Pantographs! For buses, pantographs are way better! Also, the material costs for dynamic wireless charging seem insanely high. Also, for distribution centres overhead cables plugged directly into the trucks seems better from a cost perspective and nearly equivalent for time efficiency.
It is called a partial/hybrid/dual-mode trolleybus and has been common in various European cities(not only) for many years. Similar technology is available for trams. Where wires are located only part of the line, but are not present, for example, in historic city centers for aesthetic reasons.
These are being trialled in various countries. It seems to be the most practical solution and with very little disruption to the road system during installation. th-cam.com/video/_3P_S7pL7Yg/w-d-xo.html
We tested that for trucks in Germany. It worked but was a bit impractical because you cannot do that on every road but trucks need to drive everywhere. The conclusion is now that batteries are now good enough to power a truck for most applikations.
Dynamic Induction charging systems would be installed under major arteries, not side roads. From other videos I’ve seen, you’d only have to install dynamic induction charging under 5% or so of a highway. Or, as Rosie said, induction charging could be installed under bus, truck, and apartment parking spaces. This technology could completely disrupt Exxon, etc.!
At home it would be completely idiotic. The only annoying part about public charging is the payment process and getting the charger to work. That's usually not an issue at your own wallbox.
Compared to wired charging: Lower efficiency therefore more drain on green electricity generation, higher installation and maintenance costs, higher embedded emissions and heavy disruption for installation and maintenance, higher safety issues, and finally one of the most important point not mentioned here: higher copper requirements. Yes, there is more copper used in a “wireless” base+ cable to the mains, than just a cable. Wireless charging is generally pointless for standard electronic devices (except maybe during a car or a train/airplane journey). It’s even more pointless for EVs, because of the higher drain on resources. Goes against any sustainable goal.
When you look around, you then you often see that we don't care about excessive use of materials. If it is convenient and / or necessary, then we build it. 🙂
@@replica1052 for wireless charging you need the coil AND a cable to mains still. And for EV charging the coil will need to be of decent thickness and size (number of turns) to induce the electrical power required. Waste of resources. The energy transition is necessary but needs to be done right. Wireless charging, apart from specific use cases, is not a solution that heads in the right direction IMHO.
The moment you have to mess about with alignment and getting within 10cm of the optimal position, you may as well just plug it in. The dynamic charging for trucks is interesting, but same problem. Installing each truck with a larger battery is more sensible than thousands of kilometres of inductive highway
Geeze you give up so easily.... I'm sure you are aware of the saying "Necessity is the mother of invention" . If 10cm can't be maintained by a human driver then a need arises to change that. or a way to guide the vehicle, many vehicles all around you on the highway are already guided to stay within their own lane until it's clear the drive wants to change lanes like indicating or emergency swerving. So your problem of drift is already solved. inductive highway is still a lot better for the environment than filthy diesel trucks pumping out pollutants and greenhouse gasses.
@brobinson8614 as someone who has been using an electric car daily for 5 years, I can confirm plugging it in is basically zero effort. Wireless charging isn't an improvement on that, so it's no surprise it's not really worked. People have been looking at this for over a decade and it's gone nowhere
@@AlexPacker It is in countries where our houses a big distance from our car parks. Thats why swap a battery stations are the future. especially for long distance driving and trucks. I do understand some people have the luck of a driveway they can charge their car over night, so thats cool too. Just need lots of smart options
Electrifying the roads seems needlessly expensive and hazardous. At best it would seem to be of value for transportation of goods along fixed corridors much like trains. It might be interesting to estimate the deployment cost of such systems and to compare the cost of the efficiency losses of each technology. 90% efficient wireless power transfer isn’t nearly good enough when it implies many megawatt-hours of wasted energy across the network.
@ not really ideal place. A lot of engineering is going on on train tracks, and with (highspeed) trains every few minutes, it becomes delicate to send sombody out there to repair a solar panel. There are many more places where there are fewer constraints. Also... panels will quickly become dirty
If charging a Truck only takes a few minutes, then dynamic charging seems senseless, given the infrastructure issues and loss of efficiency. Drivers need breaks and can be charging during those breaks.
Even if batteries would allow such rapid charging truck batteries I'll be somewhere around the mwatt, if you just have a few trucks charging one would need a power station somewhere close to just power a few charging places, not to mention that most trucking is done during the day so charging would happen at night where reliable production is scarce
@@dumyjobby Due to peak demand billing on commercial and industrial utility feeds, charging stations with extremely peaky demand will need some combination of on-site battery storage and charge staggering to smooth their peaks out.
@@dumyjobby You'll be relieved to know that's actually been thought through and has a fix already. As in China and other countries they have stacks of second hand EV batteries stored next to charging stations, these battery banks are trickle feed by either the grid (off peak), or wind turbines or by solar. There is no drain on the grid even when multiple vehicles are charging because these battery banks store plenty of chage. I do note your comment does sound exactly like the propaganda from the fossil fuel industry misinformation campaign. It's unfortunate that as they have been paying influencers to spread memes, videos on myths or outdated information about anything renewable or that will reduce the sale of fossil fuels. Lets not let big business infiltrate our brains.
For those who visit Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, take a look at their wireless charging EV bus. I interviewed the bus driver who raved about the system. Alignment at bus stops is extremely easy as there is a yellow line on curb and first bus step. Low tech simplicity. Charging stops are about 5 minutes.
That's probably an almost perfect use case. Lots of frequent, short stops, predictable route, big vehicle to carry the weight of extra equipment etc. Only real downside I could see is you couldn't re-task that bus to a different route unless it was also equally equipped. Or say in an emergency to evac people etc. Municipal vehicles are frequently part of the 'unexpected' situation planning cities do.
If this is happening in Canada. one of the tricky bits is thermal expansion and contraction as the temperatures range from +40 C to -40C throughout the year, while road surfaces might change to as high as 50 C or higher. Roads are cracked all the time, this has to be an issue.
@@eanerickson8915 Was thinking that too. I suspect population density and land mass have direct effects on the business case for any sort of transportation model.
0:12 Team Wasteful gimmick. We're already going to struggle to produce enough power to electrify everything, transmitting it through the air instead of wires is the dumbest way to further increase demand for electricity.
We can hardly cool our phones enough to dissipate the waste heat when wireless charging with 50 watts. And that is even with the inductor half a millimeter from eachother. Remember inverse square law still applies. There is quite a jump to megawatt, which even have to have liquid cooled cables to move that kind of power.
It's not really like a microwave - the frequency is usually around 10 - 200 kHz not 2.45 GHz - 10000x ratio! The effect on the body is quite different as it is on Pacemakers etc. Your hand will not be cooked by an induction cooktop but definitely will if you put it in a microwave oven!
@@jimurrata6785 How many kW is a Qi pad and what frequency is is operating at? This, plus the inductance of the phone are critical to understanding the issues involved. So, the large powers with these devices is in itself a potential hazard. Then it will be necessary to ensure that nothing which might have a current induced in it, except the receiver coils, gets close. In the real world how do you control what gets close to the highway or a parking spot? In the event of an accident, a vehicle with damaged batteries/charging system could be static over the top of one of these for a prolonged period. Might get interesting!
@nickwinn7812 all good questions! It comes down to impedance matching. The load needs to match the source. I think that these systems are also intelligent in that the source transducer will not turn fully on until it detects a vehicle transducer nearby. If you squeeze in next to it you could be in danger. Maybe? I am running out of knowledge and speculating...
0:01 yeah, trains. 2:28 and wastes so much energy... There's nothing wrong with cables. 7:07 then just replace them with trolleybuses or trams... much better
Hmmm why not use trains? Like switzerland. Put the truck on the train, and charge it enough so it can do the last miles and then get back to another train
Copper is already a source of contention, and even criminality in some places. So no, no copper coils under every major thoroughfare. Maybe at service station parking lots, etc., something can be done.
The coils could be in aluminium as the required increased size of the cores should not be an issue in this application. However, I do think this would be a nightmare to install and maintain in the highway, as well as being a potential health/safety hazard.
There is a big difference between wireless charging a low current device like a mobile phone, and a very high current device like an EV. The challenges of moving to EV are bad, but wireless charging seems a step too far. The main issue must be efficiency followed quickly by cost. It's already difficult to deliver the energy needed from the grid, requiring local energy storage to smooth the power demand on the grid and reduce long distance transmission losses. I suspect the transfer efficiency figures are very optimistic and fail to account for the total system losses. It is going to be difficult to make high frequency power generation, and coupling, efficient and cost effective.
Even going through all the sources here there isn't a single scientific paper/process (I don't mind 3rd party testing on their own) testing all the claims about efficiency. I found it weird that the numbers are 3x better (1/3 of measured losses) compared to actual, real world, tested wireless charge on phones (were the distance is 10x smaller). PS : I find the scientific papers using company's blog post number quiet worrying. I could understand using official reports but blog from the Chief Marketing Officer? No thanks
@@byGDur Having chargers does you little good unless they are where you need them when you need them. When I borrow my mother's Bolt EV, I need chargers in the middle of nowhere when the range guesstimator screws me over, not around major cities where the battery is already full from cheaper destination-charing. With gas stations, almost any random highway exit has one if not two and there rarely are any queues since each fuel pump is the equivalent of 2000+kW DC fast-charging with practically all vehicles capable of going full-speed until the last ~5%. Fast-charging still has a very long way to go from both the infrastructure and vehicle sides before matching gas and diesel for convenience on trips or for people who do not have the luxury of charging at home on much cheaper domestic energy rates.
Every new "revolutionary" transport idea ends up being optimized into a train. I suspect this one is going to be the same of most situations with a few niche exceptions. Trains are far more efficient than trucks, don't need batteries, have far less maintenance, don't need to stop to charge, and only require 1 driver for 100 times the passenger/cargo capacity. If we spent more money funding train lines instead of roads, we might actually end up with an efficient (both energy and throughput) transportation system. Just imagine how much more pleasant driving would be if half of the people on the road decided to take a much faster train instead of driving.
@@darylwells103 Usually with electric trains you electricity the whole line with overhead wires so you don't need batteries, battery trains are starting to be a thing though and might make sense for lines that aren't used very often
While EV wireless charging is a nice idea, in reality it's not really sensible. We need to be reducing energy consumption, not wasting huge amount of energy pushing electricity through the air between coils.
is it any better to push around 1000 pounds of extra batteries in every single EV because you can't charge en route? at least coils won't pancake you in an accident.
It will surely come at some point. I've seen some of the systems trialed so far and alignment looked a lot easier than I had imagined. Something that no one seems to be talking about, is the huge benefits for disabled drivers. Filling stations and charging bays have often been badly designed and are very difficult for wheelchair users. I was on crutches for a few months in 2021 and getting the cable from the boot (Renault Zoe, no frunk) and getting to the charge port (front and centre) was very awkward. There is also the safety aspect of pulling up at night in a remote location and not having to unlock the car or get out.
That reminds me of something I found in an old book from the 50th. This was the time when we thought nuclear energy would change the world. There they already mentioned things like heated sidewalks in the winter and inductive power supply for electric cars embedded in the roads. It’s funny that concepts like this keep coming back.
Cool idea, may work in home garages and heated parking lots here, otherwise the frost heaves will mess with anything not buried below 3.5 ft. so an 8 cm deep coil will not last more then one winter. total waste of everything. but that is what we get here in the snow belt.
Refueling (recharging) stops are an important safety feature. If your vehicle runs forever then some irresponsible drivers are going to pull terrifically long hours on the road without a break It's not so bad for commercials, where a tacho is compulsory in most countries, but in a private car it would be inviting problems
It already is, at 3 am on staurdays on the German autobahns, there is always a queue because some tourist tried to "drive through the night" after a long day at work. Especially around the popular skiing weekends, where everyone wants to go south to the alps.
6:30 "...mining battery materials" Which would pale in comparison to the amount of the extra COPPER (expensive!) being mined to create all of that inductive charging infrastructure. Inductive charging coils ARE NOT SMALL! It'd be easier to just create the batteries. edit: Honestly, they should be using aluminium coils. There's probably minimal issues with vibration (at least compared to copper in motors) & impacts, aluminium would probably be ok in this usage. You just need 3x as much volume, but whatever, it's still lighter-weight (tho probably not an issue in roads) and WAY cheaper & more available than Copper.
Just the wiring required to deliver power to the inductive chargers would already require a mile of copper per mile of road. This is already cost-prohibitive, without even getting into the materials going into the inductive chargers themselves. Or the fact that digging up every street to install the wiring is also prohibitively expensive, not even getting into the cost of the copper.
@@ab-tf5fl aluminum wire is used in most utility applications like power transmission. i doubt there would be much need for copper, maybe a small amount in the control electronics. i don't think the plan is feasible, but the problem isn't that copper is too expensive. i think easy(ish) grid connection is one of the more favorable aspects of the idea, since most roads already have transmission lines running alongside them, or somewhere nearby. it's rare that a road is going somewhere that doesn't also need power along the way. i reckon long, rural highways would be the exception.
A car park at more than 50% capacity with all cars charging (whether wired or wireless) would require its own substation. I can’t imagine wiring roads - the state of Victoria can barely repair potholes. And for mass freight - rail is under-utilised in Australia. A better rail network would be much simpler.
Well obviously they would not all be energised at the same time, there would have to be smart systems to prioritised based on certain criterea (in the same way many already do with wired charging). Actually car parks at supermarkets, malls and service areas are the most obvious place for this sort of technology since they are best suited to fairly slow charging as people will be there a while.
@@andyjdhurley That doesn’t really ring true though. In this scenario every parking spot must be capable of induction charging. What if the car park is 100% occupied and half of those cars are ‘scheduled’ for charging? The power demand for a typical suburban car park would be ‘huge’. If you’re going to limit charging capacity, at what degree of occupancy vs power demand do you make the threshold? It will be possible to install a limited number of induction charging points, as cable charging is limited today, but I can’t see widespread installations any time soon.
I have always wondered why EVs dont have a similar charging solution similar to how autonomous roomba vacuum cleaners dock and charge. It seems like something possible with current tech and cheaper and more efficient. Rosie, perhaps you could ask the right people?
Better than opportunity charging is to do what China is doing and that's swap a battery (like we do with cordless drill), fast too They have it down to 2 and a half minutes. in what looks like a car wash, drive in, have your battery swapped while you are still in the car, and carry on. The other great thing is you never have a battery die on you because all that is the responsibility of the charging stations. They own the battery, we lease it for a much lower cost than gasoline. China even have this service for scooter and motorcycle batteries
I can not remember if Tesla allows a wireless charging kits to be installed on their vehicles and people they have been found out having them installed have been blocked from using their charging network and even having the battery and drivetrain warranty being denied
Given the fact that the range of EVs and electric semis is increasing every year with better batteries coming to the market, and that they are able to recharge pretty quickly as well, it seems like a huge waste of ressources for just sparing us the 15 minutes of recharge time we will need for every 3 hours of driving or so. I mean, don't you need to go to the bathroom after 3 hours of driving? Or just stretch out a little?
Better than charging ourselves and waiting ages, we should do what China is doing and that's swap a battery (like we do with cordless drill), fast too They have it down to 2 and a half minutes. in what looks like a car wash, drive in, have your battery swapped while you are still in the car, and carry on. The other great thing is you never have a battery die on you because all that is the responsibility of the charging stations. They own the battery, we lease it for a much lower cost than gasoline. China even have this service for scooter and motorcycle batteries
Actually it would be much safer if truckdrivers had to uphold the law about having a certain amount of rest. And the truck might as well charge at the same time. Humans driving a truck 24/7 is just a bad idea on every level anyway.
That’s old technology. Today’s wireless EV charging systems are about 90 efficient, although manufacturers claim even higher. For home charging, I would not want to waste 10%, so would opt for plugging in my EV.
This high efficiency is only achieved with perfect (so automatic) alignment. Auto alignment means more complexity and how would you do that while driving.
but the alternative of hauling around giant batteries in every single EV is also inefficient. if you have wireless power on the roadway, you only need a smaller battery. which way is more wasteful?
@@joshieecs That's fine for highways and autopilot can keep vehicle aligned, but you'll need a larger battery when traveling off the highway on secondary streets without charging. Please don't expect 100% of streets dug up for charging.
@@joshieecs: Paving our roads with copper? I am pretty sure that is the most wasteful and unrealistic thing I have ever heard. Pulling over and charging with 250kW is the solution that is already in the real world now. We can't even afford to maintain the asphalt as it is, infusing it with copper will only make it much worse.
Where I could see this working is traffic lights. You could look at how many cars usually wait at a traffic light and put inductive chargers for that length of road. Also you would on average sit at traffic lights for a long enough period to make a meaning full charge during some commutes. Naturally this would work best in the most congested parts of cities.
i think the idea is that, you could get by with a much smaller battery if the roads had wireless power. if you consider that savings across 100's of millions of future EV's as we electrify transport, a 50% or even 25% reduction in battery capacity would be a tremendous savings.
A wire is cheap, reliable and efficient. There is no question that wireless charging is here to stay but only for applications where the absence of a wire is crucial.
I had an idea to do wireless charging by installing a maglev style coil system under the lanes of a motorway so when your on a long journey you would actually be charging while using the motorway.
@@EngineeringwithRosie After graduating under John and Grant, I moved on to a spin-off company doing wireless power for consumer devices in Auckland. And now I do something completely different because I went on an OE to the Netherlands 😊 I'm an avid watcher of your channel, I really enjoyed your hard-headed takes on wind turbine economics.
Filling up your battery daily is not good for battery health. It's better to only fill up before a long trip and then reduced the time the battery sits at 100%. Many intelligent charging solutions with wallboxes for homes can manage this.
@Kerbezena good comment Fortunately battery technologies are evolving rapidly and this may not be an issue. The future can be bright 🌞 80% maybe just fine on a daily basis Patterns of use will give us more detail.
I would have prefered you to evaluate separately BEVs that only run on electricity, and hybrids, including PHEVs, that run on both electricity and gasoline. The latter eliminate the need for on the go charging, the range anxiety, the long charging times, the high prices, and the impracticality of BEVs. Most renters, etc., can't easily charge at home. Mulitple analysies have shown that hybrids are a faster strategy for decarbonization because they are practical for everyone and the oil companies back them so they can get a soft landing for their industry rather than a crash of an all BEV fleet. I charge my PHEV with no real effort, while I'm sleeping! The cable came with the car and it plugs into a regular wall socket. No compatibility issue. I get 80 MPG highway and climbing now that I've learned a few tricks. A 12.5 gallon fill-up can last me up to 6 months.
Dynamic charging systems are most unlikey to be a significant thing on roads due to the small displacement tolerance. Rosie said the induction 'antennas' are spaced about 2 metres apart. The graphs indicate that 50 mm displacement is the max for efficient induction charging. This means the charging is only effective for 100 mm as the vehicle goes over the coil. With the coils spread 2 metres apart, induction charging is only effective for 5% of the vehicle journey - thus it needs to be high power. Other utilities have got in first and claimed virtually the entire underground space in our streets. When tram tracks were installed down George St, Sydney, the displacement of existing services cost around $500 million/kilometre. Motorways busy with autonomous vehicles are the only ones likely to see dynamic charging, as only autonomous vehicles can achieve the driving accuracy required. Northern US roads are often potholled by freeze-thaw action on pavements. For dynamic charging, the induction coil container interface with the pavement is a weakness for iniating freeze-thaw action. Batteries are getting cheaper and stationary chearging faster - stationary induction charging will win the day.
I think for charging commercial vehicles, there's already stuff like trolly buses that works way better than wireless charging and already exists. And it's probably cheaper to set up and maintain the infrastructure for since it doesn't require tearing up the road. I just struggle to see a situation where wireless charging makes more sense than pantographs for commercial usage, and for personal vehicles, even if it might be a little annoying, being forced to stop for 20 or 30 minutes every couple of hours probably improved road safety, and electric cars have enough range now that it's only every 4 or 5 hours. Wireless charging pads in parking lots for vehicle to grid are an interesting idea, but wireless charging pads are so expensive because of all the extra power electronics even compared to a regular EV charger that It seems unlikely to be worth the cost. Level 0 chargers (using the car's built-in inverter) would have enough power capacity at the scale of an entire parking lot and that's a small enough cable that it's no more annoying than paying at the parking meter if it's profitable enough to replace that.
@@poulhenne The vehicle side of the pantograph can only be made so small at it isn't free, so putting them on consumer vehicles would be more expensive relative to the vehicle in a market that's more price sensitive and would cause more aerodynamic problems than for a larger vehicle.
Good Vid Rosie. except for! Have you seen the road surface here in Straya? Potholes 3 months after resurfacing! We don't have the talent needed to make/maintain/train the workforce needed for bitumen roads. where will we find talent to add copper to the mix. (rhetorical)
Newly subscribed. Have you done a topic on ongoing maintenance for the various forms of power generation I.e Nuclear, solar, wind, coal. The cradle to grave logistics, the technicians, spare parts, administration, disposal, training, test equipment.
spoke with 2 Wireless Charging manufacturers at ACT Expo in Vegas back in May. the technology exists and is already in use (unfortunately people don't realize they're "secretly addicted" to touching CCS and NACS handles). Wireless is also ADA compliant for people with handicaps and better supports V2G for those who might have an interest in future power sharing programs offered by their local utility.
The potential to never have to do anything, or even have to think about charging for your daily commute, (besides parking in the right place) could help win some people over. The cars could be made able to adjust the position, only requiring the drivers to park roughly in the right place. Standardization is crucial for public systems, but also not difficult for stationary charging, phone manufacturers managed that. It's the same fundamental principle no matter who develops it, so it's mostly a matter of making the coils of a certain size range, and that's kind of dictated by the size of the vehicles anyway. It's not difficult or much more expensive to make systems with multiple coils to widen the compatibility either, wide compatibility can be built into either the chargers or vehicles, or both. So, not much more of an issue for inductive charging than it is for conductive charging, so the biggest issue with public inductive charging probably also be payment systems, and not the charging technology. I don't see much future for dynamic charging, neither inductive or conductive. We have used pantographs for a very long time, and even that still has a lot of issues, even in dedicated systems with one or a few commercial operators. And using pantographs is probably the most practical way to transfer grid power to a vehicle in motion. If anything, I think it's time to look at the possibility to add batteries to trains, to eliminate reliance on continuous power from pantographs.
Wireless charging would be a big deal for fleets of self-driving taxis. I could imagine vehicles like Zoox or Heathrow Airport terminal 5 parking pods which, in the future when serving a city, would have to park somewhere in off-peak time just to get out of the way. Adding opportunity charging pads on busy, popular stops would greatly extend the range or, better yet, allow vehicles to use smaller, lighter batteries. BTW, those parking spaces for off-peak parking would cost nothing as they would be the same parking places for cars already existing with one great advantage, you don't have to provide random access to any of the vehicles. They could just queue one after the other since they are all the same, first-in/first out, and get charged while queuing. Perhaps you have seen the video of the parking garage full of Waymo vehicles that were keeping the neighbors up all night with their beeping. I wonder, why do they bother parking like regular cars? Just make a queue, no maneuvering, no nothing. Perhaps, make two queues, just in case one car gets stuck and blocks one of the queues.
Wireless charging used to run me the wrong way once I heard about it being less efficient than wired charging. I figured if you can get so much better use of our power (especially at such a massive scale), then why not take a few seconds to plug it in? But when I think about it more these days, I think I may have been missing the forest for the trees. Every consumer is different and values different things. Maybe for some people, charging being wireless is enough to tip the scales in favor of them ditching their ICE vehicle for an EV. That would be a huge benefit to the world. So maybe the few % we lose by charging it wirelessly is negligible compared to the benefit of them switching to an EV in the first place. We can worry about improving efficiency later. In software development, we also have this concept come up - microoptimizations. We sometimes get so focused on the things we know could be better that we underestimate the impact that just getting a project done in the first place would have.
Just use the same alignment mechanism you see in every single mechanical car wash ever. A rail on the right side that guides the tyres and a red light that tells the driver to apply the brake. Also a 1950s design
I see a real safety problem here. People with certain medical devices, like pacemakers, defibrillators and insulin pumps, will have a problem. While a vehicle may act as a Faraday cage, a pedestrian or bicycle traveling over magnetic fields will be affected. In the worst case, it could kill them.
Whilst I agree it's probably a bad idea (at least on long stretches of road) the coils would obviously only energise when they detected (and identified for billing purposes) a suitable vehicle. But there is a risk such things could go wrong.
Paused you at 8:46; in the US our long distance, high and ultra high voltage transmission systems need a lot of work- both maintenance and upgrades just to really be up to now; a rapid change to EVs nationally of anything but regionally where electricity is plentiful and use high is about the limit of what the market will bear hear. Our domestic auto producer have failed miserably at building a medium sized car with high quality and good finish, and they don't look to be very enthusiastic about EVs, tbh. The situation here in Texas, which is not tied to either the East of Western grids is worse, as our politicians refused to sign on to the national standards that joining either of those grids would have required- we need more repair and refit to get caught up to today than either national grid. It isn't a few dollars, more like many billions of USD, and the utilities don't want to pay for it, the Texas government doesn't have any thought to pay it and we have no access to funds the other national grid operators do. Rosie, you are an engineer; you see the problem, but without a lot of money, no solution has a chance yet. PS; although you mentioned Nikola Tesla, you didn't mention how big a rejection his wireless charging and transfer system brought about; simply put, there was and is no feasible way to charge for the product without some sort of meter as you would find on houses and businesses without a meter that the seller has control of and access to. ON billing, would the charges be for the electricity actually got into the battery or for the electricity that was spent to create the charge? How would slight misadjustments effect that charge equation? Who would carry the responsibility- over the last twenty years most states no longer directly inspect vehicles, instead "certified" mechanics do the test and write up the results, once a year when they have to have them. So, for this charge on the fly thing, most of the things about EVs that sold them- cheaper running costs, less maintenance and fewer headaches will now be their lot to make this second but necessary step happen. Me, I'm holding out for the transporters used in Star Trek- that seems a much better idea all around; step on, pay the toll and Bob's your uncle, you are there!
The cost of the necessary materials and maintenance prevents widespread deployment. Look at an example of how much a basic 30-50kW DC charger costs and the performance components you would need for each pad. You mentioned Hyundai's interest in this technology, but the car that would implement it as the first GV60 has been on the market for a few years but doesn't offer it.
Not sure how integrative the ASEAN is, but in the EU, they can say. Right, get your stuff together, Apple, Samsung etc. etc.: you got five years to have a single, interoperable charging cable. This will definitely happen with EV charging cables too. I can't imagine there being a company like Tesla, being able to install a charger network and only allow it to be used for their cars. Maybe ASEAN, needs to do the same type of thing. (and yeah, the phone and other small device charging cables being standardised, has made a big difference. Unfortunately, 'eaten bread is soon forgotten' and people have forgotten how sh*tty it was that when you got a new device, you needed to carry that cable around too, and as for borrowing someone at work's cable - forget it. BTW, it wasn't just different brands, but every model had it's own unique cable.)
I'm a fan, but not sure if it would work on highways. Then maybe a power line on top would be better to charge big trucks. They don't need to be dug up with roadworks.
I expect a combination for charging, wireless makes lot of sense everywhere vehicles normally park. Wireful charging also makes a lot of sense everywhere vehicles normally park. The issue is the cable, doing without cable may be a safety feature as well as a convenience. Also, it's difficult to steal wireless charging pad, I suspect, not so much with a cable.
On a someone related note, I thought about how amazing it would be if wireless inductive charging technology could work for large cargo and tank ships. I'm not an engineer, but I'm curious to know if this is technologically possible given all this talk about wireless in-road power transfer, wireless charging, and wirelessly beaming power from space to earth. Together with all this talk of strange and seemingly silly proposals like global super grids in Europe, the US, Australia, Asia, and even globally. With insane projects like the Xlinks Morocco-UK Power Project, as well as the Australia-Asia Power Link, it's not inconceivable for such high-capacity power cables to be laid between Australia and New Zealand, Australia and Asia, Canada, Greenland, and Europe. This would be really interesting since it would lead to the decarbonization of global shipping, it would lead to smaller batteries on ships, thus reducing weight and the global commodity price for battery materials. Since these cables would be cris-crossing the ocean, new sources of power like offshore geothermal, ocean thermal energy conversion, deep-water offshore wind, marine current energy, wave energy, and deep-water compressed air energy storage could all be plugged into these power cables. And these power cables don't specifically need to be limited to just providing power to ships. They could provide power for onshore applications, and for ocean-based carbon capture (since seawater holds 149 times more CO2 by volume compared to the air. Also, given the massive energy needs for desalination, for hydrogen production, and for data centres, power cables like these would be really valuable. If you read this, I'd love to hear from you about what you think given the Xlinks and Australia-Asia cable projects.
This sounds and looks good but I think the laws of physics will be a issue and that would be before the cost of building new roads or upgrading current roads but this does have its place as bus stops, stands and bus stations. Like wise with lorries in the loading and unloading dock/yard and maybe on hills
If a major road (highway) can be electrified, it would go a long way to creating a market for lighter cars with lower range. A 100 mile range would suddenly be enough to get cross country. People who stay very local can just use the regular charging they have now. Charged roadways would go a long way to making the range issue obsolete.
That's the dumbest place to put it (not that other places are much better). In your garage, you only need to take the cable, open the charge port door, and plug in. You don't need to worry about payment or any other part of the initialization of the charging process like at public chargers. Not having to handle the cable is not worth at least three times the electricity use.
@@Kerbezena Some people are disabled, so manouvering to the charger, grabbing the plug, moving to the chargeport and plugging in might be almost impossible dude. So it's not so fcking dumb for some.
If charging can occur during driving that would have enormous advantages. There would need to be a standard on every continent. Clearly the concern about efficiency of charging while moving needs to be addressed.
I’m pretty sure that Tesla EVs are available in Australia, so why doesn’t Rosie drive one, or at least show Teslas connecting to Superchargers? No trouble getting them to work, no trouble finding one, no range anxiety.
This is more of a pipe dream. The current standard, SAE J2954 is not being adapted by any manufacturers that I'm aware of. While it sounds good to charge wirelessly, you have to get pretty close. So why go through the extra expense if you can just plug the charger in? Also, to be able to charge while the vehicle is moving? Forget about it.
Thanks for the video. I cannot see how its reshaping anything; a cable can do the same. The most difference will be to people with a handicap that makes it hard to handle cables. Dynamic charging is unrealistic to roll out and maintain. For long haul trucks i still think battery swap is realistic.
I love the idea of this, not sure of the losses, I know my phone gets pretty hot on wireless charger. My Father has a pacemaker, He had to change out his induction cooktop for another type as he is not allowed to be within 2 meters while it is in operation, he cooks a lot, so not feasible. How would this work crossing the wireless street.
Battery swapping is way easier to implement, and better - the high-cost part of the vehicle, the battery, is owned and maintained by specialist companies. Lower up-front cost, lower depreciation, lower repair costs, lower insurance cost, more grid manageability. But it's still impossible to do from where we are now, Just like wireless charging roads.
Considering how much of Australia's road network is currently dirt, I think the best the dynamic system could economically manage would be the east coast Brisbane to Melbourne corridor. That would be a huge achievement. But also it would take about as long as the installation of the dual carriageway took! By the time a project like that got about 25% done, the technology could be expected to change! With such a long term project, trying to get subsequent *generations* of opposing politicians and business heads to agree on continuing the roll-out would be "interesting". Just look at how such an obviously beneficial project as the NBN became a political football. My dream for long-distance travel tends to be more modest - install opportunity and wire chargers in all rest stops, for cars, motorbikes, and trucks. As a secondary benefit, this encourages drivers to rest more often. Using wireless chargers for these opportunity installations would reduce the problem I foresee with the idea - vandalism of this expensive hardware. In these rest stop bays the difficulty of alignment could be eased, or made automatic. It should go without saying that using solar power generating roofing over these stops, combined with co-located batteries, would greatly ease the power delivery issue.
State of the art wireless charging should not be conflated with inductive charging. It's more accurately magnetic resonance charging. Also, there is at least one standard: SAE J2954
Most governments have a difficulty with the cost of repairing and maintaining basic road infrastructure as is, this approach adds complexity and cost for what gain? Criminals will actually start to dig up roads to get to the cables to sell etc. Add in the growing negative impact of climate change and we have to be careful that the systems and technologies we invest in are not going to simply add to the financial burden from extreme weather events. Specifically why is this approach better than building out a robust dedicated charging network at associated cost?
Imagine we lived in a world of wireless charging only. I'm proposing a mind-blowing technology that TRIPLES the efficiency of charging your car in one swoop: PLUG IN A BLOODY CABLE!
I'd go one step further and do what China is doing and thats swap a battery (like we do with cordless drill), fast too They have it down to 2 and a half minutes. in what looks like a car wash, drive in, have your battery swapped while you are still in the car, and carry on.
So stoked on the potential of this combined with a tony-seba-super-power situation. I'm convinced it is a big part of the path to net-zero. We musn't let AI steal our super-power!
Since the success of the Telsa EV, I thought various stationary, and even from sun-powered orbitals*, lasers will soon always* recharge EVs everywhere*. I'm usually spot-on with making such predictions, but... maybe not this time.
If battery voltage was considerably higher the cables could be considerably smaller. 400VDC? 800VDC? No! 4000VDC! Ten times the voltage of a typical modern EV would mean the DC charging cables could be nearly 1/10 the size.
If battery prices continue to fall with shift to sodium ion then upgrade of Road Systems may not be cost effective.? Charging areas in Cities would be very useful for EV taxis & Vans and Buses!
Not every meter of road has to be electrified. In hilly or mountainous roads only the surface that is climbing needs this. The vehicle will charge going downhill using gravity.
It would make sense to put wireless charging on major freeways like the Hume. If a truck can pick up 100kw, that's another 50-100km added. so if charges are placed 100km apart(that's 8)and then at all road stops . That's no more smelly diesel 😊😊😊
In Europe lorry drivers have to take a 45 minute break after working 4 1/2 hrs, with adequate charging infrastructure thi would be enough to top up enough for the rest of the day so there's no need for wirless charging for them. I do see a use for busses and taxis and possibly light urban rail that stop at a designated spot regularly, wirless charging could enable the use of a smaller battery leading to a more efficient vehicle. For dynamic charging of long distance heavy goods vehicles the best charging method is sections of overhead catenary like the Tesla Giga Train which runs of batteries whilst on the Tesla branch line but switches seamlessly to overhead catenary for traction and chrging whilst on the main line. Electromagneric radiation is no problem because your effectively sitting in a Faraday cage whilst the wirless charger is outside the car. The field is focussed on the point where the receiver coil is positioned anyway so very little radiation outside that area.
Weird, you don't mention THE #1 advantage of wireless: Automating the charging process for autonomous vehicles without manual plug manipulation (see Tesla Cybercab). Also no misalignment problems here, max efficiency, low maintenance. This (besides personal garages) will drive rapid adoption.
Stationary wireless charging at bus stops, taxi queues, parking lots, etc. makes sense: plenty of time to align magnetic cores for best efficiency and likely necessary for the long-term viability of ubiquitous L2-charging as eliminating exposed cables also eliminates opportunistic cable theft. Mobile/dynamic wireless charging is far less efficient and requires a ton of more complex infrastructure to deliver a given amount of energy. I seriously doubt this has any chance of achieving economic viability. Having high-voltage power lines next to the highway doesn't make highway charging any easier since you need substations to take the 135+kV from those pylons down to the 9.6-25kV for the local step-down transformers that spit out the 480-600V required by the equipment.
I think wireless charging for consumer vehicles will become a thing, but it will be primary/entirely stationary charging and about small conveniences, rather than a big revolution. For example, in a home charging situation, going wireless eliminates cable clutter, as well as the risk of forgetting to plug your car in at night. In a public charging situation, I think wireless charging will be about a combination of convenience for lazy people and accessibility to the disabled. I could even see ADA someday outright requiring that every large charging site have wireless chargers, purely for accessibility reasons. I also see wireless charging as making sense for robotaxis. Paying humans to plug and unplug cables is expensive, and a solution that involves robots plugging and unplugging the charging cable feels more convoluted and expensive than the wireless charging alternative. Plus, since robotaxis are, by definition, computed controlled, it is easy to make them park perfectly optimally to charge at the best efficiency. I can even see parking lots where robotaxis wait for rides being equipped with slow-speed in-motion charging so that vehicles can move around the lot to allow other vehicles to get in or out without having to interrupt their charge. One place I definitely do *not* expect to see wireless charging take off, though, is on roads or highways. The cost per mile is too expensive, and the benefits relatively minor, considering that conventional charging is getting faster and faster, and that most cars driving on a stretch of road will be charging at home, and won't need charging away from home, period, except when on an occasional long-distance trip. Even buses, I'd need to see some data showing it to be cheaper than alternatives such as conventional chargers at route ends or overhead wire/pantographs, as I suspect many transit agencies are being sold snake oil that they may come to regret in a few years. If we ever see in-motion charging of consumer vehicles, the most likely place for it would be drive-thru lanes at fast-food restaurants,
Pantographs! For buses, pantographs are way better! Also, the material costs for dynamic wireless charging seem insanely high. Also, for distribution centres overhead cables plugged directly into the trucks seems better from a cost perspective and nearly equivalent for time efficiency.
Pantographs could also work on Trucks.
It is called a partial/hybrid/dual-mode trolleybus and has been common in various European cities(not only) for many years. Similar technology is available for trams. Where wires are located only part of the line, but are not present, for example, in historic city centers for aesthetic reasons.
These are being trialled in various countries. It seems to be the most practical solution and with very little disruption to the road system during installation.
th-cam.com/video/_3P_S7pL7Yg/w-d-xo.html
Too bad North American cities ripped out all of their tolly bus infrastructure +40-50 years ago because it wasn't "modern"
We tested that for trucks in Germany. It worked but was a bit impractical because you cannot do that on every road but trucks need to drive everywhere. The conclusion is now that batteries are now good enough to power a truck for most applikations.
At home? Sure. In carparks? Maybe. But underneath literally every road? Yea, nah - ya dreaming :)
Dynamic Induction charging systems would be installed under major arteries, not side roads. From other videos I’ve seen, you’d only have to install dynamic induction charging under 5% or so of a highway. Or, as Rosie said, induction charging could be installed under bus, truck, and apartment parking spaces. This technology could completely disrupt Exxon, etc.!
If you like wasting half your charging energy then go ahead with wireless.
Railroads do wired charging
At home it would be completely idiotic. The only annoying part about public charging is the payment process and getting the charger to work. That's usually not an issue at your own wallbox.
@rogerphelps9939 at least you wouldn't have to clear your drive of snow 😂
Compared to wired charging: Lower efficiency therefore more drain on green electricity generation, higher installation and maintenance costs, higher embedded emissions and heavy disruption for installation and maintenance, higher safety issues, and finally one of the most important point not mentioned here: higher copper requirements.
Yes, there is more copper used in a “wireless” base+ cable to the mains, than just a cable.
Wireless charging is generally pointless for standard electronic devices (except maybe during a car or a train/airplane journey). It’s even more pointless for EVs, because of the higher drain on resources. Goes against any sustainable goal.
When you look around, you then you often see that we don't care about excessive use of materials. If it is convenient and / or necessary, then we build it. 🙂
you get a car that parks itself and welcomes you every morning preconditioned and ready to go
(a coil needs less copper than a cable )
@@replica1052 for wireless charging you need the coil AND a cable to mains still. And for EV charging the coil will need to be of decent thickness and size (number of turns) to induce the electrical power required.
Waste of resources. The energy transition is necessary but needs to be done right. Wireless charging, apart from specific use cases, is not a solution that heads in the right direction IMHO.
@@byGDur except that copper is critical in the energy transition.
@@Nikoo033 you get to shorten the cables by a lot (induction is made by frequencies so the coils are very thin )
The moment you have to mess about with alignment and getting within 10cm of the optimal position, you may as well just plug it in. The dynamic charging for trucks is interesting, but same problem. Installing each truck with a larger battery is more sensible than thousands of kilometres of inductive highway
Geeze you give up so easily.... I'm sure you are aware of the saying "Necessity is the mother of invention" . If 10cm can't be maintained by a human driver then a need arises to change that. or a way to guide the vehicle, many vehicles all around you on the highway are already guided to stay within their own lane until it's clear the drive wants to change lanes like indicating or emergency swerving. So your problem of drift is already solved. inductive highway is still a lot better for the environment than filthy diesel trucks pumping out pollutants and greenhouse gasses.
@brobinson8614 as someone who has been using an electric car daily for 5 years, I can confirm plugging it in is basically zero effort. Wireless charging isn't an improvement on that, so it's no surprise it's not really worked. People have been looking at this for over a decade and it's gone nowhere
Batteries will continue to improve and be much cheaper. Sodium could replace lithium especially in colder climates.
@@AlexPacker It is in countries where our houses a big distance from our car parks. Thats why swap a battery stations are the future. especially for long distance driving and trucks. I do understand some people have the luck of a driveway they can charge their car over night, so thats cool too. Just need lots of smart options
Electrifying the roads seems needlessly expensive and hazardous. At best it would seem to be of value for transportation of goods along fixed corridors much like trains. It might be interesting to estimate the deployment cost of such systems and to compare the cost of the efficiency losses of each technology. 90% efficient wireless power transfer isn’t nearly good enough when it implies many megawatt-hours of wasted energy across the network.
Simply extend the train network...and it will also reduce the requirement for tires, which have also huge ecological impacts
Agree - and trains have already been invented ;-)
@ That's the problem... maybe we should call them tr-AI-ns so that people would find them modern
We could put solar panels between the railway tracks.
@ not really ideal place. A lot of engineering is going on on train tracks, and with (highspeed) trains every few minutes, it becomes delicate to send sombody out there to repair a solar panel. There are many more places where there are fewer constraints. Also... panels will quickly become dirty
If charging a Truck only takes a few minutes, then dynamic charging seems senseless, given the infrastructure issues and loss of efficiency. Drivers need breaks and can be charging during those breaks.
Even if batteries would allow such rapid charging truck batteries I'll be somewhere around the mwatt, if you just have a few trucks charging one would need a power station somewhere close to just power a few charging places, not to mention that most trucking is done during the day so charging would happen at night where reliable production is scarce
@@dumyjobby Due to peak demand billing on commercial and industrial utility feeds, charging stations with extremely peaky demand will need some combination of on-site battery storage and charge staggering to smooth their peaks out.
@@dumyjobby You'll be relieved to know that's actually been thought through and has a fix already. As in China and other countries they have stacks of second hand EV batteries stored next to charging stations, these battery banks are trickle feed by either the grid (off peak), or wind turbines or by solar. There is no drain on the grid even when multiple vehicles are charging because these battery banks store plenty of chage.
I do note your comment does sound exactly like the propaganda from the fossil fuel industry misinformation campaign. It's unfortunate that as they have been paying influencers to spread memes, videos on myths or outdated information about anything renewable or that will reduce the sale of fossil fuels. Lets not let big business infiltrate our brains.
@@teardowndan5364 Yes good thinking this is happening already in some countries, see my other comment.
For those who visit Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, take a look at their wireless charging EV bus. I interviewed the bus driver who raved about the system. Alignment at bus stops is extremely easy as there is a yellow line on curb and first bus step. Low tech simplicity. Charging stops are about 5 minutes.
That's probably an almost perfect use case. Lots of frequent, short stops, predictable route, big vehicle to carry the weight of extra equipment etc. Only real downside I could see is you couldn't re-task that bus to a different route unless it was also equally equipped. Or say in an emergency to evac people etc. Municipal vehicles are frequently part of the 'unexpected' situation planning cities do.
Hmmmm… Smells like vaporware in here 👃👀👀
This would pair perfectly with Solar Fricken Roadways!
@@thermitebanana yes, both are not cost effective.
'Presently in use' means 'not vapourware'
@thekaxmax I'm extremely sceptical of that claim
@@thekaxmax I may have a bridge to sell you, check in with me later ;)
If this is happening in Canada. one of the tricky bits is thermal expansion and contraction as the temperatures range from +40 C to -40C throughout the year, while road surfaces might change to as high as 50 C or higher. Roads are cracked all the time, this has to be an issue.
Ask how the swedes did it then?
-40 to 40? You must live in Ottawa!
@@eanerickson8915 No, in the west, but the vast majority of our land mass is subject to this 80 C spread.
@@eanerickson8915 Was thinking that too. I suspect population density and land mass have direct effects on the business case for any sort of transportation model.
Sun-baked asphalt will get to 60+C when ambient temperature is already around 40C.
0:12 Team Wasteful gimmick.
We're already going to struggle to produce enough power to electrify everything, transmitting it through the air instead of wires is the dumbest way to further increase demand for electricity.
We can hardly cool our phones enough to dissipate the waste heat when wireless charging with 50 watts. And that is even with the inductor half a millimeter from eachother. Remember inverse square law still applies.
There is quite a jump to megawatt, which even have to have liquid cooled cables to move that kind of power.
It's not really like a microwave - the frequency is usually around 10 - 200 kHz not 2.45 GHz - 10000x ratio! The effect on the body is quite different as it is on Pacemakers etc. Your hand will not be cooked by an induction cooktop but definitely will if you put it in a microwave oven!
OK, but will your wristwatch or wedding ring heat up and burn you? What if you have metal parts inside your body?
@@nickwinn7812Does your phone melt down when you set it on a Qi charging pad?
@@jimurrata6785 My phone doesn't draw 100kW
@@jimurrata6785 How many kW is a Qi pad and what frequency is is operating at? This, plus the inductance of the phone are critical to understanding the issues involved.
So, the large powers with these devices is in itself a potential hazard. Then it will be necessary to ensure that nothing which might have a current induced in it, except the receiver coils, gets close. In the real world how do you control what gets close to the highway or a parking spot?
In the event of an accident, a vehicle with damaged batteries/charging system could be static over the top of one of these for a prolonged period. Might get interesting!
@nickwinn7812 all good questions!
It comes down to impedance matching. The load needs to match the source. I think that these systems are also intelligent in that the source transducer will not turn fully on until it detects a vehicle transducer nearby. If you squeeze in next to it you could be in danger. Maybe? I am running out of knowledge and speculating...
0:01 yeah, trains.
2:28 and wastes so much energy... There's nothing wrong with cables.
7:07 then just replace them with trolleybuses or trams... much better
Hmmm why not use trains? Like switzerland. Put the truck on the train, and charge it enough so it can do the last miles and then get back to another train
Thats a great idea!!
Copper is already a source of contention, and even criminality in some places. So no, no copper coils under every major thoroughfare. Maybe at service station parking lots, etc., something can be done.
The coils could be in aluminium as the required increased size of the cores should not be an issue in this application. However, I do think this would be a nightmare to install and maintain in the highway, as well as being a potential health/safety hazard.
Aluminium coils are a useful replacement, and far less likely to be nicked
There is a big difference between wireless charging a low current device like a mobile phone, and a very high current device like an EV. The challenges of moving to EV are bad, but wireless charging seems a step too far. The main issue must be efficiency followed quickly by cost. It's already difficult to deliver the energy needed from the grid, requiring local energy storage to smooth the power demand on the grid and reduce long distance transmission losses. I suspect the transfer efficiency figures are very optimistic and fail to account for the total system losses. It is going to be difficult to make high frequency power generation, and coupling, efficient and cost effective.
Even going through all the sources here there isn't a single scientific paper/process (I don't mind 3rd party testing on their own) testing all the claims about efficiency. I found it weird that the numbers are 3x better (1/3 of measured losses) compared to actual, real world, tested wireless charge on phones (were the distance is 10x smaller).
PS : I find the scientific papers using company's blog post number quiet worrying. I could understand using official reports but blog from the Chief Marketing Officer? No thanks
There are academic papers. Search for John Boys, she mentioned him in the intro. High efficiency is possible, e.g. 90%.
they paved paradise, and put up a charging dock
They can't even build enough EV chaging station and you want us to believe that they gonna resurface the roads with this? Haha :D
We can and do have enough chargers. They are insanely simple to create and install.
The UK just passed 71,000 public chargers and around 50 chargers are added to the grid each day
@@QALibrary That is less than two public chargers per town! There must be more than that available for public use?
@@QALibrary Well, good for you. DE, CH, AT not the same, unfortunately.
@@byGDur Having chargers does you little good unless they are where you need them when you need them. When I borrow my mother's Bolt EV, I need chargers in the middle of nowhere when the range guesstimator screws me over, not around major cities where the battery is already full from cheaper destination-charing.
With gas stations, almost any random highway exit has one if not two and there rarely are any queues since each fuel pump is the equivalent of 2000+kW DC fast-charging with practically all vehicles capable of going full-speed until the last ~5%.
Fast-charging still has a very long way to go from both the infrastructure and vehicle sides before matching gas and diesel for convenience on trips or for people who do not have the luxury of charging at home on much cheaper domestic energy rates.
Every new "revolutionary" transport idea ends up being optimized into a train. I suspect this one is going to be the same of most situations with a few niche exceptions.
Trains are far more efficient than trucks, don't need batteries, have far less maintenance, don't need to stop to charge, and only require 1 driver for 100 times the passenger/cargo capacity.
If we spent more money funding train lines instead of roads, we might actually end up with an efficient (both energy and throughput) transportation system. Just imagine how much more pleasant driving would be if half of the people on the road decided to take a much faster train instead of driving.
Trains don't need batteries?
Someone sugested a train for the main roads that the truck drive onto and charge while traveling, then they drop the trucks off to navigate the cities
@@darylwells103 Usually with electric trains you electricity the whole line with overhead wires so you don't need batteries, battery trains are starting to be a thing though and might make sense for lines that aren't used very often
While EV wireless charging is a nice idea, in reality it's not really sensible. We need to be reducing energy consumption, not wasting huge amount of energy pushing electricity through the air between coils.
is it any better to push around 1000 pounds of extra batteries in every single EV because you can't charge en route? at least coils won't pancake you in an accident.
It will surely come at some point. I've seen some of the systems trialed so far and alignment looked a lot easier than I had imagined. Something that no one seems to be talking about, is the huge benefits for disabled drivers. Filling stations and charging bays have often been badly designed and are very difficult for wheelchair users. I was on crutches for a few months in 2021 and getting the cable from the boot (Renault Zoe, no frunk) and getting to the charge port (front and centre) was very awkward. There is also the safety aspect of pulling up at night in a remote location and not having to unlock the car or get out.
That reminds me of something I found in an old book from the 50th. This was the time when we thought nuclear energy would change the world. There they already mentioned things like heated sidewalks in the winter and inductive power supply for electric cars embedded in the roads. It’s funny that concepts like this keep coming back.
Cool idea, may work in home garages and heated parking lots here, otherwise the frost heaves will mess with anything not buried below 3.5 ft. so an 8 cm deep coil will not last more then one winter. total waste of everything. but that is what we get here in the snow belt.
Refueling (recharging) stops are an important safety feature. If your vehicle runs forever then some irresponsible drivers are going to pull terrifically long hours on the road without a break
It's not so bad for commercials, where a tacho is compulsory in most countries, but in a private car it would be inviting problems
It already is, at 3 am on staurdays on the German autobahns, there is always a queue because some tourist tried to "drive through the night" after a long day at work.
Especially around the popular skiing weekends, where everyone wants to go south to the alps.
Inverse square law - NEXT.
I'm surprised that the efficiency spread between wireless and direct wire charging is so narrow.
Careful, she said between 20%-50% of losses, so the gap in efficiency can be massive!
6:30 "...mining battery materials"
Which would pale in comparison to the amount of the extra COPPER (expensive!) being mined to create all of that inductive charging infrastructure. Inductive charging coils ARE NOT SMALL!
It'd be easier to just create the batteries.
edit: Honestly, they should be using aluminium coils. There's probably minimal issues with vibration (at least compared to copper in motors) & impacts, aluminium would probably be ok in this usage. You just need 3x as much volume, but whatever, it's still lighter-weight (tho probably not an issue in roads) and WAY cheaper & more available than Copper.
Just the wiring required to deliver power to the inductive chargers would already require a mile of copper per mile of road. This is already cost-prohibitive, without even getting into the materials going into the inductive chargers themselves. Or the fact that digging up every street to install the wiring is also prohibitively expensive, not even getting into the cost of the copper.
@@ab-tf5fl aluminum wire is used in most utility applications like power transmission. i doubt there would be much need for copper, maybe a small amount in the control electronics. i don't think the plan is feasible, but the problem isn't that copper is too expensive. i think easy(ish) grid connection is one of the more favorable aspects of the idea, since most roads already have transmission lines running alongside them, or somewhere nearby. it's rare that a road is going somewhere that doesn't also need power along the way. i reckon long, rural highways would be the exception.
A car park at more than 50% capacity with all cars charging (whether wired or wireless) would require its own substation.
I can’t imagine wiring roads - the state of Victoria can barely repair potholes.
And for mass freight - rail is under-utilised in Australia. A better rail network would be much simpler.
Well obviously they would not all be energised at the same time, there would have to be smart systems to prioritised based on certain criterea (in the same way many already do with wired charging). Actually car parks at supermarkets, malls and service areas are the most obvious place for this sort of technology since they are best suited to fairly slow charging as people will be there a while.
@@andyjdhurley That doesn’t really ring true though. In this scenario every parking spot must be capable of induction charging. What if the car park is 100% occupied and half of those cars are ‘scheduled’ for charging? The power demand for a typical suburban car park would be ‘huge’. If you’re going to limit charging capacity, at what degree of occupancy vs power demand do you make the threshold? It will be possible to install a limited number of induction charging points, as cable charging is limited today, but I can’t see widespread installations any time soon.
Rosie. A nanosecond to dismiss this thought bubble
Opportunity charging is the most practical to start with until the tech comes down in price
I have always wondered why EVs dont have a similar charging solution similar to how autonomous roomba vacuum cleaners dock and charge. It seems like something possible with current tech and cheaper and more efficient. Rosie, perhaps you could ask the right people?
Better than opportunity charging is to do what China is doing and that's swap a battery (like we do with cordless drill), fast too They have it down to 2 and a half minutes. in what looks like a car wash, drive in, have your battery swapped while you are still in the car, and carry on. The other great thing is you never have a battery die on you because all that is the responsibility of the charging stations. They own the battery, we lease it for a much lower cost than gasoline. China even have this service for scooter and motorcycle batteries
3:53 wow! So I can charge my EV by parking it on top of my induction hob?!?!?
😂😂😂
Depends how big your kitchen is.
I can not remember if Tesla allows a wireless charging kits to be installed on their vehicles and people they have been found out having them installed have been blocked from using their charging network and even having the battery and drivetrain warranty being denied
If true, that's good news. Wireless charging is so horribly wasteful.
Wireless charging is for a society that has no scarcity...we do not live in that world right now.
Given the fact that the range of EVs and electric semis is increasing every year with better batteries coming to the market, and that they are able to recharge pretty quickly as well, it seems like a huge waste of ressources for just sparing us the 15 minutes of recharge time we will need for every 3 hours of driving or so. I mean, don't you need to go to the bathroom after 3 hours of driving? Or just stretch out a little?
Better than charging ourselves and waiting ages, we should do what China is doing and that's swap a battery (like we do with cordless drill), fast too They have it down to 2 and a half minutes. in what looks like a car wash, drive in, have your battery swapped while you are still in the car, and carry on. The other great thing is you never have a battery die on you because all that is the responsibility of the charging stations. They own the battery, we lease it for a much lower cost than gasoline. China even have this service for scooter and motorcycle batteries
Actually it would be much safer if truckdrivers had to uphold the law about having a certain amount of rest. And the truck might as well charge at the same time.
Humans driving a truck 24/7 is just a bad idea on every level anyway.
@Rosie,
Put large solar arrays and batteries on the warehouses, and you eliminate the grid distribution issue.
Wireless is 30% less efficient. So, how many nuclear plants are needed for this waste heat generation?
That’s old technology. Today’s wireless EV charging systems are about 90 efficient, although manufacturers claim even higher. For home charging, I would not want to waste 10%, so would opt for plugging in my EV.
This high efficiency is only achieved with perfect (so automatic) alignment. Auto alignment means more complexity and how would you do that while driving.
but the alternative of hauling around giant batteries in every single EV is also inefficient. if you have wireless power on the roadway, you only need a smaller battery. which way is more wasteful?
@@joshieecs That's fine for highways and autopilot can keep vehicle aligned, but you'll need a larger battery when traveling off the highway on secondary streets without charging. Please don't expect 100% of streets dug up for charging.
@@joshieecs: Paving our roads with copper? I am pretty sure that is the most wasteful and unrealistic thing I have ever heard.
Pulling over and charging with 250kW is the solution that is already in the real world now.
We can't even afford to maintain the asphalt as it is, infusing it with copper will only make it much worse.
Where I could see this working is traffic lights.
You could look at how many cars usually wait at a traffic light and put inductive chargers for that length of road.
Also you would on average sit at traffic lights for a long enough period to make a meaning full charge during some commutes.
Naturally this would work best in the most congested parts of cities.
Unless the car is self-driving then the driver needs to take breaks either by law in the case of professional drivers, or because mother nature calls.
i think the idea is that, you could get by with a much smaller battery if the roads had wireless power. if you consider that savings across 100's of millions of future EV's as we electrify transport, a 50% or even 25% reduction in battery capacity would be a tremendous savings.
A wire is cheap, reliable and efficient. There is no question that wireless charging is here to stay but only for applications where the absence of a wire is crucial.
Loving how electromagnetic radiation is no longer a health concern.
I had an idea to do wireless charging by installing a maglev style coil system under the lanes of a motorway so when your on a long journey you would actually be charging while using the motorway.
Here in the UK they are forever digging up the road to repair/add/maintain utilities let alone surface repairs.
Hi Rosie, I was part of John Boys' team working on this in Auckland. It was an interesting and exciting technical field to be involved in.
Oh wow that's cool! Thanks for sharing that 😊 did you keep working on wireless charging after that or move on to something else?
@@EngineeringwithRosie After graduating under John and Grant, I moved on to a spin-off company doing wireless power for consumer devices in Auckland. And now I do something completely different because I went on an OE to the Netherlands 😊 I'm an avid watcher of your channel, I really enjoyed your hard-headed takes on wind turbine economics.
@@Ikbeneengeit sounds like an interesting career! How's living and working in the Netherlands?
Full battery daily is the best feature with automatic v2g.😊😊😊😊😊
Filling up your battery daily is not good for battery health.
It's better to only fill up before a long trip and then reduced the time the battery sits at 100%. Many intelligent charging solutions with wallboxes for homes can manage this.
@Kerbezena good comment
Fortunately battery technologies are evolving rapidly and this may not be an issue.
The future can be bright 🌞
80% maybe just fine on a daily basis
Patterns of use will give us more detail.
I would have prefered you to evaluate separately BEVs that only run on electricity, and hybrids, including PHEVs, that run on both electricity and gasoline. The latter eliminate the need for on the go charging, the range anxiety, the long charging times, the high prices, and the impracticality of BEVs. Most renters, etc., can't easily charge at home.
Mulitple analysies have shown that hybrids are a faster strategy for decarbonization because they are practical for everyone and the oil companies back them so they can get a soft landing for their industry rather than a crash of an all BEV fleet.
I charge my PHEV with no real effort, while I'm sleeping! The cable came with the car and it plugs into a regular wall socket. No compatibility issue. I get 80 MPG highway and climbing now that I've learned a few tricks. A 12.5 gallon fill-up can last me up to 6 months.
Dynamic charging systems are most unlikey to be a significant thing on roads due to the small displacement tolerance. Rosie said the induction 'antennas' are spaced about 2 metres apart. The graphs indicate that 50 mm displacement is the max for efficient induction charging. This means the charging is only effective for 100 mm as the vehicle goes over the coil. With the coils spread 2 metres apart, induction charging is only effective for 5% of the vehicle journey - thus it needs to be high power.
Other utilities have got in first and claimed virtually the entire underground space in our streets. When tram tracks were installed down George St, Sydney, the displacement of existing services cost around $500 million/kilometre. Motorways busy with autonomous vehicles are the only ones likely to see dynamic charging, as only autonomous vehicles can achieve the driving accuracy required.
Northern US roads are often potholled by freeze-thaw action on pavements. For dynamic charging, the induction coil container interface with the pavement is a weakness for iniating freeze-thaw action. Batteries are getting cheaper and stationary chearging faster - stationary induction charging will win the day.
I think for charging commercial vehicles, there's already stuff like trolly buses that works way better than wireless charging and already exists. And it's probably cheaper to set up and maintain the infrastructure for since it doesn't require tearing up the road. I just struggle to see a situation where wireless charging makes more sense than pantographs for commercial usage, and for personal vehicles, even if it might be a little annoying, being forced to stop for 20 or 30 minutes every couple of hours probably improved road safety, and electric cars have enough range now that it's only every 4 or 5 hours.
Wireless charging pads in parking lots for vehicle to grid are an interesting idea, but wireless charging pads are so expensive because of all the extra power electronics even compared to a regular EV charger that It seems unlikely to be worth the cost. Level 0 chargers (using the car's built-in inverter) would have enough power capacity at the scale of an entire parking lot and that's a small enough cable that it's no more annoying than paying at the parking meter if it's profitable enough to replace that.
Commercial vehicles already use pantographs which are much more efficient. There is no reason a parkinglot couldn't have overhead wires for that.
@@poulhenne The vehicle side of the pantograph can only be made so small at it isn't free, so putting them on consumer vehicles would be more expensive relative to the vehicle in a market that's more price sensitive and would cause more aerodynamic problems than for a larger vehicle.
The thing is lorry and bus drivers need to rest and move around a bit anyway so they might as well use a corded charger. That has less energy losses.
Definitely for starters a niche product. It's like the introduction of automotive automatic transmissions. My concern is efficiency and safety.
Good Vid Rosie. except for! Have you seen the road surface here in Straya? Potholes 3 months after resurfacing!
We don't have the talent needed to make/maintain/train the workforce needed for bitumen roads. where will we find talent to add copper to the mix. (rhetorical)
Newly subscribed. Have you done a topic on ongoing maintenance for the various forms of power generation I.e Nuclear, solar, wind, coal. The cradle to grave logistics, the technicians, spare parts, administration, disposal, training, test equipment.
spoke with 2 Wireless Charging manufacturers at ACT Expo in Vegas back in May. the technology exists and is already in use (unfortunately people don't realize they're "secretly addicted" to touching CCS and NACS handles). Wireless is also ADA compliant for people with handicaps and better supports V2G for those who might have an interest in future power sharing programs offered by their local utility.
I have a Kona EV without V2L. Any advice on getting that feature somehow? A DIY kit or a professional who could install it?
I live in western Europe.
The potential to never have to do anything, or even have to think about charging for your daily commute, (besides parking in the right place) could help win some people over. The cars could be made able to adjust the position, only requiring the drivers to park roughly in the right place.
Standardization is crucial for public systems, but also not difficult for stationary charging, phone manufacturers managed that. It's the same fundamental principle no matter who develops it, so it's mostly a matter of making the coils of a certain size range, and that's kind of dictated by the size of the vehicles anyway. It's not difficult or much more expensive to make systems with multiple coils to widen the compatibility either, wide compatibility can be built into either the chargers or vehicles, or both. So, not much more of an issue for inductive charging than it is for conductive charging, so the biggest issue with public inductive charging probably also be payment systems, and not the charging technology.
I don't see much future for dynamic charging, neither inductive or conductive. We have used pantographs for a very long time, and even that still has a lot of issues, even in dedicated systems with one or a few commercial operators. And using pantographs is probably the most practical way to transfer grid power to a vehicle in motion. If anything, I think it's time to look at the possibility to add batteries to trains, to eliminate reliance on continuous power from pantographs.
Wireless charging would be a big deal for fleets of self-driving taxis. I could imagine vehicles like Zoox or Heathrow Airport terminal 5 parking pods which, in the future when serving a city, would have to park somewhere in off-peak time just to get out of the way. Adding opportunity charging pads on busy, popular stops would greatly extend the range or, better yet, allow vehicles to use smaller, lighter batteries. BTW, those parking spaces for off-peak parking would cost nothing as they would be the same parking places for cars already existing with one great advantage, you don't have to provide random access to any of the vehicles. They could just queue one after the other since they are all the same, first-in/first out, and get charged while queuing. Perhaps you have seen the video of the parking garage full of Waymo vehicles that were keeping the neighbors up all night with their beeping. I wonder, why do they bother parking like regular cars? Just make a queue, no maneuvering, no nothing. Perhaps, make two queues, just in case one car gets stuck and blocks one of the queues.
Wireless charging used to run me the wrong way once I heard about it being less efficient than wired charging. I figured if you can get so much better use of our power (especially at such a massive scale), then why not take a few seconds to plug it in? But when I think about it more these days, I think I may have been missing the forest for the trees.
Every consumer is different and values different things. Maybe for some people, charging being wireless is enough to tip the scales in favor of them ditching their ICE vehicle for an EV. That would be a huge benefit to the world. So maybe the few % we lose by charging it wirelessly is negligible compared to the benefit of them switching to an EV in the first place. We can worry about improving efficiency later.
In software development, we also have this concept come up - microoptimizations. We sometimes get so focused on the things we know could be better that we underestimate the impact that just getting a project done in the first place would have.
Inverse square law still exists. But of course there will be customers who love wastefulness and gadgets.
Theoretically, the pads can be moved a bit via stepper motors for alignment. Would make the parking easier.
Just use the same alignment mechanism you see in every single mechanical car wash ever. A rail on the right side that guides the tyres and a red light that tells the driver to apply the brake. Also a 1950s design
I see a real safety problem here. People with certain medical devices, like pacemakers, defibrillators and insulin pumps, will have a problem. While a vehicle may act as a Faraday cage, a pedestrian or bicycle traveling over magnetic fields will be affected. In the worst case, it could kill them.
Whilst I agree it's probably a bad idea (at least on long stretches of road) the coils would obviously only energise when they detected (and identified for billing purposes) a suitable vehicle. But there is a risk such things could go wrong.
Paused you at 8:46; in the US our long distance, high and ultra high voltage transmission systems need a lot of work- both maintenance and upgrades just to really be up to now; a rapid change to EVs nationally of anything but regionally where electricity is plentiful and use high is about the limit of what the market will bear hear. Our domestic auto producer have failed miserably at building a medium sized car with high quality and good finish, and they don't look to be very enthusiastic about EVs, tbh. The situation here in Texas, which is not tied to either the East of Western grids is worse, as our politicians refused to sign on to the national standards that joining either of those grids would have required- we need more repair and refit to get caught up to today than either national grid. It isn't a few dollars, more like many billions of USD, and the utilities don't want to pay for it, the Texas government doesn't have any thought to pay it and we have no access to funds the other national grid operators do. Rosie, you are an engineer; you see the problem, but without a lot of money, no solution has a chance yet.
PS; although you mentioned Nikola Tesla, you didn't mention how big a rejection his wireless charging and transfer system brought about; simply put, there was and is no feasible way to charge for the product without some sort of meter as you would find on houses and businesses without a meter that the seller has control of and access to. ON billing, would the charges be for the electricity actually got into the battery or for the electricity that was spent to create the charge? How would slight misadjustments effect that charge equation? Who would carry the responsibility- over the last twenty years most states no longer directly inspect vehicles, instead "certified" mechanics do the test and write up the results, once a year when they have to have them. So, for this charge on the fly thing, most of the things about EVs that sold them- cheaper running costs, less maintenance and fewer headaches will now be their lot to make this second but necessary step happen. Me, I'm holding out for the transporters used in Star Trek- that seems a much better idea all around; step on, pay the toll and Bob's your uncle, you are there!
Everything about this video makes me think of the hype surrounding solar roads.
The cost of the necessary materials and maintenance prevents widespread deployment. Look at an example of how much a basic 30-50kW DC charger costs and the performance components you would need for each pad. You mentioned Hyundai's interest in this technology, but the car that would implement it as the first GV60 has been on the market for a few years but doesn't offer it.
Not sure how integrative the ASEAN is, but in the EU, they can say. Right, get your stuff together, Apple, Samsung etc. etc.: you got five years to have a single, interoperable charging cable. This will definitely happen with EV charging cables too. I can't imagine there being a company like Tesla, being able to install a charger network and only allow it to be used for their cars. Maybe ASEAN, needs to do the same type of thing. (and yeah, the phone and other small device charging cables being standardised, has made a big difference. Unfortunately, 'eaten bread is soon forgotten' and people have forgotten how sh*tty it was that when you got a new device, you needed to carry that cable around too, and as for borrowing someone at work's cable - forget it. BTW, it wasn't just different brands, but every model had it's own unique cable.)
I'm a fan, but not sure if it would work on highways. Then maybe a power line on top would be better to charge big trucks. They don't need to be dug up with roadworks.
Excellent job thank you
Great Vid. Yeap parked vehicles either giving or receiving sounds great. Wish you could talk a bit about hydrogen fuel cells more and big vehicles.
I expect a combination for charging, wireless makes lot of sense everywhere vehicles normally park. Wireful charging also makes a lot of sense everywhere vehicles normally park. The issue is the cable, doing without cable may be a safety feature as well as a convenience. Also, it's difficult to steal wireless charging pad, I suspect, not so much with a cable.
On a someone related note, I thought about how amazing it would be if wireless inductive charging technology could work for large cargo and tank ships.
I'm not an engineer, but I'm curious to know if this is technologically possible given all this talk about wireless in-road power transfer, wireless charging, and wirelessly beaming power from space to earth. Together with all this talk of strange and seemingly silly proposals like global super grids in Europe, the US, Australia, Asia, and even globally.
With insane projects like the Xlinks Morocco-UK Power Project, as well as the Australia-Asia Power Link, it's not inconceivable for such high-capacity power cables to be laid between Australia and New Zealand, Australia and Asia, Canada, Greenland, and Europe.
This would be really interesting since it would lead to the decarbonization of global shipping, it would lead to smaller batteries on ships, thus reducing weight and the global commodity price for battery materials.
Since these cables would be cris-crossing the ocean, new sources of power like offshore geothermal, ocean thermal energy conversion, deep-water offshore wind, marine current energy, wave energy, and deep-water compressed air energy storage could all be plugged into these power cables. And these power cables don't specifically need to be limited to just providing power to ships. They could provide power for onshore applications, and for ocean-based carbon capture (since seawater holds 149 times more CO2 by volume compared to the air.
Also, given the massive energy needs for desalination, for hydrogen production, and for data centres, power cables like these would be really valuable.
If you read this, I'd love to hear from you about what you think given the Xlinks and Australia-Asia cable projects.
This sounds and looks good but I think the laws of physics will be a issue and that would be before the cost of building new roads or upgrading current roads but this does have its place as bus stops, stands and bus stations. Like wise with lorries in the loading and unloading dock/yard and maybe on hills
If a major road (highway) can be electrified, it would go a long way to creating a market for lighter cars with lower range. A 100 mile range would suddenly be enough to get cross country. People who stay very local can just use the regular charging they have now. Charged roadways would go a long way to making the range issue obsolete.
I'd love it in my garage!
That's the dumbest place to put it (not that other places are much better). In your garage, you only need to take the cable, open the charge port door, and plug in. You don't need to worry about payment or any other part of the initialization of the charging process like at public chargers. Not having to handle the cable is not worth at least three times the electricity use.
@@Kerbezena if those numbers are to be believed (and I doubt they should be) it would be way less than 2 times.
@@Kerbezena Some people are disabled, so manouvering to the charger, grabbing the plug, moving to the chargeport and plugging in might be almost impossible dude. So it's not so fcking dumb for some.
This would probably pay for itself at bus stops.
If charging can occur during driving that would have enormous advantages. There would need to be a standard on every continent. Clearly the concern about efficiency of charging while moving needs to be addressed.
When you dig up Sydney and put this in then I'll believe it.
I’m pretty sure that Tesla EVs are available in Australia, so why doesn’t Rosie drive one, or at least show Teslas connecting to Superchargers? No trouble getting them to work, no trouble finding one, no range anxiety.
It seems you are not from Australia. Superchargers are few & far between and almost non-existent if you the coastal strip.
Under roads? This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. Do you know how incredibly expensive that would be?
This is more of a pipe dream. The current standard, SAE J2954 is not being adapted by any manufacturers that I'm aware of. While it sounds good to charge wirelessly, you have to get pretty close. So why go through the extra expense if you can just plug the charger in? Also, to be able to charge while the vehicle is moving? Forget about it.
We already have this technology in the United Kingdom, we call it trains.
Until we have super abundant renewable energy, we can't afford the inefficiency of wireless charging except for some niche opportunity charging
Good idea for big parkings but normal Fast chargers may better for the moment
Thanks for the video. I cannot see how its reshaping anything; a cable can do the same. The most difference will be to people with a handicap that makes it hard to handle cables. Dynamic charging is unrealistic to roll out and maintain. For long haul trucks i still think battery swap is realistic.
I love the idea of this, not sure of the losses, I know my phone gets pretty hot on wireless charger.
My Father has a pacemaker,
He had to change out his induction cooktop for another type as he is not allowed to be within 2 meters while it is in operation, he cooks a lot, so not feasible.
How would this work crossing the wireless street.
Can we just complete what we need before we start on what we want?
I sure haven't seen any of those taxies in Gothenburg.
I think streets are already expensive enough.
Battery swapping is way easier to implement, and better - the high-cost part of the vehicle, the battery, is owned and maintained by specialist companies. Lower up-front cost, lower depreciation, lower repair costs, lower insurance cost, more grid manageability. But it's still impossible to do from where we are now, Just like wireless charging roads.
You could avoid driving up the road by running an overhead wire, ... And solve the alignment problem by running the trucks on metal tracks
And then you could string many trucks together so they take up less space and only need one driver... wait... hmm.
Considering how much of Australia's road network is currently dirt, I think the best the dynamic system could economically manage would be the east coast Brisbane to Melbourne corridor. That would be a huge achievement. But also it would take about as long as the installation of the dual carriageway took! By the time a project like that got about 25% done, the technology could be expected to change!
With such a long term project, trying to get subsequent *generations* of opposing politicians and business heads to agree on continuing the roll-out would be "interesting". Just look at how such an obviously beneficial project as the NBN became a political football.
My dream for long-distance travel tends to be more modest - install opportunity and wire chargers in all rest stops, for cars, motorbikes, and trucks. As a secondary benefit, this encourages drivers to rest more often. Using wireless chargers for these opportunity installations would reduce the problem I foresee with the idea - vandalism of this expensive hardware. In these rest stop bays the difficulty of alignment could be eased, or made automatic. It should go without saying that using solar power generating roofing over these stops, combined with co-located batteries, would greatly ease the power delivery issue.
State of the art wireless charging should not be conflated with inductive charging. It's more accurately magnetic resonance charging. Also, there is at least one standard: SAE J2954
Most governments have a difficulty with the cost of repairing and maintaining basic road infrastructure as is, this approach adds complexity and cost for what gain?
Criminals will actually start to dig up roads to get to the cables to sell etc.
Add in the growing negative impact of climate change and we have to be careful that the systems and technologies we invest in are not going to simply add to the financial burden from extreme weather events.
Specifically why is this approach better than building out a robust dedicated charging network at associated cost?
Imagine we lived in a world of wireless charging only. I'm proposing a mind-blowing technology that TRIPLES the efficiency of charging your car in one swoop: PLUG IN A BLOODY CABLE!
I'd go one step further and do what China is doing and thats swap a battery (like we do with cordless drill), fast too They have it down to 2 and a half minutes. in what looks like a car wash, drive in, have your battery swapped while you are still in the car, and carry on.
@@brobinson8614: But when your car can charge at 250kW, there is no need for batteryswap anymore.
So stoked on the potential of this combined with a tony-seba-super-power situation. I'm convinced it is a big part of the path to net-zero. We musn't let AI steal our super-power!
Since the success of the Telsa EV, I thought various stationary, and even from sun-powered orbitals*, lasers will soon always* recharge EVs everywhere*. I'm usually spot-on with making such predictions, but... maybe not this time.
If battery voltage was considerably higher the cables could be considerably smaller. 400VDC? 800VDC? No! 4000VDC! Ten times the voltage of a typical modern EV would mean the DC charging cables could be nearly 1/10 the size.
If battery prices continue to fall with shift to sodium ion then upgrade of Road Systems may not be cost effective.? Charging areas in Cities would be very useful for EV taxis & Vans and Buses!
Not every meter of road has to be electrified. In hilly or mountainous roads only the surface that is climbing needs this. The vehicle will charge going downhill using gravity.
It would make sense to put wireless charging on major freeways like the Hume. If a truck can pick up 100kw, that's another 50-100km added. so if charges are placed 100km apart(that's 8)and then at all road stops . That's no more smelly diesel 😊😊😊
In Europe lorry drivers have to take a 45 minute break after working 4 1/2 hrs, with adequate charging infrastructure thi would be enough to top up enough for the rest of the day so there's no need for wirless charging for them. I do see a use for busses and taxis and possibly light urban rail that stop at a designated spot regularly, wirless charging could enable the use of a smaller battery leading to a more efficient vehicle. For dynamic charging of long distance heavy goods vehicles the best charging method is sections of overhead catenary like the Tesla Giga Train which runs of batteries whilst on the Tesla branch line but switches seamlessly to overhead catenary for traction and chrging whilst on the main line. Electromagneric radiation is no problem because your effectively sitting in a Faraday cage whilst the wirless charger is outside the car. The field is focussed on the point where the receiver coil is positioned anyway so very little radiation outside that area.
Do you follow Tobias Wagner, the "Electric Trucker" (on his channel of the same name)?
@@Kerbezena Yes, he gives the real world experience of a professional trucker.
Weird, you don't mention THE #1 advantage of wireless: Automating the charging process for autonomous vehicles without manual plug manipulation (see Tesla Cybercab). Also no misalignment problems here, max efficiency, low maintenance. This (besides personal garages) will drive rapid adoption.
Stationary wireless charging at bus stops, taxi queues, parking lots, etc. makes sense: plenty of time to align magnetic cores for best efficiency and likely necessary for the long-term viability of ubiquitous L2-charging as eliminating exposed cables also eliminates opportunistic cable theft.
Mobile/dynamic wireless charging is far less efficient and requires a ton of more complex infrastructure to deliver a given amount of energy. I seriously doubt this has any chance of achieving economic viability.
Having high-voltage power lines next to the highway doesn't make highway charging any easier since you need substations to take the 135+kV from those pylons down to the 9.6-25kV for the local step-down transformers that spit out the 480-600V required by the equipment.
I think wireless charging for consumer vehicles will become a thing, but it will be primary/entirely stationary charging and about small conveniences, rather than a big revolution. For example, in a home charging situation, going wireless eliminates cable clutter, as well as the risk of forgetting to plug your car in at night. In a public charging situation, I think wireless charging will be about a combination of convenience for lazy people and accessibility to the disabled. I could even see ADA someday outright requiring that every large charging site have wireless chargers, purely for accessibility reasons.
I also see wireless charging as making sense for robotaxis. Paying humans to plug and unplug cables is expensive, and a solution that involves robots plugging and unplugging the charging cable feels more convoluted and expensive than the wireless charging alternative. Plus, since robotaxis are, by definition, computed controlled, it is easy to make them park perfectly optimally to charge at the best efficiency. I can even see parking lots where robotaxis wait for rides being equipped with slow-speed in-motion charging so that vehicles can move around the lot to allow other vehicles to get in or out without having to interrupt their charge.
One place I definitely do *not* expect to see wireless charging take off, though, is on roads or highways. The cost per mile is too expensive, and the benefits relatively minor, considering that conventional charging is getting faster and faster, and that most cars driving on a stretch of road will be charging at home, and won't need charging away from home, period, except when on an occasional long-distance trip. Even buses, I'd need to see some data showing it to be cheaper than alternatives such as conventional chargers at route ends or overhead wire/pantographs, as I suspect many transit agencies are being sold snake oil that they may come to regret in a few years. If we ever see in-motion charging of consumer vehicles, the most likely place for it would be drive-thru lanes at fast-food restaurants,