples to apples.
Did you include the loss involved in transporting the gasoline to the stations?
Did you include the evaporation percentage of gasoline from the tank? (Kidding here)
Did you include the energy involved in cracking the crude oil to manufacture the gasoline?
Until you do this is comparing Apples to Oranges or if you prefer a Honda S2000 to a Yugo.
I understand that the unit can supply 75KW as long as the taxi is there, but had to say that "75 kilowatts is not a speed."
Interesting, so induction systems wouldn't wear out? save for other ways electrical stuff stop working.
So, I suppose you still need maintenance access to replace stuff that blow out.
With Chinese electric buses a solution is already available, charge overhead at bus stops. Supercapacitors in the bus allow to beam a lot power such that stopping for passengers gives you juice for going towards the next stop.
What if there isn't a next stop? (far away, out of service, need to join another bus line). This was a problem we would raise up when bringing up this concept a decade ago but I reckon that in just a decade batteries have made a hell lot of progress in cost first and capacity second. So you can carry a useful amount of battery capacity as well.
Now, I wonder how you pay for the juice. I would like to be able to throw coins and bills of cash into the machine! ok this is outmoded so failing that I think it should take VISA/Mastercard.
Cash would STILL be an option if you can go through a manned booth to exit the charging park.
OK now you're telling me, there's some Android or iOS or Web thing and I'll have an account. Well, I don't want to have to bring an Internet connection with me nor be stuck because my 7-year-old phone (or 1-year-old phone, or Apple watch or PC netbook) is crapping out.
So, the electric charger provides a network connection and the car includes an OS and networking. Unpatched outdated garbage full of holes and I'm cucked with a mandatory account? Will it auto-draw money from my bank account every fifth of the month and permanent record of all my travels and power use is sold to GCHQ etc.
What if I buy the car with the intent to use it for 30-40 years (like these antiques in Cuba) : Will it get firmware upgrades? Do you need to junk the car because it's on creaky old QNX, Android 10.1, linux 5.2.280 or something? Can you upgrade it to Wireless Charging 2.0?
How about your "dematerialized" and "virtual" economy instead!
The actual truth is it's square miles of datacenters filled to the brink with electronics junk, thousands kilometers of various wiring and megawatts of HVAC.
Office space for smug liberal elitist-wannabes with their 25C heat in winter, 21C cooling in summer doesn't come cheap either. With the money they extract thanks to their "machine learned" algorithms leveraging synergies to "improve the customer experience" you have to provide these bluepilled idiots with iShit and electric cars and the charging infrastructure (and then probably, old fashioned suburban sprawl that costs a trillion dollars in boring pipes and wires and road surfaces to make the place a lifeless asphalt wasteland)
You even have to pay for the wars they cheer for when they angrily retweet about the evil dictator of the day who "starves his own people". They need a "humanitarian bombing" campaign to deal with them, because the republicans and the liberal media and "NGOs" and "celebrities" are all calling for this.
But you're eating organic quinoa, installing solar panels and educating your six-year-old about puberty blocking hormones and sex reassignment. Tired of saving the world yet?
Right off the bat, ignore LynnwoodRooster. Otherwise known as an Ad Hominem fallacy. The rest of your argument suffers from problems as well, such as strawman. For example, "There is ALWAYS loss in an inductive system". Well, duh. I never said inductive charging doesn't have losses. For example, I said "extra inefficiency", the Cleantech article mentions "No charging method is 100%", and I follow up mentioning that while low power systems ( < 100W) have major problems with inefficiency, high power systems ( > 5kW) don't have that issue.
I even identified why this is largely so - dedicated chargers need a transformer to adjust the incoming voltage (generally 240V), to that of the battery pack (~400V). With a wired charger, this is part of the circuit. With inductive chargers, the inductive coil itself can be used to adjust the voltage, acting as a huge transformer. Transformers aren't 100% efficient, and are actually a major cause of battery charging being less than 100%. The battery itself is around 90-90% efficient. The rest is lost in transforming the electricity to the necessary voltage, primarily the transformer.
The Wiki article notes that the "efficient" Magne Charge system is 86% efficient, and that's probably at an optimal positioning of both coils. Offset the receiving coil by 10% and watch that efficiency cut in half.
And most EV chargers are 80-90% efficient, so 86% is right in the efficiency band for even corded chargers. Yes, optimal positioning is necessary, but not actually very difficult at the sizes we're talking about. Especially if the EV has automatic parking assist. Let it do the parking job and get you optimal positioning every time.
Also note that Magne Charge is also depreciated. It's old. Newer techs are better, but not necessarily widely enough deployed or public enough to give the actual percentages.
I don't read AC A human right
Why are people worried about the radiation coming off of their phone, yet are ok with getting soaked in an area that emits so much of it that it can charge large batteries like those used in a car without physical contact?
I bet its going to be great... not to mention the cancer these poor souls will get.
Then why haven't you quit?
You haven't proven it to be a lie. It's been outright stated that physically connected chargers are in the 90% range, efficiency wise, and I've posted plenty of links showing that inductive chargers can reach those ranges as well.
Wired EV chargers aren't just a cable either, remember? They're a lot like computer power supplies, AC-DC transformers. Except instead of spitting out 12V, they spit out something like 400VDC. 90% is good efficiency for that.
Hell, I save money on running my desktop because I sprung for the higher efficiency power supply.
I don't read AC A human right
It's because there isn't a wire connecting the charger directly to the car. Instead you do indeed have lots of loops of wire that aren't actually touching each other, like in the transformer that would otherwise be present.
I don't read AC A human right
as soon as you're willing to pay a 75% income tax.
...which surely beats setting aside 75% of your revenues to pay off various debts (mortgages, other credits, etc.) that you got your self into to pay things that we tax-paying "evil euro-communists" get for free (e.g.: student loans vs. nearly free education).
Oh, yeah, I get it. You don't like that taxes are imposed on you, you'd prefere chosing yourself, where you're going to lose 75% of your income.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
If passersby have their laptop HDD wiped by the strong nearby EM field,
Hello, what is this weird object that you call "HDD"?
And how can I connect it to my laptop's M.2 NVMe connector?
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Well, I'm glad that you're finally trying. However, you still have problems of non-applicability, and have introduced spherical cow problems. To be blunt, in theory, there's no difference between theory and reality. In reality there is. Oh, and I'm quite up on my physics, and they don't say that I'm wrong. I may not be an EE, but I'm still STEM. So you can drop the credentials fallacy.
Next, I'll point out that you're strawmanning my(and my cited article)on the actual efficiency. The article, and I, have at most said "as efficient or possibly more". You immediately dropped the "as efficient" to argue against more efficient. To meet "possibly more", all you'd need to do is find a fairly inefficient corded charger. A cheap one, not properly optimized for efficiency.
All I've been arguing is "as efficient".
Still, you might want to read your links to make sure they say what you mean. For example, your first link says this:
But, ferromagnetic materials like steel as core of transformer, suffers from hysteresis loss, eddy current losses. Also it faces problem of getting saturated after certain level of magnetization. But these can be avoided in air core transformer as ferromagnetic core is absent in this transformer.
Looks to me like they're saying the opposite of what you're asserting. In specific circumstances, air core transformers can be more efficient than steel core. Thank you for providing more proof for my position.
Second link, continuing on from slide 5, at slide 8 they mention that increasing the dimensions of the transformer increases the coupling factor, and I can clearly see the charts showing a factor above 0.95, where 1 would be a theoretical ideal coupler ratio.
Given that one of the points I've made is that inefficiency is noted on the wiki page for under 100 watt applications, presumably with a coil around an inch across, while EV class induction coils bust the 5kW where it isn't a problem anymore, and are closer to a couple feet...
So congratulations, citation 2 also supports that a nice large open core induction coil can realistically be efficient enough for the cited charger efficiencies. You'd almost think that the businesses designing them put engineering work in.
Still, let's look at what wikipedia says about magnetic cores.
In some cases the losses are undesirable and with very strong fields saturation can be a problem, and an 'air core' is used. A former may still be used; a piece of material, such as plastic or a composite, that may not have any significant magnetic permeability but which simply holds the coils of wires in place.
What is this in reference to? Losses from eddy currents, hysteresis, and high field strengths causing saturation. What might we be seeing at 5kW and up? Why might we NOT want losses?Sounds like a potential application for an air core to me.
Citation 3 is really irrelevant. It isn't even a good explanation of coupling factor for laymen.
Noticeably lacking from your citations is that iron core is always better than air core.
Also, I reject your contention of misaligned coils, as quite a lot of development work was done to prevent that little problem.
SAE International -93% efficiency, grid to battery.
Notice that I'm posting, not theoretical stuff, but actual produced hardware, documentation about inductive EV chargers, not theoretical stuff.
Oh, and I just noticed. You're attacking a strawman. I didn't say that an air core transformer is more efficient than steel core. If that was true, we wouldn't use steel cores. Though some of that is about cost too. I'm looking
I don't read AC A human right