3 ms·
Even on highways, you wouldn't need this to be on 100% of the roads to be useful. You could have, say, a mile of charging rails for every ten miles of road and
by elihu 9y ago
Even on highways, you wouldn't need this to be on 100% of the roads to be useful. You could have, say, a mile of charging rails for every ten miles of road and on lanes that go uphill.
I guess the limit comes down to how much power the rails can produce and how fast the vehicles can charge. If a vehicle can charge at N times the rate they use that energy at highway speeds, then it needs to have at least 1/N of the road populated with charging rails.
If this becomes a widely adopted standard, maybe car manufacturers will look into using a low-capacity battery that can accept high current as a buffer. (Maybe a supercapacitor?)
- notatoad 9y agoYou can get by with significantly less than 1/N I think. The goal doesn't need to be infinite travel distances, just enough to get to the next destination. Personally, I'm unlikely to drive more than 1000km in a day. Any more than that, and I need to rest for longer than it takes a car to charge. If electric rails are placed in the road frequently enough to extend the range of an electric car from 400km to 1000km, they've suddenly made electric more practical than gasoline for long distance travel.
- dmd 9y agoThat assumes personal cars, which is one of the things that autonomous cars is likely to change; ideally cars will be in use almost all the time, not sitting idle.