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Inductive charging highway section to be built in Florida
- thesuperbigfrog 3y ago'“When you can charge while driving, range anxiety and frequent charging stops will be a thing of the past,” says ENRX CEO Bjørn Eldar Petersen. “Our unparalleled expertise in induction technology allows us to deliver charging at 200 kW even at high speeds. No one else has the technology to offer anything similar.” Further, he explains how this would change requirements for electric vehicle construction: “Dynamic charging can reduce the need for large battery capacities, allowing cars to be equipped with lighter and more affordable battery packs.”' If this technology is as good as stated, it could be a game changer for EVs. How much energy would a section of inductive-charging road require? What kind of capacity limits does it have? If one EV is following another EV, it the second EV's charging decreased?
- p1mrx 3y agoA typical car needs 20 kW to maintain highway speed, so 200 kW charging gives you perpetual motion using 10% of the road length. Similarly, that's 400kW for 5% of the road, or 2MW for 1% of the road.
- Panzer04 3y agoI would think the biggest limitations would be: - Cost of placing under the highway (mitigated by only doing so on full reconstruction/maintenance works) - Cost of materials (massive induction coils, over a very large distance to get meaningfull charging.... - Cost of electricity (Induction would be much less efficient than direct charging - rather than 100%, you'll get a fraction of that (heavily dependent on the distance from the body to the roadway - good luck Electric F150s..) Roads are designed to be as cheap as possible while fulfilling their purpose. It's difficult to imagine you could cost-effectively spread that charging infrastructure out. It would be more expensive than pantograph electric lines, which would be much more efficient at actually transferring energy. EVs are still only a few percent of all cars, so this infrastructure would be unused most of the time. Cars with inductive chargers underneath will be even less common, and people willing to pay the premium to use them less common again. This seems like a pipe dream like solar roadways, sounds good but beaten out by the normal, sensible solution of just charging at stationary car park where cars spend 95% of their time. Batteries are only getting cheaper as well, which hurts the business case too.
- bobthepanda 3y agoAlso cost of maintenance. In much of the US they can barely keep the paint lines clear and the pavement un-potholed, and now we want to put electric infrastructure into the mix?
- AlexandrB 3y agoIndeed. This idea seems ridiculous on its face when you consider the state of existing road infrastructure. The only way it could work is if it made maintenance cheaper or was a driver of significant revenue.
- imtringued 3y agoSpeaking of revenue, this type of infrastructure would require tolls to pay for the energy consumption.
- vuln 3y agoSounds like you’ve never driven in Florida. Florida has some of the best roads, markings and reflectors that would rival any southern state. The lack of snow does wonders.
- bobthepanda 3y agoI would imagine that subjecting a bunch of electrical equipment to saltwater storm surge would also be pretty bad.
- vuln 3y agoIf you look at a map of Florida you’ll see that Orlando is pretty much near the center of the state rendering a _saltwater storm surge_ a very very very very rare event. But hey keep assuming things about Florida. Your imagination is wild.
- CyberDildonics 3y agoIf this technology is as good as stated, it could be a game changer for EVs. That's basically saying "big if true". Inductive charging is barely fast enough to charge a phone laying directly on top of the charger in a reasonable amount of time, do you honestly think electric roads that inductively charge fleets of EVs are going to be ubiquitous?
- Dylan16807 3y ago> Inductive charging is barely fast enough to charge a phone laying directly on top of the charger in a reasonable amount of time A phone uses 1-2 watts under active use, and models designed for fast wireless charging can receive more than 10 watts. It's fine. Even slow wireless charging can fill up a phone pretty well and can easily keep a phone running indefinitely. And the underside of a car is about five thousand times as big as the charging coil on a phone.
- AlexandrB 3y ago> And the underside of a car is about five thousand times as big as the charging coil on a phone. Now compare the distance between a phone and charging pad to the distance between the bottom of a car and the wires that are going to be buried under concrete. And forget about listening to Spotify while driving on these roads, the massive EMI those electromagnets will produce is going to take your reception to 0 bars.
- Dylan16807 3y agoIs it the distance that matters, or the ratio between distance and coil width? Because the latter comes across pretty favorably.
- imtringued 3y agoAccording to the napkin math of other commenters, you would need a charging strip every 15 miles. This is not sustainable at all. Build rail instead.
- ravetcofx 3y agoI'm sorry but this sounds stupid energy wasteful and expensive for something that should be a maglev bullet train, which would also have a much higher throughput of passengers per hour. Inductive charging will always have a huge amount of energy waste overhead.
- ketzo 3y agoWell, devil’s advocate — if this does work, it would be extremely useful in a lot of places that monorails are not.
- oceanplexian 3y agoFlorida recently completed a high speed rail project (The same cannot he said for CA HSR). It’s no bullet train but pretty comparable to Acela. Everyone throwing shade on FL might be surprised that they are actually ahead of the game on a lot of infrastructure.
- chrisco255 3y agoStill doesn't change the fact that highway driving and automobile based transportation is not going anywhere. High speed rail won't ever replace cars. It's a nice supplemental form of transport, and works fine for point to point transport between major hubs, but it doesn't work at a distributed scale.
- justrealist 3y agoI think that's kind of the point. * CA talks a lot about replacing cars, and accomplishes nothing. * FL makes no pretense about being primarily a based car-culture, but successfully implements mass transit where it makes sense
- CyberDildonics 3y agoThis sounds like startup snake oil. How is this ever going to make sense financially?
- intrasight 3y agoIt'll be funded by the next IRA - Induction Recharging Act ;)
- wincy 3y agoUnless Florida isn’t telling us something, and is about to become the Imperial Kingdom of DeSantis and funnel all the world’s resources into Florida, I think this will come to fruition around the same time the Saudis finish construction of Neom.
- Aperocky 3y agoSmell like Nikolas and Theranos. Both seem to be technically possible, but on closer inspection it turns out they weren't, at least not today. Since not even a lab explanation is offered, it smells incredibly similar.
- rippercushions 3y agoInductive highway charging is entirely feasible and there have been various experiments around the world for years now. The main issue is how to fund outfitting cars to make use of it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_road https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_road
- woodruffw 3y agoExperiments are evidence of feasibility studies, not feasibility itself. From the article, the main deployments of induction in roadbeds have been a small pilot program[1] in South Korea and an unrealized plan in Sweden. The South Korean deployment has apparently (partially?) shut down since. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_electric_vehicle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_electric_vehicle
- rippercushions 3y agoThe Swedish plan is very much being realized, they've been testing since 2012 and they're building out the first permanent segment by 2027. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_Transport_Administration_electric_road_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_Transport_Administrati... The challenge is not the technology itself, but funding, standards, scaling it out etc etc.
- woodruffw 3y agoGiven that it doesn't exist yet (and that the only comparable example was partially decommissioned), I don't think we're in a position to claim that the technology is ready. We've barely had the "easy" wireless charging scenario (small, stationary devices, low power draws) for a decade; it isn't even remotely clear that vehicles sizes and speeds, clearances, road conditions, etc. have received adequate consideration yet.
- syntaxing 3y agoThere is nothing today that can overcome the LAW (not theory) of 1/r^2. Can you wirelessly charge a car? Yes. Should you? No. Even Tesla (the scientist and I guess the car company since they went with the weird snake arm route) could not over this limitation.
- whatshisface 3y agoNothing except for being near a plane of charge, which has a constant field strength near itself. The field of a charged wire falls off as 1/r.
- bandyaboot 3y agoSolar Roadways!
- haileys 3y agoAssuming perfect efficiency and that people are doing the speed limit, 1 mile of 200kw charging at 70 mph gives you a grand total of 2.8 kWh of juice. Of course, there will be losses in power transfer, and nobody in the US actually does the speed limit, so in reality the actual amount of charge you'll be able to pick up off this thing will be significantly less than that. What a complete boondoggle. Embarrassing for everyone involved.
- throwaway22032 3y agoThis is obviously hilariously cost inefficient and a bad idea for other reasons, but it's unclear to me why you think that 2.8kWh in a mile is a bad result here. Most EVs use something like 0.2-0.4kWh/mile. So in fact even at 10% efficiency you could drive forever if this stuff was scaled out.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- oh_sigh 3y agoI think the problem is that it is massively expensive compared to asking car drivers to stop for 15 minutes every 200 miles.
- r00fus 3y agoThis is't 2.8kWh per mile. There's only 1 mile being built. So you maybe get 2kW for driving that stretch - assuming you have the inductive capabilities in your car. Does any car support this yet? A nice theoretical boondoggle when we could be building out rail or funding deployment of actual charging stations.
- throwaway22032 3y agoI totally agree. Just raising the fact that 2.8kWh/mile if actually true works fine.
- flangola7 3y ago
- Etrnl_President 3y ago[dead]
- natch 3y agoThis is solving a non-problem. We can drive from the bay area to LA with one stop for charging, 9 minutes. Hardly enough time to grab a bite and use the restroom. Non-problem.
- bombcar 3y agoAnd if that's too much of a hassle, develop front bumpers with large power contact pads that you literally press up against when parking - or put the inductive charger in the parking spaces instead of all the roads.
- natch 3y agoNot a hassle, lift the cord, press the button, stick the cord in the hole, done. Parking space idea sounds nice, as does all vaporware. As long as I can back in.
- bombcar 3y agoI suspect much of the "EV hassle" arguments would disappear very quickly if people were just given one for a few weeks.
- porkbeer 3y agoMy use case is specific, but a week with an e-car just taught me that I need to wait another decade for them to either mature, both as cars and an ecosystem, or be replaced by the next great thing, likely a hybrid approach.
- natch 3y agoIt could have been a bad EV, or it could have been user error, or you could truly live in a location or have a situation where they are not viable yet. Not ruling out the third, to be sure.
- natch 3y ago
- remote_phone 3y agoSounds reminiscent of the highway that would be made of solar panels that everyone thought was an amazing idea that never ended up happening.
- web3-is-a-scam 3y agoWake me up when the technogly can do sustained driving in a Canadian winter conditions.
- HFguy 3y agoWhy would winter conditions impact inductive charging?
- sbradford26 3y agoI have major issues with inductive charging in the road but truly in a snowy area the waste heat from it would automatically clear the roads which in a place like Florida has no use for but in Canada it would be great.
- porkbeer 3y agoYeah, massive energy waste is great. /s
- jwlake 3y agoI think just tanker chargers and wires would be more effective, like in-flight refueling. Also way more sci fi.
- bombcar 3y agoThink of it - renewable power is effectively "free" so even if giant Tesla coil lightning bolts arcing across the roadway lose half the energy they contain, using them to recharge capacitors in cars would look damn cool and therefore is obviously the correct solution.
- bcatanzaro 3y agoWe can't even keep normal roads free of potholes, how would we ever maintain electrified highways. Also the waste inherent to inductive charging would eat in to the carbon emissions benefits we're hoping to get from electric cars pretty significantly.
- hoosieree 3y agoOn the upside, with all that energy going into heating the asphalt, Florida can finally start to reduce their snowplow fleet.
- Thetawaves 3y agoWat Florida has snowplows? (is that the joke?)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- polishdude20 3y agoWhat if we did this only at stop lights? Like, have a small section of maybe 3-4 car lengths made. Whenever you stop, you charge a bit. Not sure if that would help much though.
- bilsbie 3y agoMaybe this is a good time to ask this. Can inductive charging go through glass?
- George83728 3y agoYes of course it can, but if this question is a setup for inductive solar roadways I'm going to scream.
- George83728 3y agoDumbest idea I've heard since "Solar Roadways". Which makes me wonder, why are sci-fi fantasy road surfaces such a midwit magnet?
- imtringued 3y agoBecause asphalt is a proven material. Don't ask why but I had a fantasy of building a road in a developing country and your best options are dirt, sealed gravel and asphalt. Everything else is not cost effective at all.
- Havoc 3y agoDoes this scale? Thinking of wireless phone charging - it's noticably inferior to the classic wire connection. Especially with roads & cars that need a decent bit of clearance
- Kye 3y agoThis feels like an idea that barely made sense before widespread charging and long-running batteries that makes no sense now. How much of a charge could you realistically get at highway speeds on a ~1 mile stretch of road? Would it even out-do a solar panel placed on the dashboard while you're parked at either end of a trip? Now, inductive charging at parking lots might make sense. That could resolve a lot of the issues that are starting to crop up with charging stations that look a lot like gas pumps.
- mikewarot 3y ago"The United States can always be relied upon to do the right thing — having first exhausted all possible alternatives." -- Unknown Here we will expend a bit of money to find out why it is (or isn't) possible to actually recharge untracked vehicles on the fly (inductively/wirelessly). I look forward to seeing what is learned from this effort. [Edit - add detail]
- ta1243 3y ago> why it is (or isn't) possible to actually recharge vehicles on the fly. We have those vehicles now. I'm travelling on a vehicle right now which draws it's power from an overhead wire.
- imtringued 3y agoYou don't need a mile to test this.
- mikewarot 3y agoYou need long enough that you reach steady state at speed, the choice of a mile is a bit arbitrary, but seems reasonable in that regard. You also need to test your power distribution strategy, and cut over between sections, etc... those require a longer run, and again, a reasonable choice.
- wittenbunk 3y ago-Churchill
- mikewarot 3y agoThere's no proof of that...., I looked before I posted because I thought it was him too https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/11/11/exhaust-alternatives/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/11/11/exhaust-alternative...
- lgleason 3y ago....and which cars actually support this vaporware?
- bin_bash 3y agoeveryone is complaining about this but I'm just really impressed that it's realistic to expect 200kw from inductive charging on a highway! That's cool! I don't care if it's practical.
- 6510 3y agoI thought about this for a while but towing cables (tho high maintenance) are so much simpler. Have some wind propellers and/or solar by the side of the road with very little conversion and transport. Hook up any vehicle. It works when it works, when it doesn't it isn't a big deal. If someone hits the breaks everyone slows down. Make it big for trucks, small for few vehicles or even smaller for bicycles, roller skates, soap boxes, robot taxi's, etc walking dogs, making sure employees arrive at work on time. and so on
- m463 3y agoThinking about this: - I'll bet inductive charging is bad for emi and pacemakers - most private electric vehicles will go 300+ miles on a charge, charging doesn't matter to them. - this might be ok-ish for long-haul trucks, but I'll bet solar panels might work there too (53' x 8' ~ 7kw for solar panels in full sun)
- DropPanda 3y agoA heavy truck uses in the order of magnitude of 100 kW of continuous power for propulsion at highway speeds. Solar panels on the truck can extend range by around 10%, but increase weight, capital and maintenance cost. When trucks are parked, it’s often dark outside.
- m463 3y agohmmm.. I checked the numbers and you are right. telsa semi says is less than 2kwh per mile, so 2kw*hr/mi * 65 mi/hr -> 130kw maybe solar panels on trailers would be good for refrigeration, even when parked/dropped, but yeah not too helpful for motive power.
- MagicMoonlight 3y agoCharging via roads is the stupidest idea ever.