While EV charging isn’t that tedious with a cable, for quick trips, being able to just park and have your car automatically charge would be more convenient. Researchers from Oak Ridge National Lab (ORNL) and VW have moved high-speed wireless EV charging one step closer to reality.
We’ve seen fast wireless EV chargers before, but what sets this system apart is the coil size (~0.2 m2 vs 2.0 m2) and the fact it was demonstrated on a functioning EV where previous attempts have been on the bench. According to the researchers, this was the first wireless transfer to a light duty vehicle at 270 kW. Industry standards currently only cover systems up to 20 kW.
The system uses a pair of polyphase electromagnetic coupling coils about 50 cm (19″) wide to transfer the power over a gap of approximately 13 cm (5″). Efficiency is stated at 95%, and that 270 kW would get most EVs capable of those charge rates a 50% bump in charge over ten minutes (assuming you’re in the lower part of your battery capacity where full speeds are available).
We’ve seen some in-road prototypes of wireless charging as well as some other interesting en route chargers like pantographs and slot car roads. We’ve got you covered if you’re wondering what the deal is with all those different plugs that EVs have too.
Well damn, 95% seems incredibly good.
But at 270kW that’s still 13,5kW wasted (heat induced somewhere else?).
Yeah, that’s more than my entire house is typically using… that’s a lot of heat – 4 electric fires – wasted, or worse, heating the battery.
But how does it compare with wired charging? Those cables get hot when 270kW is passed through them. They either have to be water cooled or limit the 270kW charging period.
A quick search shows that 350kW wired charger manufacturers are claiming up to 96% efficiency, so only 1% better than this.
they calculate that efficiency compared to cable :)
Yeah. More pseudo-green technology, ruining the entire point for the sake of the slightest little smidgen of convenience. People should scale this out to understand how an actually-existing mass rollout of renewables would look, this really can’t be ignored at scale.
A 5% reduction in efficiency is far from ruining the entire point of an EV. Moreover, you seem to be ignorant to that fact that many technologies are only successful due to certain conveniences.
People piss away more efficiency than that just to make cars look cool or be oversized.
Let me put it this way: 13.5 kW in 10 minutes is a bit more than 2 kWh. Now look at the battery of your phone. People piss that much energy away watching friggin cat videos.
Hmm, my phone has a 5000 mAh battery, nominal 3.7v, giving 18.5 Wh per full charge. I can watch about 4 hours of cat videos on a full charge. 2 kWh / 18 Wh * 4 hours = 434 hours of cat videos.
Do you think that is a reasonable amount of cat videos to watch, or do you think wasting 2 kWh per 10 minutes of charging is reasonable?
That actually sounds like close to the amount of pointless videos a family of 4 would burn on ~120 driven miles.
434 hours of cat videos divided by 4 family members (we’ll assume the driver is watching also — how irresponsible!) gives us 108.5 hours of video per person, over a 120 mile drive. With a known time and distance, we can calculate the average speed. 120 miles/108.5 hours = 1.1 miles/hour
Which makes the driver watching cat videos while driving understandable.
A better point of comparison is taking a hot shower. One kilowatt-hour boils a bucket of water.
If you’re using 150 liters of warm water for 15 minutes in the shower, and you’re raising the temperature from 13 C in the ground to 37 C at the tap, you’re using about 4 kWh of electricity to heat the water.
Personally, if I were so poor, or the power prices went so high that losing 2 kWh became meaningful, I would be looking for the problem and the solution elsewhere.
Yeah, good point. You could also say it’s like 5-10 miles on an EV. Yeah, it’s not nothing, but if everything else was awesome with EVs (it’s not) it wouldn’t seriously matter.
If you’re going to say “but every watt matters” you better be driving around with no AC, for instance.
I would accept a maximum advantage of 5 miles in the real world – not “EPA range” where you drive 5-10 mph under the speed limit for maximum range.
The thing is, the advantage is still proportional. You don’t save 5-10 miles every day, you save that out of every 100-200 miles. which is approaching the level of difference that common fuel economy improvement scams operate at. You know the ones that have you add a spoonful of what’s really just expensive acetone to a tank of fuel and claim to save some? The weight of your foot on the pedal has a greater difference in the outcome.
1. That’s still an incredible efficiency loss. It’s already going to require doubling electrical infrastructure to replace ICE . . .
2. 5 inches isn’t a practical ground.clearance off a track. So there’s going to need to be moving parts here – greatly increasing costs and lowering reliability – at which point, why not just make metal-metal contact and skip the ‘wireless’?
And then imagine the shielding for electronics needed.
because with wireless you don’t have to park in exactly the same spot everytime, you can be off a bit and still get the vehicle charged
Off a bit means huge efficiency losses, try that with your phone charger.
So we got:
– 13 cm = need for rising pedestal under the car
– need to align car or pedestal perfectly
– hauling heavy fragile coil under the car at all times
– still losing over 10kW, probably half of it heating up that coil meaning now we need to actively cool it on the car side = even more losses
It’s highly ironic that you need kilometers of copper wire in loops on both sides to bridge a 13 cm air gap. That alone makes wireless charging a solution in search of a problem, or a problem pretending to be a solution to anything.
Well yeah, it seems ridiculous to waste that much power for the sake of ‘convenience’ when just plugging the damn things in which would charge faster as well.
People will waste a king’s ransom just so they don’t have to walk across a room once per day, never underestimate people’s revolting craving for petty convenience
I know! Imagine if people just threw away huge amounts of efficiency to make cars look cool or to be way too big for what they’re used for. That’d be totally ridiculous.
Wait…
Nobody wants to drive a Fiat 127 – they were death traps, cramped and uncomfortable without any amenities, yet a car of that size and weight wasn’t actually significantly more efficient. You get the same economy with a modern hybrid that is 2x larger and heavier, more than twice as powerful, and has air bags for all passengers.
See you say that, but a fiat 124 is actually one of my dream cars. I love slow tiny old cars. I used to drive a geo tracker, for scale.
Death trap is fine.
Unreliable Italian trash death trap is the killer.
I’d buy another Honda 600N, if they weren’t unreasonably priced these days.
Improved my driving more than any other vehicle. You had to be in the right gear of you just stopped. Ultimate slow car you can drive fast and still be legal.
Also bug powered Fiat 600 that does 1/8 mile wheelie. Double plus good! German drivetrain from back when they didn’t suck.
More likely 50% efficiency over 13cms. Scam.
Still the irony of having kilometers of copper wire coiled up to make power jump over a 13 centimeter air gap.
And the added mass that must be moved around, when unused is wasting more power.
Is there anywhere in that advertisement a hint t what the charging system looks like and what it costs?
But overall, I don’t really believe in this. It’s too much effort and complexity for too little gain.
I think the way forward is to go to a swapable battery system. First, it allows a battery to be swapped in about the same time as it takes to fill a tank of gasoline, and as a result battery capacity for long trips is no worry anymore.
It also solves the resale value for 2nd hand vehicles. Now, second hand electrical vehicles devaluate quickly, because it is prohibitively expensive to replace a worn out battery. If a battery is worn out, the rest of the car is pretty much waste (or “spare parts”).
Because of the cost of batteries, new electric vehicles are also quite expensive. If you don’t have to buy a battery together with the vehicle, then cost would go down a lot (How much?)
I just saw “Why Battery Swapping Is A BAD Idea” from youtube / AutoTrader, and it’s a quite stupid video. Most what he mentions are non arguments or solvable problems, such as the “chicken and egg” thing. Of course the batteries have to be universal, so they work for each car “brand” (how many car brands are left, except for the different names?) For the rest, it boils down to car manufacturers do not want to be responsible for the batteries, so they much rather sell one together with a car, then to set up a charging network.
He also mentions about 5 different systems that exist (or have existed) for battery swapping, which is of course part of the problem. There should not be 5 different systems.
They already have battery swapping in China, which makes watching a stupid video about not doing it, even more pointless.
They’ve also done it in Israel and some other place I forget, but only in China it’s still operational because the government is subsidizing it. Elsewhere the companies went under because it’s financially unsound and unpopular with the vehicle owners – it costs too much to subscribe to the service to make it worth their while.
There’s a (I think) Chinese company selling cars with battery swap facilities in Sweden, and IIRC across Europe. Sounded interesting till I checked the price… Still way way cheaper to run my dirty 2013 V40 diesel that gets an appalling 3.1l / 100km on my daily commute.
In theory it’s the ideal way to own an EV, but if it costs stupid amounts to replace a battery when it’s worn out, with 90% of the cost being the battery, then even with swappable batteries somebody needs to be covering the cost of the batteries that age and so overall there’s likely to be little difference, the only benefit being the ‘instant’ charging.
>In theory it’s the ideal way to own an EV
It’s not. Renting a battery through a swap-scheme lowers the up-front cost you pay to have the car, but it increases the total cost of ownership, because you have to pay for more than one battery per car in the system, plus the overhead or running the battery swap infrastructure, plus company profits AND the taxes on all that.
It’s like a payday loan – get money now, pay 300% interest. Only difference is, EVs aren’t targeted to people in desperate financial situations, so you have the choice to not do the dumb thing.
Hopefully EU will regulate some battery formats with quick loading into a car., and force the rest of the world on the right way like it happened with phones.
Battery swap schemes always have one big problem: there has to be more batteries than cars, because some batteries are always in stockpile rotation. There has to be at least a couple spare batteries everywhere, in every little remote service station, in case someone goes that way on a Sunday.
Ideally, you would not need an extra battery for every car, if they could be perfectly distributed according to need in both location and time, but in practical reality you will have to stock more batteries to account for peak demand, like on Easter holiday when everyone takes to the highway at the same time to go visit grandma.
Since the battery costs about one third of a new vehicle’s price, this is a huge investment. If there is one extra battery per five vehicles, the extra cost is somewhere around $2,000-5,000 per car, and to make it profitable to a company you need to triple that price for the end consumer, which means you need to pay something to the tune of $10,000 extra over time to use the system.
That’s just a coarse estimate, but you can see why it wouldn’t be popular, and why these schemes haven’t already taken off. They have tried, but it has never worked.
If by “never” you mean “wildly successful in China,” sure.
Yes, how did they do it exactly?
https://restofworld.org/2024/ev-battery-swapping-china/
“Nio is yet to be profitable and reported a $2.9 billion loss in 2023, adding to the company’s existing deficit of over $2 billion. (…) China remains the place where this vision of a green, swap-friendly future is closest to being realized. “In China, there’s a lot of [governmental] support on financing”
Anything is possible if you’re allowed to operate at a loss and get a bunch of government subsidies out of the taxpayers’ pockets.
So what? The entire energy industry has EV subsidies out the wazoo anyway.
A battery swap industry has significant benefits for an entire economy, even if it has to be subsidized. I mean, there are bigger issues with EVs in general, but subsidizing that wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world once the other bits are fixed.
Yeah, so what? I agree – but the question is whether battery swapping makes sense versus owning your battery or otherwise. Everything can be made to “make sense” given special circumstances.
But whether battery swapping makes sense in general, the answer is no, because it entails using even more resources and paying even more money to patch up a fundamental hole in the plan, which is that is batteries are just bad for the job.
Furthermore, “rent-a-battery” might lower the up-front cost but it makes an already unaffordable system even more unaffordable to the masses. Electric cars are still a rich man’s toy, or a system and an infrastructure built for the elite in countries where the government calls all the shots.
>benefits for an entire economy, even if it has to be subsidized
Rarely. As a general principle, subsidies hide costs, which messes up with supply and demand, causing greater demand than what is justified by the value of the thing in question. People end up on the losing side, paying more than they get out of it.
The “economy” may benefit by increasing the exchange of money, or GDP as it’s counted, but money isn’t wealth. Driving a car is wealth, living in a house is wealth – having a bunch of worthless dollars in your bank account isn’t wealth.
You have to remember that a lot of the “progressive” stuff that China does is simply boondoggles: shunting public money to certain “friends of the party” due to corruption, like how they were building empty ghost cities in the middle of nowhere just to pay the construction companies.
That’s why anything that is “wildly successful in China” but not elsewhere should immediately ring your BS-detector’s bell.
“shunting public money to certain “friends of the party” due to corruption”
So… just normal politics, then?
Yep. Well, in different amounts depending on the system of government.
It’s easier for corporations to crony up with an all-powerful government that can legalize whatever the corporations are up to.
Make cars with a fixed battery and a swappable one. With current tech, and 50:50 split, that could be 200km + 200km range (not exactly due weight difference). When driving short distances in conservative mode, like city, go without the swappable one.
Of course, I know what some will say:
– but you need to design suspension for the full weight!
– but you will not be able to accelerate in 3 seconds and brake like if using carbon discs because half the amps!
– but you will not be able to turn like F1 because the weight is not as low as with both batteries installed!
– but internal will be used more and last just 2 years!
– but where I live everyone commutes 12 hours a day… each way! In the snow and uphill!
– but but but
Those screaming for swappable batteries in rechargeable cars have been ignored since the beginning. Why? Because it would require all manufacturers to standardize the battery packs, and that would not benefit the investors. That is the only reason. The amount of money invested in recharge stations negates any argument about the cost of implementing battery swap stations. Anyway, the swappable packs would be problematic anywhere very humid or where salt is used on the roads, but my bet is that the end solution to this problem would be a heck of a lot less ugly than the recharge station mess. With swappable batteries, the batteries could be at least partially charged at a central location that actually has access to the required grid power to do so, and they could then be topped off with much lower power input at their final destination. I don’t think this will ever happen unless there was a way to make it beneficial to the investor (i.e. bleed the taxpayer/consumer some more).
Not only that…. Say you buy a brand new car with only a couple of charge cycles on the battery. Nice and fresh…. Then when it runs down, it is swapped it out with one with 400 charge cycles on it…. Fair? I can hear the screaming now :) . Scheme would never work unless you had a ‘perfect’ battery technology that no matter the number of charges it ‘always’ performed as ‘new’… not there yet.
Or throw a gas generator in the trunk when you go on a roadtrip?
Batteries should be treated as a wear item. That is, they should be practical to replace and the manufacturer should sell spares at a reasonable price. Spare part availability is a legal requirement for brake pads and radiator hoses, so in theory it should apply to batteries too. Maybe the regulations need a tweak?
95% isn’t bad at all. But that doesn’t mean it is a good idea, think about it: 5% of a 270kW is 13.5kW wasted! You could light 2700 5Watt LED lights from that, that’s a lot of light!
Plus the additional electronics required to pull this off and for what, so that somebody doesn’t need to push a plug into a socket?!?! Sure the idea is awesome from a technical perspective and as an engineer I really dig the concept. But should technology choose this path?
There’s one positive, the parking spot is always dry when it rains and without snow during winter (assuming people are frequently using it). Can’t wait to see what fun tricks can be pulled with aluminum foil or loops of wire, wait for people to park their car, initiate charging and then the fun starts…
95% is *amazing,* to the point that I can’t believe it’s measured at anything but the coils in contact and perfectly aligned. I’d love to be wrong, but it’s just too good to be true (in practical application).
It’s amazing in some contexts, in this one it is absolutely terrible
Instead the old idea of smashing penny’s on the tracks, maybe we can configure some quarter compressing in the parking spots? :)
now calculate the amount of power wasted by all wireless networking and you’ll be like “huh.”
Try convincing people that plugging Ethernet in is easier.
If this is done, I am sure they will put the coils in the best remaining spots in the lot then bitch when I park my V8 there.
That’s another cash sink.
They’ll have to redo it on the worst spots in the lot or accept a 50% duty cycle at best.
See also: Wired chargers in office building lots.
Protocol is to clip the charge cable under the gas cap cover.
For those above who don’t know about how EV charging works, you must know that no charging can occur before there a long and painful communication (search for ISO/IEC 15118). So there is no way to get an “aluminum foil or a loop of wire” in the way without being detected first.
The charging system will only provide the amount of current the charged system is able to accept. So, no, you won’t get 270kW of EM energy on your car simply because your car can’t accept it. Thus the 5% loss (which, by itself is meaningless) isn’t 14kW because the actual current transferred will be a lot lower.
Also are the losses on the charger or the vehicle? Half-Half? 80/20?
If it’s 50% on the charger side (likely more), then it’s currently what you have in the AC/DC charging station that are installed on the road. That’s why you ear that loud fans when you plug your car. Converting close to a MW of AC to DC, even at 95% efficiency give a huge amount of heat to dissipate. On a RF energy transmission, you *might* skip this step since you might use AC current for the coils.
In the end, this system might end up being more efficient that the braindead cable that doesn’t scale well for hundred of amps (if you have ever tried to manipulate a 25mm2 cable, you know what I mean).
In cold temperatures, maybe have those fans direct the heat under the car, so the batteries are warm enough to accept the charge, so stalled Teslas won’t pile up during Chicago blizzards.
Another possible win is that EM could more easily be made agnostic to brand (whereas a cable will have a brand/model-related voltage)
I like the idea of going direct from AC to AC (even though the second AC might be riding at a 100Hz amplitude).
Cables have pretty much standardized, with NACS winning in North America and Mennekes (+CCS) in Europe.
Even our buses, when not using pantographs, have adopted to these standards.
What does any of this matter when battery technology for these rechargeable cars is woefully insufficient to meet the needs of anyone save for those who drive short distances daily in urban areas? I reside in a “typical suburban” area with a 30-45 minute commute to decent jobs which becomes an hour or more during rush traffic. Back when the rechargeable cars began to gain popularity we started to see quite a few of them on the highway. Then, most of these people quickly learned that they weren’t going to be able to make it to work and back (and also to the grocery store or wherever else they needed to go after work) without sitting on their thumbs for an hour or more, waiting for just enough charge to make it home, followed by a day to days of charging to regain full capacity since nearly every single residential electric service isn’t capable of continuously providing even 10kW for recharge (not that their power grid would be able to support it even if the house had a much larger power feed installed). The numbers of EV’s observed during commute peaked, and my observation is that it has dropped considerably over the past 2 years. I used to see teslas drive through my neighborhood multiple times in a day, now I might see 2 or 3 in a week. Until we solve the problem of these horribly toxic, flammable/combustible, ENVIRONMENT-DESTROYING low capacity lithium battery packs, why do we even care about alternative charging technologies? It seems that the entire industry is shoving the cart 10 light years in front of the horse just to scoop up some taxpayer money.
A 45mn commute (in freeflow) means about 60 km one-way, or 120 both ways. In a car that’s about 12-15kW of power. Which an European 16A circuit will be able to top up in 4 hours overnight.
If the electricity is oil-fired, still half the CO2 emissions of an ENVIRONMENT-DESTROYING petrol car
>If the electricity is oil-fired, still half the CO2 emissions
By what reckoning?
The efficiency from oil to electricity to engine power is about the same as from oil to gasoline to engine power – slightly less if you account for electric grid inefficiencies. In the optimal case, the gasoline engine would come ahead, but generally speaking the emissions are just about equal for equal power output.
@Dude
The reckoning is that turbines at a power plant hit 60% efficiency and the best gas engines hit 40%. I usually see estimates of electricity distribution losses peg it at around 10%. Last I measured it my car charges at around 95% efficiency, wall-to-miles.
.6*.9*.95=.513, and .513 > .4 .
So yeah, EVs and the electric grid “burn oil” at about 125% the efficiency of a gas powertrain. Which is friggin’ weird, but there’s the numbers.
Super bummer about the cost of them though. Got mine charging off the dryer outlet right now and I wish more people could enjoy refueling at home. Helping smooth out demand for my local utility operator too!
The average efficiency of thermal plants is nowhere near 60%.
60% are combined cycle turbines. Without heat recovery steam generators their efficiency is worse than car engines. Which is the first couple of hours of them being on, happens most days.
DoE is estimating an average of around 60% total power conversion efficiency (including charge-discharge and accessory usage) for rechargeable cars. When considering the compounded efficiency of the power plants, the rechargeable car is notably less efficient than the “petrol” vehicle of today. Everyone seems to be realizing this and dumping these toxic nightmares, at least around me.
IVQ, I don’t know what you guys are smoking in europe but consider the following:
1) You aren’t getting 100% efficiency with your charge-discharge. Duh. The “Department of Energy” has come up with total charge-discharge efficiency numbers for rechargeable cars of approximately 60%. Now consider that the electric grid which supplies the energy to charge the car is approximately 60% efficient. 0.6*0.6=36% efficiency… Meanwhile “petrol” cars average 40% efficiency with their internal combustion engines nowadays. Even if you assume 80% power conversion efficiency for the rechargeable car, uhh, you end up with less than 10% better overall efficiency than the “petrol” car, while using complex compounds which are MUCH more environmentally unfriendly than plain old hydrocarbons?
2) 12-15kW for an hour an a half of commuting? I don’t know what the roads and weather are like over there, but if you look at the USA where a majority of us experience temperature extremes on a nearly daily basis since thousands of years ago, you will find that the actual consumption with air conditioning, considering commuting traffic (lots of low speed time), etc, the number will actually be double what you claim. Maybe you live somewhere where no one else is on the road. Good for you, you’re an outlier.
Anyway, my goodness I would love to know what you guys are smoking over there.
Please stop repeating corporate talking points designed to make more millions for super rich investment firms and banks from taxpayer credits who already have many tens or hundreds of millions in their bank accounts. Thank you.
IVQ, I wrote an eloquent response and accidentally hit the back button. Here is the summary:
1) Your numbers for kW consumed for 45 minute commute are ridiculous unless you are driving in ideal ambient temperature with zero traffic. That is not a reality for 99% of the USA where we experience temperature extremes on a near daily basis and half of our commute is “stop and go traffic”.
2) Your argument about “environment destroying petrol car” is negated by the fact that when considering the total charge-discharge efficiency of the rechargeable car, combined with the power conversion efficiency of the electric power plant, the overall efficiency number of the rechargeable car (full of toxic, environment-destroying compounds) is lower than the petrol vehicle (which burns simple hydrocarbons very cleanly).
Please stop repeating corporate talking points which support super-rich investors/investment firms/etc. This garbage you are repeating is designed to make these people more tens to hundreds of millions at the taxpayers expense. Instead, I recommend you focus on actual science, which shows us exactly why we should not be buying these toxic pieces of trash.
If that’s what you call eloquence, I think you’d not recognize it when it, shall we say, masticated on your posterior – despite the apparent ocular proximity.
I’ve driven EVs for over 15 years and really don’t see the need or desire for wireless charging and battery swapping. My phone tells me that over the last year I did 95% of my charging at home. It takes less than a minute or me to charge; less than 30 seconds to plug it in when I get home, less than 30 seconds before I leave the next morning. And I never have to drive out of my way to find a gas station. Adding hardware to cars to make them wireless charging capable or battery swap capable is only going to add cost for something that I believe isn’t really needed and I can’t imagine I would need to take advantage of. But this is just me, maybe this would be useful for others…
Wireless charging solves one real problem:
A great number of people live in apartment buildings with street level parking, where you either don’t have access to a wall plug, or it’s only Level 1 charging and takes forever, and people may steal your charging cable for the copper. There’s water, charging cables getting frozen stuck or not being able to plug in, moisture getting in between and tripping the ground fault safety… when you’re out there subject to weather, there’s all sorts of ways “simply plugging it in” can fail you. If the parking lot had wireless charging, you’d just park and charge – that’s it.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkgkxn/copper-thieves-are-cutting-electric-car-charging-cables-and-stealing-them
Fascinating lifestyle. What if you need to drive further than the battery supports in one day? Are you one of those people burning time, twiddling their thumbs for a ridiculous amount of time while their inefficient, toxic machine charges back up? Are you aware of the effects of lithium mining and refining on the environment?
You have posted on here a lot, but have so far failed to acknowledge that an internal combustion vehicle is also “inefficient” and “toxic.”
Wireless car charging seems to solve what is largely a non-problem. At home it is easy to plug in as you exit the car. For public charging stations, I would have thought that an AI driven robotic arm that automatically plugs a car in would be easier and require minimal changes to vehicles (mainly a way to communicate and automatically open the charging port). It wouldn’t even require much standardization, just standard messaging.
Oh so very simple.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/0B70EUL856E
“Wireless car charging seems to solve what is largely a non-problem. ”
Except that copper thieves have figured out that charging station cables have copper in them…
Of course, an easier fix than wireless charging is to NOT use copper in the charging cables and to put a notice on the charger to that effect.
Guess what the coils used here re made from :-)
With this new setup thieves will rip streets/parking spots and cut receiving coils from under the cars like Catalytic converters now.
You want to know what’s funny, at least half of the charging stations I have seen in my life (which isn’t many despite the fact that I travel all over the USA) had broken screens. Is there some subset of the population who just like smashing screens, or is this just a charging station thing?
Except that you still have to sit at a charging station like some buffoon and wait for your toxic, inefficient abomination to charge up while those burning simple hydrocarbons are on their way in minutes. And they’ll still be driving those hydrocarbon machines a decade and a hundred thousand miles later without a care in the world compared to the rechargeable car service concerns…
Last time I used a public charger for an EV, I got a coffee and went to the restroom. Then I went back to the car and was on my way. But if you prefer to be stuck standing on a gas station forecourt, huffing hydrocarbons, go for it.
I have to wonder if this is safe for people with pacemakers or other implanted electronic hardware. I’m sure most of the radiation will be near-field in nature, so the power falls off as the cube of the distance. But at those power levels, will that rapid fall-off be enough to protect sensitive electronic devices within 2 or 3 metres? And might a malfunction allow even more radiated power?
I’d want to see some credible testing of this before allowing the scheme to progress beyond the investigative stage.
Seems like a wasteful process however I’m not an engineer. All I ever heard was that such transformers, (that is what this system looks like) are inefficient. Seems like a gimmick. :(
This entire concept is a joke unless the car is riding on rails. It’s as if the creators of this idiocy have never seen roads before, and are unaware that vehicle ride height varies continuously as the vehicle travels down the road over bumps and humps and all the other nonsense we encounter on the millions of miles of roads that exist in the USA alone. These guys are a solution looking for a problem.
Somehow you forgot to add your standard text blocks in your spam.
Let me do that for you:
burning simple hydrocarbons (the good stuff – only good things happening here)
toxic, inefficient abomination (bad things happen – source of all evil things in your life, heck, maybe you can blame your broken marriage on them!)
I am not sure what you are trying to say. The rechargeable car “fuel economy” scam was broken by none other than the wall street journal more than a year ago. What is the number they multiplied the “tested” efficiency by? 6.67 or something like that? We already knew the economy numbers were a scam simply because of the math for the charge-discharge efficiency combined with the grid efficiency and all of the loads/power consumers not included in the “testing”. In the end, the rechargeable car, at best looks “equivalent” to the modern “petrol” car, except that the rechargeable car uses horribly toxic and volatile complex compounds, while providing a greatly decreased range; The rechargeable car also comes with a greatly reduced lifespan as compared to the modern ICE equivalent, and it results in much wasted time (time is money; money saved helps us be more environmentally friendly, etc).
You are trying to dismiss ICE vehicles that are so efficient and clean nowadays that you could practically breathe the air coming out of the tail pipe, all accomplished while burning a renewable resource, simple hydrocarbons from the ground of which we have had a century to perfect the extraction and refining. You propose that we abandon all of that progress and replace it with something far more toxic and when considering the full life cycle of the product FAR more environmentally unfriendly! I just think that is ridiculous.
Call me a socialist all you want – I don’t care – I think it is disgusting that these rechargeable car talking points all benefit only the super-rich investors and firms and corporations who are making their millions to billions on this nonsense. I am amazed at how many people have been brainwashed by this nonsense despite the fact that it’s easy math to disprove it all. The only reason that they are pushing this rechargeable car nonsense is because the profit margins are gone on the ICE vehicles – The ICE vehicles are too clean, too refined, too well understood and this just doesn’t add countless millions of dollars into their bloated bank accounts anymore.
You first.
You first.