> The wireless transmission takes only a few milliseconds – a tiny fraction of the time it would take a car moving at 70 miles an hour to cross a four-foot charging zone. The only limiting factor, Fan said, will be how fast the car’s batteries can absorb all the power.
Well, yes, moving tens of kilowatt-hours of energy in milliseconds wirelessly to a moving target with a lithium based rechargeable battery is an unsolved problem.
I think you would have more than one charging strip. I mean charging your batteries to full in four feet at highway speeds would be cool, but just supplying four feet worth of energy every four feet would be fine.
The problem is cost and complexity. These things need a load of copper wire to make a loop, so if you are laying something like this down every 4 feet, it translates into a boatload of material (think 400ft of copper per 4ft charge) (That is being driven on... so definitely a possibility that they require regular maintenance).
It's really interesting, but I wonder if as a society we're willing to complicate our roads to the level of adding any sort of functionality to them. Asphalt is wonderfully easy to work with, just pour, grind up, remelt, you can keep reusing it. Even then maintaining our roads is a challenge. Adding electrical infrastructure to the roads themselves to further complicate how you would re-pave, resurface, etcetera? Even if technically feasible, I don't know if we have the economic/political feasibility that's also required to make that work
> Even if technically feasible, I don't know if we have the economic/political feasibility that's also required to make that work
It’s a good point, though outside the US there are also entrepreneurs. Politics/regulations might work differently. There could also be incentives to do things like this.
EVs already provide enough range for commuting. The vast majority of the population commutes tens of miles, and EVs can regularly do hundreds of miles. So there’s really no need to modify roads for the sake of commuters.
For longer distance travel we really should be talking less roads and more high speed rail. They’re faster, safer, and more efficient than cars. It’s also a less uncertain technology; there are several countries with highly successful high speed rail systems that we could copy.
For freight we should use regular rail for similar reasons, plus the fact that using semi trucks, diesel or EV, creates a large financial burden on the public to undo the damage that heavy trucks do to our roads.
The benefit is that it eliminates (perceived) range anxiety. People are used to filling up their cars at gas stations, and used to battery-powered devices 'dying' - an unfortunate label.
Even if real-world use was a tiny fraction of miles traveled, I think people would be much more apt to buy electric if they knew that the cars could charge as they drive. You could implement it such that the car communicated with the road and was delivered a charge only if it was beyond a certain number of miles that day to reduce load on the network and incentivize overnight charging.
Regarding high-speed rail, the whole point of driving your car to the destination is to have a car at the destination; high-speed rail where you arrive and have to walk is a non-starter for a lot of destinations right now. I agree that we should reduce the effective subsidy that heavy freight trucking currently benefits from so businesses are economically motivated to switch to more rail freight.
I get that range anxiety is an irrational fear, but I genuinely doubt that it’s why people don’t buy EVs. I suspect that resistance to change is a more common cause, with range anxiety being a convenient excuse.
Besides, any solution to range anxiety has to be tuned to the social benefit it would generate. I’d be more a fan of simply making gasoline more expensive, since what we really need is not people using EVs, but people not using fossil fuels.
Range anxiety is not an irrational fear. Even after 2 years of owning an EV (w/ 200+ range), range anxiety is present. Actually it's more like charge while not at home anxiety, as charging is still a crapshoot.
- L1 charging is 3-4 miles / hour.
- Charging infrastructure is horrendously unreliable. (non-Tesla). I don't do much outside charging, but in 40% of my experiences, chargers are often out of service, throw errors, or not maintained well. (I was at an popular Electrify america spot and 3 of 6 chargers were out of commission, 2 of them were like that for weeks)).
- Charging is expensive. More expensive than gas, sometimes ripping you off. Session fees of $3 just for plugging in, plus 4x residential kwh rates.
> ”People are used to filling up their cars at gas stations”
Yes, and EV drivers are used to charging up their cars at charging stations.
Wireless on-route charging is not needed for the same reasons that we don’t need to refuel our cars while driving down the highway.
The real cause of range anxiety in modern EVs is that in many parts of the world there aren’t enough charging stations. But it’s much cheaper to build more charging stations than to dig up roads and retrofit them with wireless charging infrastructure!
Presumably people whose use case would require frequent charging in places other than their home (or work) don't buy electric cars, so there's probably some selection bias here.
Here in the UK, Tesla owners drive more miles annually on average than owners of any other car brand[1], which suggests they don't have any qualms about driving long distances and charging away from home.
(As another data point, I see Teslas regularly parked in my London neighbourhood outside homes that do not have any off-street parking/charging. So at least some EV owners get by without any home charging at all)
Auto Express seems to be the source of those figures, which show that diesel cars as a class have (slightly) higher average mileage than Teslas, and roughly 33% higher average mileage than full electrics as a class.
Again, it seems like selection bias, in that those high-mileage drivers who can use electric do, and those that can't buy diesel. Presumably there is a cohort of diesel drivers who would switch to electric if they offered sufficient range or faster charging, especially as diesels outnumber electrics ~2.5:1 in the UK [2].
Or maybe it's "those drivers who can afford to buy a (long range) electric do, and those that can't buy diesel"?
There's still a significant price gap between comparable diesels and electrics.
Norway's experience (60%+ market share for electric vehicles) suggests that if the price is comparable, and charging is convenient enough, the majority of buyers will choose electric.
I'd also say that the limited range is a nice way to force people to take breaks on long journeys. My guess would be that this decreases the accident rate of electric vehicles a bit.
That’s a decent point if you focus on battery cost, but if reducing vehicle weight was ever a policy goal we could achieve that at a negative cost by banning SUVs. Until we do that, I’m dubious about any public expenditures to reduce vehicle weight until we fix the low hanging fruit.
Reducing battery weight has a few advantages. Your car is lighter. This means less weight on the road, and thus less road maintenance. Or less batteries in the system, meaning it is cheaper. And safer because mass times velocity = momentum. Right now electric vehicles are substantially heavier than their ICE counterparts. (A Model 3 has a curb weight comparable to a F150)
You could probably get some decent benefit by only doing it in some special spots. I.e. intersections in cities where people stop for periods of time, or maybe parking spaces? I like the idea of removing cables from the situation and rather than ensuring i get an "unlimited" duration drive, i get 25% additional by just being on the road.
> EVs already provide enough range for commuting. The vast majority of the population commutes tens of miles, and EVs can regularly do hundreds of miles. So there’s really no need to modify roads for the sake of commuters.
The 50mins I takes me to charge my Kona every ~210 miles is roughly when I should be taking a break of roughly an hour anyway. "Technology Connections" on YouTube has a really fantastic (and old) video on this subject: assuming level 1 (110V) at home and at work, you'd basically never need anything more than level 1 charging for commuting. EVs require a surprisingly small amount of energy.
> high speed rail
I have understood the efficiencies in rail since I was maybe 12. It blows my mind that it is such a niche mode of transport (especially for goods, transporting humans isn't where the real savings are) in so many places around the world. From a purely economic standpoint (forgetting environmental issues entirely), it makes complete sense to aim to have zero semis on roads between cities. Trains should be long-haul, semis should be last-mile.
> I have understood the efficiencies in rail since I was maybe 12. It blows my mind that it is such a niche mode of transport (especially for goods, transporting humans isn't where the real savings are) in so many places around the world.
Interestingly, the US is actually pretty good at rail freight. They de-regulate most rail freight a few decades ago and are doing fine. The Economist had a special report about it a few years ago (https://www.economist.com/briefing/2010/07/22/high-speed-rai...) proudly proclaiming: "America’s system of rail freight is the world’s best."
> Amtrak's passenger services are sparse compared with Europe's. But America's freight railways are one of the unsung transport successes of the past 30 years. They are universally recognised in the industry as the best in the world.
> Their good run started with deregulation at the end of Jimmy Carter's administration. Two years after the liberalisation of aviation gave rise to budget carriers and cheap fares, the freeing of rail freight, under the Staggers Rail Act of 1980, started a wave of consolidation and improvement. Staggers gave railways freedom to charge market rates, enter confidential contracts with shippers and run trains as they liked. They could close passenger and branch lines, as long as they preserved access for Amtrak services. They were allowed to sell lossmaking lines to new short-haul railroads. Regulation of freight rates by the Interstate Commerce Commission was removed for most cargoes, provided they could go by road.
> Before deregulation America's railways were going bust. The return on capital fell from a meagre 4.1% in the 1940s to less than 3% in the 1960s. In 1970 the collapse of the giant Penn Central caused a huge shock, including a financial crisis. By 1980 a fifth of rail mileage was owned by bankrupt firms. Rail's share of intercity freight had slumped to 35% from 75% in the 1920s. Tracks were neglected and fell into disrepair, leading to a downward spiral of speed restrictions and deteriorating service. The term “standing derailment” was coined to describe the toppling-over of stationary freight wagons when the track gave way beneath their wheels.
(You can use outline.com to get past the Economist's paywall.)
Imagine a world of self driving, electric cars. If the roads themselves powered the cars, the batteries in the cars could be much smaller, enough to get off these powered roads to the final ~10 miles and then back again.
In terms of longer distance travel, instead of railways, we could have caravans of cars all going in the same direction that attach to each other powered by a single engine at the front with a larger more powerful engine with bigger batteries. These could all be arranged real time since everyone would know each other’s destinations, so individual cars could hop and off when they need to.
I think it’s a great idea and could really change transportation.
Self driving cars are decades away, and replacing a substantial part of our road networks with anything more expensive is decades more away. I give this future a very low chance of happening.
Solar power (photovoltaics) produce during the day, when most vehicles are in use.
Being able to directly store energy into their batteries (or maybe even have the vehicle directly use it, without having to store it in its battery, just as many portable PC can do) as it is produced and without any intermediate storage (maybe even without the usual AC<->DC transformation(?)) may justify such a system.
And that’s not even going into the inevitable push-back over transporting that kind of power wirelessly in public spaces.
Consider how much more virulent the 5G panic would be if 5G involved these kinds of power levels. I feel like politically this is at least 50 years from being viable even if the technology were perfect today.
Also this is the kind of thing that won't be tested for health impact for the necessary 20 years before being released. And once the investment is high enough, if we ever discover that being a in wireless charging electric car is in fact, not very healty if you do it for a decade, the steaks will be so great that it will take half a century before society balance things out.
Based on the article, it sounds like you wouldn't need to tear up large chunks of road, but instead would have short stretches with chargers every few miles on the highway. It would be particularly interesting if there were solar arrays with batteries you could place in more remote areas.
Right, how can keeping human error under the wheel be viable, considering you are already rigging the entire road infrastructure?. Just make more efficient public transportation under such circumstances.
Maybe, the whole idea is just a marketing stunt to catch the eye and interest of the average person to prop the technology in the media. Because wireless charging definitely has many applications.
More to the point, how many pacemaker and ICD users are we willing to kill? If you've got an electrical device connected directly to your heart, you really, really don't want to unexpectedly drive into an incredibly strong EM field.
This will be used for some niche use, like a closed road for dump trucks to run full time, or on train tracks for electric trains. This is too complex even compared to putting a cable in every parking space that currently exists.
Whether it is factual or not is irrelevant for the public outcry over the next conspiracy theory. I'm not defending it, but we currently have a crisis of science authority. I'm not sure what to do about it though.
I wonder if putting the system before lights at intersections would help to buy, so to say, people. If it would be cheaper and more convenient for them directly. I think the problem with 5g is that it is not entirely clear how better is it. Also there are probably more people driving, then using mobile Internet. Or at least more people that would protest such undertaking.
> but we currently have a crisis of science authority
Did science ever carry any authority on it's own? In the last few decades I've been living in the United States, I honestly don't think it has.
> I'm not sure what to do about it though.
I think what we're seeing now is really organized emotional manipulation on a massive scale. I seriously doubt that any of these conspiracies are truly organic, or if they are, that their current scale is organic.
Worse still is it's impossible to determine who is doing the pumping. Is it "activist" groups looking for funding? Is it "corporate" groups looking for legal leeway? Is it bored kids on the internet looking for entertainment?
As to what to do about it, I think the answer basically starts with a lot more investigative journalism. We don't do that anymore. It creates a vacuum that allows these groups to thrive.
Meh. Today's battery technology is better than this IMHO. A 80kWh battery and a network of 150kW fast chargers works very well. I wouldn't use anything gaz related for my electric cars, especially during winter. It's not as reliable, it's more expensive, it smells, and it's more dirty.
I really wish that rather than a thing that hooks onto the tow hitch you could rent a whole trailer with a small ~20kW diesel with a significant fuel tank, extra trunk, and perhaps even a built-in compressor-based cooler. Definitely put an extra receiver hitch on the back of the trailer for an extra bike rack, etc. And probably some kind of a roof-rack as well.
That way if you're taking a long trip (when you usually need extra luggage) you can also bring all the other stuff. Skis, food, clothes, bikes, kayaks, whatever it is you're doing. It all goes on the trailer.
Yeah it's not all that great that it's burning diesel (or biodiesel or whatever) but if you could convince people to drive strictly electric cars the other 355 days a year I think you'd see big improvements in nearly all metrics people care about nonetheless.
A few pieces of context - this builds on the insight that underlies WiTricity - https://witricity.com - near-field coupling of designed resonators for non-radiative power transfer. Specifically, this can enable very high efficiency wireless transfer in the near-field of resonators, which at these wavelengths is on the order of 1-5 meters. This is qualitatively different from other approaches to wireless power transfer and does have some real scientific insight which originates from the electromagnetics/ photonic community.
More specifically, this specific results builds on an insight from the same research group which led to a Nature paper in 2017: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature22404/ - that using an non-linear saturable gain element in a parity-time symmetric configuration enables robust power transfer in a range of conditions such as moving and the presences of obstacles. There's interesting underlying science here that shouldn't be missed for the focus on the application.
Interesting. Several years ago I designed a resonate, near field wireless charging platform and used a simple X5R capacitor; the nonlinearity of the X5R dielectric to provide regulation. As the distance increased, the resonant frequency and Q increased, increasing the potential across the X5R, which decreases the capacitance, changing the resonant frequency. Though I can’t remember if I placed the X5R in series or shunt. Though it mainly helped with regulation depending on current draw of the receiver, it did provide some range increase.
Interesting development in this space this week for WiTricity (the company) is that China is standardizing nationally on magnetic resonance technology for wireless vehicle charging based on WiTricity’s designs and standards work. I’m sure this was an exciting week for my former colleagues there, and congratulations are certainly in order for them.
Here's the author's web page at Stanford.[1] Not much there. He published a very similar paper in 2017.[2] The actual papers are paywalled. So we don't get to see how big a coil, or whatever, is needed to get 10W at 1 meter.
It's straightforward to do that with a split transformer.
Berkeley used to have an electric bus which recharged at bus stops that way. More trouble that it was worth, but it worked. There's an old patent from, I think, GE, for a scheme for long transformers below highway lanes to do the same thing. The practical question is whether this new thing is substantially better.
Parity–time symmetry is a concept from quantum optics. The author, from his papers, used to do optical work. There's been work on this in the magnetic domain, but at very small scales, like nanometers.[3] Doing this on a scale of meters is new.
No idea whether this makes any sense. None of the non-paywalled papers have anything useful to read. Anybody enough into quantum magnetics to make sense of this?
One step closer to F-Zero. On a more serious note, This is really exciting. I would be interested to see how they would bill for this type of charging.
Many countries would have to replace the money lost to fuel duty with something fuel duties are a huge portion of the tax revenue in most of Europe and many other countries.
So adding a road tax for EVs eventually would have to happen to offset the loss of revenue.
Hmm, I wonder if there could be an interesting incentive alignment with the transaction of charging cars as they drive along a highway and collecting a tax for improving it.
There are other comments about political feasibility, but what if the same system became a way to re-produce the tax for use we originally built into gasoline.
Obviously theres a bunch of tax evasion / self charge cases that would need to be considered.
So they need to transmit enough enegy to power a moving car, through the road surface, using a reciever small enough to fit on/under a moving car. Ok. That's a huge amount of energy. I hope nobody is trying to use a compass anywhere near these roads. And I would seriously think twice about getting out of your car if you have a pacemaker, hip or other impanted metal device.
There is aleady a decades-old system in widespread use for delivering electrical energy to moving vehicles. It isn't rocket science. It's called a "wire".
An interesting thought would be if EVs carried capacitors that had about a quarter mile of range that could be charged instantly then slowly dumped into a battery as the car travels. Then every quarter mile have a fast charge strip that the car pulls from like a light rail into the super capacitor.
I visited Monterey and noticed some odd markings on the roads. Monterey has induction charging built into the roads along some bus routes. I'm not sure if they're charging along the way, or just at the bus stops?
Either way, it's an interesting application. I'm not sure how wild you could go with this right now, given all the roads that exist already, and the cost that would come along with it. Or maybe the traffic implications of people climbing to get on those free charging roads?
But public transit seems like a smart use for this kind of thing. Takes a predictable path, for a (somewhat) predictable about of time, on a loop all day. If you designed it right, perhaps you could drive that bus along that route until it breaks down?
And your mechanical watch stops working every time you pass over one of the recharging grid squares :-)
I love the idea of using magnetic inductance to charge at a distance but with all that flux even small loops of conductors might be in danger of generating a serious voltage potential across them.
IDK why there is so much focus on charging in motion.
This has a much better application for parking lots. Dedicate some percentage of spaces as charging spaces and power vehicles at rest. It doesn't need to deliver a high power charge to be useful.
Heck, this even makes sense for loading docks/semi. Put these induction chargers at every loading bay and let the electric semis charge while they load and unload.
For fixed vehicles, using one of the two to seven standardish plugs makes a lot more sense. Giving up 8% efficiency to save 30 seconds over usually 20-30/minutes of dwell time isn't worth it.
As mentioned elsewhere in the thread, charging forklifts or something in a warehouse in motion, or while briefly stopped drives up how long you can use an electric powered device, and the added utility pays for efficency loss.
Of course, it's easier to add this to cover enough of a warehouse than to cover enough of a highway system.
It's a shame that the somewhat breathless headline is dominating the discussion.
This is a good idea, which hasn't even been demonstrated to work with electric cars and roads.
What it has been demonstrated to work for, is robots in warehouses, and in that context it's great: this would allow ~99% utilization and obviate laying out warehouse space for charging docks.
I highly doubt cars are the actual killer app for wireless charging. At the end of the day, they're usually parked a good amount of time, and are comparably tolerant of extra weight, which makes some form of battery much simpler.
I'd look for applications where a system cannot stop moving, otherwise isn't in physical contact with infrastructure / cannot be accessed, or absolutely can't tolerate additional weight.
Does the below quote really mean that there's only 8% power drop from the charger to the battery? That too good to be true with a wireless system, even with directional antennae.
"In their new paper, the researchers show how to boosts the system’s wireless-transmission efficiency to 92%. The key, Assawaworrarit explained, was to replace the original amplifier with a far more efficient “switch mode” amplifier."
This sounds like a waste of energy to me. My favourite highway concept is autonomous electric vehicles connecting to each other physically and forming "trains", where the large factor of air resistance is reduced greatly and cars would negotiate with each other who's expending and who's recouperating energy depending on each car's distance to its target.
[Large] wind tubines by the side of the road can produce a lot of unreliable power efficiently. Transporting it to urban areas adds inefficiency to the unreliable. You need a fair bit of wind to get anything out at the other end.
Solar voltaic has its own weird reliability issues but the panel does produce unusable amounts of power most of the day. (if your plan is to transport it)
Good weight/kwh ratio batteries are expensive.
If you can have the batteries roll along the power source for free the wind and sun could be offered very cheaply.
Wireless I dunno, overhead cables or contact rails in the road seem fine. Still costly but reasonable.
Pondering this it struck me how wonderful this ancient tech is.
We could put rails by the side of the road with drones on them (mechanical horses) hook up any old clunker by its towing ring, cut dramatically into fuel consumption, reduce tire wear and get rid of much of the driving idiocy.
It gets more spectacular where you can dump mechanical energy into vehicles while it is available.
I have no idea at what speed conventional cars are still usable but I see far less need for a speed limit if everyone drives in formation. If someone hits the breaks the drone can detect it and slow down the car behind it. Perhaps 2 cables, one at the front and one at the back.
Charging the battery over cables gets pretty obvious at this point. (there is regenerative breaking too!)
To add a final bit of hilarity: If we stop gluing batteries into appliances (ffs?) fit them to the bottom and make them easy to swap by driving over a swapping station... then the fully charged battery is more valuable than the empty one.
Thanks for the unexplained downvote. Reminds me, we could chain people to rails too! That way we can prevent them from going where they have no business. People like me, or like you! It will revolutionize training schedules. You will be on time for work every day.
"Wireless chargers transmit electricity by creating a magnetic field that oscillates at a frequency that creates a resonating vibration in magnetic coils on the receiving device. The problem is that the resonant frequency changes if the distance between the source and receiver changes by even a small amount.
In their first breakthrough three years ago, the researchers developed a wireless charger that could transmit electricity even as the distance to the receiver changes. They did this by incorporating an amplifier and feedback resistor that allowed the system to automatically adjusts its operating frequency as the distance between the charger and the moving object changed. But that initial system wasn’t efficient enough to be practical. The amplifier uses so much electricity internally to produce the required amplification effect that the system only transmitted 10% of the power flowing through the system.
In their new paper, the researchers show how to boosts the system’s wireless-transmission efficiency to 92%. The key, Assawaworrarit explained, was to replace the original amplifier with a far more efficient “switch mode” amplifier. Such amplifiers aren’t new but they are finicky and will only produce high-efficiency amplification under very precise conditions. It took years of tinkering, and additional theoretical work, to design a circuit configuration that worked."
A resonant structure (AKA "antenna") can be thought of as Star Trek's Transporter, version 0.0000001...
A resonant coil, 0.0000002...
A resonant coil to transport electricity, 0.0000003...
Any tech that aims to improve something by re-designing roads is bound to fail. It's simply not cost effective.
How about truck by-lanes across the country are equipped with electric cables on poles, and trucks have those train type extenders to get charged. Or even charging stations in truck stops.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 165 ms ] threadWell, yes, moving tens of kilowatt-hours of energy in milliseconds wirelessly to a moving target with a lithium based rechargeable battery is an unsolved problem.
Who woulda thunk.
Or smaller yet - slot cars.
(Not technically wireless or battery powered, but still)
It’s a good point, though outside the US there are also entrepreneurs. Politics/regulations might work differently. There could also be incentives to do things like this.
EVs already provide enough range for commuting. The vast majority of the population commutes tens of miles, and EVs can regularly do hundreds of miles. So there’s really no need to modify roads for the sake of commuters.
For longer distance travel we really should be talking less roads and more high speed rail. They’re faster, safer, and more efficient than cars. It’s also a less uncertain technology; there are several countries with highly successful high speed rail systems that we could copy.
For freight we should use regular rail for similar reasons, plus the fact that using semi trucks, diesel or EV, creates a large financial burden on the public to undo the damage that heavy trucks do to our roads.
Even if real-world use was a tiny fraction of miles traveled, I think people would be much more apt to buy electric if they knew that the cars could charge as they drive. You could implement it such that the car communicated with the road and was delivered a charge only if it was beyond a certain number of miles that day to reduce load on the network and incentivize overnight charging.
Regarding high-speed rail, the whole point of driving your car to the destination is to have a car at the destination; high-speed rail where you arrive and have to walk is a non-starter for a lot of destinations right now. I agree that we should reduce the effective subsidy that heavy freight trucking currently benefits from so businesses are economically motivated to switch to more rail freight.
Besides, any solution to range anxiety has to be tuned to the social benefit it would generate. I’d be more a fan of simply making gasoline more expensive, since what we really need is not people using EVs, but people not using fossil fuels.
- L1 charging is 3-4 miles / hour. - Charging infrastructure is horrendously unreliable. (non-Tesla). I don't do much outside charging, but in 40% of my experiences, chargers are often out of service, throw errors, or not maintained well. (I was at an popular Electrify america spot and 3 of 6 chargers were out of commission, 2 of them were like that for weeks)). - Charging is expensive. More expensive than gas, sometimes ripping you off. Session fees of $3 just for plugging in, plus 4x residential kwh rates.
In cities, in where lots of people don't have a personal parking space, there's the charging problem, just like now there's the parking problem.
Some days I had to search for more than 30 minutes for a spot to park in. Add the charging requirement and I would feel anxious in less than a week.
Yes, and EV drivers are used to charging up their cars at charging stations.
Wireless on-route charging is not needed for the same reasons that we don’t need to refuel our cars while driving down the highway.
The real cause of range anxiety in modern EVs is that in many parts of the world there aren’t enough charging stations. But it’s much cheaper to build more charging stations than to dig up roads and retrofit them with wireless charging infrastructure!
(As another data point, I see Teslas regularly parked in my London neighbourhood outside homes that do not have any off-street parking/charging. So at least some EV owners get by without any home charging at all)
[1] https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/cars/article-8263039/UK-...
Again, it seems like selection bias, in that those high-mileage drivers who can use electric do, and those that can't buy diesel. Presumably there is a cohort of diesel drivers who would switch to electric if they offered sufficient range or faster charging, especially as diesels outnumber electrics ~2.5:1 in the UK [2].
[1] https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/tesla/352144/tesla-drivers-cov... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/299031/fuel-types-of-new...
There's still a significant price gap between comparable diesels and electrics.
Norway's experience (60%+ market share for electric vehicles) suggests that if the price is comparable, and charging is convenient enough, the majority of buyers will choose electric.
No, in the Bay Area, people buy SUVs to "feel taller" when driving in traffic.
The 50mins I takes me to charge my Kona every ~210 miles is roughly when I should be taking a break of roughly an hour anyway. "Technology Connections" on YouTube has a really fantastic (and old) video on this subject: assuming level 1 (110V) at home and at work, you'd basically never need anything more than level 1 charging for commuting. EVs require a surprisingly small amount of energy.
> high speed rail
I have understood the efficiencies in rail since I was maybe 12. It blows my mind that it is such a niche mode of transport (especially for goods, transporting humans isn't where the real savings are) in so many places around the world. From a purely economic standpoint (forgetting environmental issues entirely), it makes complete sense to aim to have zero semis on roads between cities. Trains should be long-haul, semis should be last-mile.
There is a reason semi's are long-haul. A fleet of semi's is tremendously flexible, with single loading and single unloading.
The fleet can be driven in a myriad of ways and constantly re-routed for suit the present requirement.
Trains are good for a specific types of cargo, ex. to and from ports.
And if I'm shipping something in the form-factor of a parade float, I'd want to load it once on a truck, not on a truck and then a train.
Interestingly, the US is actually pretty good at rail freight. They de-regulate most rail freight a few decades ago and are doing fine. The Economist had a special report about it a few years ago (https://www.economist.com/briefing/2010/07/22/high-speed-rai...) proudly proclaiming: "America’s system of rail freight is the world’s best."
> Amtrak's passenger services are sparse compared with Europe's. But America's freight railways are one of the unsung transport successes of the past 30 years. They are universally recognised in the industry as the best in the world.
> Their good run started with deregulation at the end of Jimmy Carter's administration. Two years after the liberalisation of aviation gave rise to budget carriers and cheap fares, the freeing of rail freight, under the Staggers Rail Act of 1980, started a wave of consolidation and improvement. Staggers gave railways freedom to charge market rates, enter confidential contracts with shippers and run trains as they liked. They could close passenger and branch lines, as long as they preserved access for Amtrak services. They were allowed to sell lossmaking lines to new short-haul railroads. Regulation of freight rates by the Interstate Commerce Commission was removed for most cargoes, provided they could go by road.
> Before deregulation America's railways were going bust. The return on capital fell from a meagre 4.1% in the 1940s to less than 3% in the 1960s. In 1970 the collapse of the giant Penn Central caused a huge shock, including a financial crisis. By 1980 a fifth of rail mileage was owned by bankrupt firms. Rail's share of intercity freight had slumped to 35% from 75% in the 1920s. Tracks were neglected and fell into disrepair, leading to a downward spiral of speed restrictions and deteriorating service. The term “standing derailment” was coined to describe the toppling-over of stationary freight wagons when the track gave way beneath their wheels.
(You can use outline.com to get past the Economist's paywall.)
Being able to directly store energy into their batteries (or maybe even have the vehicle directly use it, without having to store it in its battery, just as many portable PC can do) as it is produced and without any intermediate storage (maybe even without the usual AC<->DC transformation(?)) may justify such a system.
Consider how much more virulent the 5G panic would be if 5G involved these kinds of power levels. I feel like politically this is at least 50 years from being viable even if the technology were perfect today.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-06-28-mn-19436-...
Maybe, the whole idea is just a marketing stunt to catch the eye and interest of the average person to prop the technology in the media. Because wireless charging definitely has many applications.
Pretty glib considering the current 5g controversy
I wonder if putting the system before lights at intersections would help to buy, so to say, people. If it would be cheaper and more convenient for them directly. I think the problem with 5g is that it is not entirely clear how better is it. Also there are probably more people driving, then using mobile Internet. Or at least more people that would protest such undertaking.
Did science ever carry any authority on it's own? In the last few decades I've been living in the United States, I honestly don't think it has.
> I'm not sure what to do about it though.
I think what we're seeing now is really organized emotional manipulation on a massive scale. I seriously doubt that any of these conspiracies are truly organic, or if they are, that their current scale is organic.
Worse still is it's impossible to determine who is doing the pumping. Is it "activist" groups looking for funding? Is it "corporate" groups looking for legal leeway? Is it bored kids on the internet looking for entertainment?
As to what to do about it, I think the answer basically starts with a lot more investigative journalism. We don't do that anymore. It creates a vacuum that allows these groups to thrive.
That way if you're taking a long trip (when you usually need extra luggage) you can also bring all the other stuff. Skis, food, clothes, bikes, kayaks, whatever it is you're doing. It all goes on the trailer.
Yeah it's not all that great that it's burning diesel (or biodiesel or whatever) but if you could convince people to drive strictly electric cars the other 355 days a year I think you'd see big improvements in nearly all metrics people care about nonetheless.
...and you have a Chevrolet Volt, BMW i3, or Fisker Karma.
More specifically, this specific results builds on an insight from the same research group which led to a Nature paper in 2017: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature22404/ - that using an non-linear saturable gain element in a parity-time symmetric configuration enables robust power transfer in a range of conditions such as moving and the presences of obstacles. There's interesting underlying science here that shouldn't be missed for the focus on the application.
https://www.greencarcongress.com/2020/05/20200508-witricity....
There are academic connections between the group at Stanford publishing this work and the group at MIT that founded WiTricity.
It's straightforward to do that with a split transformer. Berkeley used to have an electric bus which recharged at bus stops that way. More trouble that it was worth, but it worked. There's an old patent from, I think, GE, for a scheme for long transformers below highway lanes to do the same thing. The practical question is whether this new thing is substantially better.
Parity–time symmetry is a concept from quantum optics. The author, from his papers, used to do optical work. There's been work on this in the magnetic domain, but at very small scales, like nanometers.[3] Doing this on a scale of meters is new.
No idea whether this makes any sense. None of the non-paywalled papers have anything useful to read. Anybody enough into quantum magnetics to make sense of this?
[1] https://web.stanford.edu/~sca/
[2] https://www.livescience.com/59487-wireless-power-systems-cha...
[3] https://www.osti.gov/pages/servlets/purl/1356846
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-Zero
So adding a road tax for EVs eventually would have to happen to offset the loss of revenue.
There are other comments about political feasibility, but what if the same system became a way to re-produce the tax for use we originally built into gasoline.
Obviously theres a bunch of tax evasion / self charge cases that would need to be considered.
There is aleady a decades-old system in widespread use for delivering electrical energy to moving vehicles. It isn't rocket science. It's called a "wire".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_buses_in_Vancouver
Either way, it's an interesting application. I'm not sure how wild you could go with this right now, given all the roads that exist already, and the cost that would come along with it. Or maybe the traffic implications of people climbing to get on those free charging roads?
But public transit seems like a smart use for this kind of thing. Takes a predictable path, for a (somewhat) predictable about of time, on a loop all day. If you designed it right, perhaps you could drive that bus along that route until it breaks down?
https://mst.org/news_items/media-invitation-cord-cutting-for...
I love the idea of using magnetic inductance to charge at a distance but with all that flux even small loops of conductors might be in danger of generating a serious voltage potential across them.
This has a much better application for parking lots. Dedicate some percentage of spaces as charging spaces and power vehicles at rest. It doesn't need to deliver a high power charge to be useful.
Heck, this even makes sense for loading docks/semi. Put these induction chargers at every loading bay and let the electric semis charge while they load and unload.
As mentioned elsewhere in the thread, charging forklifts or something in a warehouse in motion, or while briefly stopped drives up how long you can use an electric powered device, and the added utility pays for efficency loss.
Of course, it's easier to add this to cover enough of a warehouse than to cover enough of a highway system.
This is a good idea, which hasn't even been demonstrated to work with electric cars and roads.
What it has been demonstrated to work for, is robots in warehouses, and in that context it's great: this would allow ~99% utilization and obviate laying out warehouse space for charging docks.
I'd look for applications where a system cannot stop moving, otherwise isn't in physical contact with infrastructure / cannot be accessed, or absolutely can't tolerate additional weight.
"In their new paper, the researchers show how to boosts the system’s wireless-transmission efficiency to 92%. The key, Assawaworrarit explained, was to replace the original amplifier with a far more efficient “switch mode” amplifier."
Solar voltaic has its own weird reliability issues but the panel does produce unusable amounts of power most of the day. (if your plan is to transport it)
Good weight/kwh ratio batteries are expensive.
If you can have the batteries roll along the power source for free the wind and sun could be offered very cheaply.
Wireless I dunno, overhead cables or contact rails in the road seem fine. Still costly but reasonable.
Pondering this it struck me how wonderful this ancient tech is.
https://www.rac-info.nl/lv/images/lvtrekschuitenpaard.jpg
Its A horse pulling a boat!
We could put rails by the side of the road with drones on them (mechanical horses) hook up any old clunker by its towing ring, cut dramatically into fuel consumption, reduce tire wear and get rid of much of the driving idiocy.
It gets more spectacular where you can dump mechanical energy into vehicles while it is available.
I have no idea at what speed conventional cars are still usable but I see far less need for a speed limit if everyone drives in formation. If someone hits the breaks the drone can detect it and slow down the car behind it. Perhaps 2 cables, one at the front and one at the back.
Charging the battery over cables gets pretty obvious at this point. (there is regenerative breaking too!)
To add a final bit of hilarity: If we stop gluing batteries into appliances (ffs?) fit them to the bottom and make them easy to swap by driving over a swapping station... then the fully charged battery is more valuable than the empty one.
This can drive the cost per km down below zero.
In their first breakthrough three years ago, the researchers developed a wireless charger that could transmit electricity even as the distance to the receiver changes. They did this by incorporating an amplifier and feedback resistor that allowed the system to automatically adjusts its operating frequency as the distance between the charger and the moving object changed. But that initial system wasn’t efficient enough to be practical. The amplifier uses so much electricity internally to produce the required amplification effect that the system only transmitted 10% of the power flowing through the system.
In their new paper, the researchers show how to boosts the system’s wireless-transmission efficiency to 92%. The key, Assawaworrarit explained, was to replace the original amplifier with a far more efficient “switch mode” amplifier. Such amplifiers aren’t new but they are finicky and will only produce high-efficiency amplification under very precise conditions. It took years of tinkering, and additional theoretical work, to design a circuit configuration that worked."
A resonant structure (AKA "antenna") can be thought of as Star Trek's Transporter, version 0.0000001...
A resonant coil, 0.0000002...
A resonant coil to transport electricity, 0.0000003...
Then of course there's this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NB_hF_K_7cc
2:28:
Montgomery Scott: "What's that?"
Alternate Universe Mr. Spock: "Your equation for achieving transwarp beaming..."
[He shows Mr. Scott the equation on screen...]
Montgomery Scott: "Imagine that! It never occurred to me to think of space as the thing that was moving!"
How about truck by-lanes across the country are equipped with electric cables on poles, and trucks have those train type extenders to get charged. Or even charging stations in truck stops.
And wireless charging is in-efficient.