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Wireless charging of moving electric vehicles overcomes major hurdle
- rihegher 9y agoThis technology coupled with solar panel covered highways could mean that your vehicule would just need enough to get to or leave the highway.
- adekok 9y agoCovering roadways with glass solar panels is a terrible idea. Asphalt is durable and flexible. It's OK with getting bits of gravel, glass, or steel ground into it. Solar panels deal badly with such abuse. Putting solar panels flat on the ground loses 30% of their potential power. Even ignoring all of that, covering solar panels with cars is a terrible idea.
- phreeza 9y agoI think rihegher was maybe suggesting to put the solar panels above the road?
- rihegher 9y agoNo i was thinking about http://www.wattwaybycolas.com/ http://www.wattwaybycolas.com/
- pdelbarba 9y agoOh god... Not another one of these... There is literally no reason to put solar panels on road surfaces. Go on google maps and look at the surface areas of roads (that are not in a buildings shadow most of the day) compared to rooftops or empty space.
- rihegher 9y agoI see one reason,the fact that if you put solar panel in a place where the energy will get consume directly or within a short period then you don't need to take care of storage and transport for it.
- pdelbarba 9y agoThen place them next to the roadway so they can operate efficiently? I don't understand the gimmick here. Again, it's a blender that plays MP3s, a carefully crafted web of buzzwords. Why does everyone want this so badly?
- rihegher 9y agoAgain I think it is to reduce cost, you just need to add a layer on an area that is already taken care of (snow removed during winter, object and dust removed by cars and maintenance team).
- pdelbarba 9y agoSnow can be removed from rotating solar arrays by simply turning them sideways at sunrise, perfectly clearing them as the sun warms them up. If you're really enterprising you can turn them upside down at night. Can't say the same for the roads anywhere I've lived. Also, those dull grey cement highways used to be gleaming white when they were poured but alas, car tires are black and turn everything they touch black as well.
- oddlyaromatic 9y agoBut you would put just any old solar panels on a road: See what is happening at http://www.solarroadways.com/ http://www.solarroadways.com/ - it addresses at least some of the issues you mention.
- robert_foss 9y agoThe cost is just to high compared to commercial solar farms[1]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obS6TUVSZds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obS6TUVSZds
- maneesh 9y agoThat's what they said about solar energy in general 10 years ago.
- pdelbarba 9y agoThis isn't a technology problem though. It's a stupid problem. Compare this to building a blender that plays MP3s. Why would you not just cheaply mount the solar panels next to the road? You can still do all the gimmicks with the LEDs and stuff without having to spend time and money making a high traction, durable road surface that doubles as a solar panel. There's nothing to be gained.
- gravypod 9y agoYou could also just mount the panels above the road and block the sun out of people's eyes while they drive. Less sun hitting people also means less people need to run the AC on the road. If you don't mount flat you can then do tracking too. Like you say. Mounting flat is probably the worst way to go from a utility and return standpoint.
- gravypod 9y agoIt's still true. Solar Power in most of the USA is too expensive unless you factor in government subsidies that has been added to accommodate externalities caused by burning fossil fuels. The technology currently is not cheaper to manufacture then coal/natural gas for most of the USA mainly due to the high investment cost and high maintenance cost of panels. These panels don't last forever and you can expect to replace them once every few (5-10) years. For commercial installs you also need to install rotors which have their own failures and maintenance costs associated with them. To have solar win against fossils you need an area that is sunny and very dry. You also need very very cheap land. Watt/square meter of land fossils will win in most places within the US.
- nappy 9y agoI'm surprised by how often (and by how many people!) someone suggests roads should be covered with solar panels... Asphalt is very different than glass...
- agumonkey 9y agoGlass is changing too, Corning has flexible and durable glass in lab (enough to make cute videos on youtube). I'm not for or against, just that coke bottle glass is not the only way
- bluGill 9y agoFlexible is actually a negative on the roadway though: it increases rolling resistance. You want something very hard that will not shatter. Cement works very well (asphalt is okay)
- gorkonsine 9y agoThere's another way: put solar panels above the road. Especially for big, wide highways, there's a lot of area that's basically not used for anything except cars and trucks to drive over. Cover these with solar panels and now that land isn't just used for transportation, but also a lot of energy generation. On top of that, the cars underneath will be shaded from the Sun, which can be really useful in sunny climates, and would help people use less A/C in their cars, thus saving energy. The two problems I see with this idea are people complaining about the "view" (which is why it shouldn't be done on some really nice scenic part of a road, but in the middle of an ugly part of the city it should), and the possible problems with wind-loading, especially during storms, though surely this has been dealt with before, as there's a lot of places where they cover parking lots with elevated solar panels like this. For the view problem, they don't even have to cover the whole road with panels, they could just cover some lanes, put them in the median and extending over the inner lanes some, etc.
- jaclaz 9y ago>though surely this has been dealt with before, as there's a lot of places where they cover parking lots with elevated solar panels like this. As a side note, you have to consider how in parking lots it is rare to have cars and trucks passing under the panels at 70 Mph, and more generally accidents are usually very low speed. Besides the "normal" resistance to wind, if you want to build a sort of half-pipe covering a highway you need to consider the pressure induced from the inside by high-speed moving objects and the possibility to resist accidents (preventing an 18 wheeler from completely crash a - say - 100 m section of the half-pipe in case of an accident needs a rather sturdy structure). So, more or less it would be needed to build an artificial tunnel (concrete, rather thick) similar to a "snow shed": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_shed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_shed http://wsdotblog.blogspot.it/2014/03/the-i-90-snowshed-retires-after-64-years.html http://wsdotblog.blogspot.it/2014/03/the-i-90-snowshed-retir... The "lighter" metal/lattice ones are only used usually for railways.
- SomeCollegeBro 9y ago> Besides the "normal" resistance to wind, if you want to build a sort of half-pipe covering a highway you need to consider the pressure induced from the inside by high-speed moving objects and the possibility to resist accidents (preventing an 18 wheeler from completely crash a - say - 100 m section of the half-pipe in case of an accident needs a rather sturdy structure). I mean, aren't these issues already basically solved? I frequently drive through miles-long tunnels under Boston at 70mph.
- ccozan 9y agoThe car and the road are actually parts of a giant dynamo, I guess. Like the car having a coil and under the road a giant magnet, thus generating current in the coil. Nice idea.
- parametrek 9y agoNot practical though. Every time someone has done the math for a fully scaled up system (assuming magic technology that doesn't exist) it always has the same answer: Unless the power transfer system is nearly 100% efficient, using it on a typical highway results in the the highway turning into a molten puddle in less than a day. If you want to run the numbers yourself a Tesla uses 300 watt-hours per mile on the highway. California route 60 sees 337000 cars per day and is 70 miles long. And an amazing power transfer system might be 75% efficient.
- Klathmon 9y agoI think it might still be useful even if it's not enough to "increase" the charge of the car. Prolonging the driving distance by 50%+ on some highways would still be really beneficial. Taking the thought to the extreme, it could also be used as a kind of traffic shaping/control system. Have some roads "energised" at specific times to provide an incentive to go a longer way to alleviate chokes or traffic jams. That gives many people an incentive to take a longer path (whereas current systems/methods for this are kind of driver-hostile as the drivers going the longer route don't get any direct benefit)
- mikepurvis 9y agoThe issue isn't the efficiency from the car's perspective—it's what happens to the other 25% of the energy that doesn't go into the car. Hence the molten puddle road comment.
- organsnyder 9y agoAll the more reason to only run it at certain times of the day. Enable it at night, when electricity is cheaper, heat generation is less of an issue, and there's less congestion.
- jlebrech 9y agowe could fit mini furnaces on top of cars, and put gimballed laser towers on the motorway.
- mastermindxs 9y agowhy not just have cars with rear blast shields and we'll have gimballed grenade launchers on the road side.
- Gravityloss 9y agoMicrowaves. Remember to put the wire meshes to your windows before entering the powered section...
- blimpsAndLasers 9y agoUnmanned blimps and lasers could do it. In a far out, sci-fi kind of world, huge solar powered blimps hover in fixed traffic patterns, collecting more solar power than they use, and relay fractional amounts of collected surplus energy down to parasite vehicles, that assume a formation for refueling laser targeting, within the blimps flight pattern. The cars accept the laser energy in a beam collector, for energy conversion, netting a bonus as recharge, and then resume independent travel as their intended destination requires. Predictive consumption graphs can estimate optimal routes, for different charge requirements before leaving, optimizing for fastest time, best blimp paths, least energy consumption, traffic congestion avoidance or whatever.
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- abyssin 9y agoThe more I read about electric autonomous vehicles, the more I feel like we are about to re-create the train technology.
- surfmike 9y agoExcept autonomous vehicles are point-to-point, which makes them way more convenient!
- abyssin 9y agoGood point, but this is true only if your definition of convenience doesn't include the speed and cost of the transport infrastructure as a whole.
- kazinator 9y agoHow so? Trains are not all autonomous. Autonomous trains are greatly simplified due to traveling on rails. All trains are inconvenient due to being bound to the railway. They don't solve the last mile (or five) problem: getting to and from the station. Rail-based navigation is considerably simpler than autonomous driving. The problem is reduced to "how far am I along the track" and "if there is something in my way, it's trespassing on the railway, so make a best effort to detect the obstacle and stop, and beyond that, who cares".
- abyssin 9y agoAlthough most trains are not autonomous, there are currently many more people being transported by autonomous trains than by autonomous cars, and it has been so for several years (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automated_urban_metro_subway_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automated_urban_metro_...). I see what your point is regarding the convenience of using a car. What could be more convenient than leaving your house, getting in your car, then being dropped at your destination? But this doesn't take into account the cost of the entire infrastructure needed to make it work flawlessly. On the other hand, the train goes faster, and benefits from economies of scale. A tightly knit network of trains would beat a transport system made of autonomous cars.
- martinmusio7 9y agoI don't understand why the industry is completely focusing on electrical vehicles. It is not inherently clean energy, unless we change how we produce it. What about the fuel cells driven cars? In my opinion it is still a valid option. You refuel hydrogen and produce water at the end. Writing this, I recognized that it is probably short-/middle-term money, because electrical cars are quicker to develop (incl. infrastructure).
- bluehawk 9y agoHow do you think the hydrogen is produced? Currently it's either a product of petroleum or produced by using electricity to split water. So your argument of electricity not inherently being clean energy applies to hydrogen as well. Assuming you use electricity to split water to power your fuel cell, you've basically just made an even more complicated way to use electricity to power your car. So at that point, just simplify it and just use a battery and a motor.
- thinkcontext 9y agoSmall nit to pick, its produced more from steam reformation of methane: "There are four main sources for the commercial production of hydrogen: natural gas, oil, coal, and electrolysis; which account for 48%, 30% 18% and 4% of the world’s hydrogen production respectively." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_production
- SunSparc 9y agoWhether or not the energy is "clean" now should not keep us from working toward advancements in this area. We all know that we want "clean" energy, and many people are headed that direction, but this is a massive object to redirect and it will take time. Be patient and keep encouraging the production and use of clean energy. It will happen. :)
- scottLobster 9y agoPerhaps not inherently clean, but even in the worst case they're wildly more efficient than their standard ICE cousins, worst case scenario you're getting an equivalent of 36 mpg, best case scenario 112 mpg. A power plant of any variety is many times more efficient than your car engine. http://www.ucsusa.org/clean-vehicles/electric-vehicles/emissions-and-charging-costs-electric-cars#.WVUx_I9FyUk http://www.ucsusa.org/clean-vehicles/electric-vehicles/emiss... Given that power grids everywhere are turning more towards renewable energy, this efficiency will only grow. The cleaner the grid, the cleaner the stuff that runs on the grid. As for Hydrogen, lack of infrastructure is a major issue, on the production side as well as distribution. Producing hydrogen from natural gas produces CO2, producing it from water is slow and requires electricity, once again you're tied to the grid. There are further issues, found a good list of them here: https://cleantechnica.com/2016/06/10/hydrogen-fuel-cell-cars-not-competitive-hydrogen-fuel-cell-expert/ https://cleantechnica.com/2016/06/10/hydrogen-fuel-cell-cars...
- samlittlewood 9y agoSo, should these lanes be painted like the recharge areas in F-Zero?
- n2dasun 9y agoI wonder why I don't see more about electric hub motors. I remember seeing Protean Electric get 937 hybrid miles to a charge in 2006 on a converted Mini Cooper (http://www.autoblog.com/2006/07/21/pml-s-mini-qed-boasts-640-in-wheel-electric-horsepower/ http://www.autoblog.com/2006/07/21/pml-s-mini-qed-boasts-640...), and they later showed that you can use this on a pickup truck (http://inhabitat.com/protean-demonstrates-that-its-electric-motors-can-drive-an-f150-from-the-wheels/protean-in-wheel-electric-motor http://inhabitat.com/protean-demonstrates-that-its-electric-...), and they were supposed to bring this technology to mass market in 2014 (https://cleantechnica.com/2013/04/17/proteans-in-wheel-electric-motors-coming-to-market-in-2014/ https://cleantechnica.com/2013/04/17/proteans-in-wheel-elect...), but I haven't really heard anything from them.
- rtkwe 9y agoIt moves a lot of mass out the the end of the suspension system that comes with a lot of problems for handling. Also with the motor on the hub all of the shocks directly hit the electric motors where they don't in a normal car setup with motors and drive shafts and the bearings in the motor have to directly bear the weight of the vehicle.
- jasonwatkinspdx 9y agoBecause in hub motors are generally a bad idea. The more weight you shift to the unsprung portion of the suspension, the worse handling, ride quality over rough surfaces, and energy economy gets. Even worse, the geometry of an efficient induction motor is a cylinder, and you can add torque by lengthening the cylinder. With an in hub motor you need either axial flux or to bond in permanent magnets, both of which complicate manufacturing. On the other hand, a universal joint and a drive shaft are about as straightforward and reliable as it gets. You can still have a motor per wheel and size is not as restricted. Long story short: in hub motors don't make sense unless you're very space constrained, like on an e-bike. You can build a good enough demo to get press. Once the vehicles are out there as a product for a couple years the flaws will be clear.
- AustinStone 9y agolooks like cool stuff. too bad I didn't read the article and don't have anything intelligent to say
- Animats 9y agoThis has been proposed before. GE had an old patent for a split-transformer system with half the transformer in the road. In the 1980s, CalTrans had an electric bus in Berkeley which recharged at each stop using half a transformer buried in the road. It's easier to do today, because power control semiconductors are much better. It needs a lot of infrastructure in roads. That's really expensive and a huge maintenance headache. The wireless power people need to get to a standard charging pad that Just Works, and get it widely deployed.
- civilitty 9y ago> It needs a lot of infrastructure in roads. That's really expensive and a huge maintenance headache. Is it any more expensive or more of a headache than all the externalities, costs, and dangers of the alternative? At this point in time, societies all massively subsidize the fossil fuel industry at great cost to everyone but it's so spread out its hidden from view. I'm curious, if there is ever a realignment of costs from society at large to the oil companies, would the wireless charging roads look far more viable?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]