5 ms·

Electricity Transmitted to Auto Tire Through 10cm-thick Concrete

30 points by iProject 14y ago

ldar15 14y ago
"through" or "around"
CGamesPlay 14y ago
Wireless power transmission seems like a great idea, but it can't be billed by usage, and kills everyone who has a pacemaker.
- jakeonthemove 14y ago
  It'll get there soon enough :-)
- pliny 14y ago
  Is there a reason why you can't legislate that every electric car that can use ubiquitous wireless charging be fitted with a meter that reports usage, just like house have?
jakeonthemove 14y ago
I just can't help but think that Nikola Tesla was right - he had the same idea (and possibly the means to do it) a full century ago... We'd also be driving electric cars today if not for the oil and auto industries (read up on how they buried the electric transportation in its infancy)...
- rheide 14y ago
  citation needed
  - jakeonthemove 14y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car%3F http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car%3F http://books.google.be/books?id=MyZo7EhN8-MC&pg=PA58&dq=Sloan+1922+general+motors+streetcar&hl=en&ei=ZG1DTuvXFMPrmAX0_cmvCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Sloan%201922%20general%20motors%20streetcar&f=false http://books.google.be/books?id=MyZo7EhN8-MC&pg=PA58&#38... http://earlyelectric.com/carcompanies.html http://earlyelectric.com/carcompanies.html http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/06/henry-ford-thomas-edison-ev/ http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/06/henry-ford-thomas-ediso... Granted, it was cheaper to go with oil-powered cars because of the incentives, but in the long run, we would've been better off with electric. Oh well, more opportunities for innovative business today :-)
    - slug 14y ago
      I think you missed the part where battery technology one century ago wasn't as advanced as it is today.
      - rhizome 14y ago
        Copper was much cheaper, though!
        BystanderX 14y ago
        Not to mention demand and continued production drives research and improvement, so it would have been self reinforcing.
- jerf 14y ago
  Electric cars are barely practical with all the 21st century technology we can muster, and still come with some fairly enormous asterisks. I don't think over a century would have gone by without anybody noticing that the internal combustion engine was a great deal more practical. To the extent the oil industry buried the electric car, it was wasted effort. It would have buried itself.
westbywest 14y ago
"To put the technology into practical use, the electric power needs to be increased by 100 times. But the group said that the parts needed for it are relatively cheap and that there is no major problem." I have to admit some skepticism about this claim. 2-3 orders of magnitude increase in output power delivered may very well expose non-trivial problems. I.e. making the effort of scaling this technology up more than just linear.
- ams6110 14y ago
  Not to mention the need to rip up and replace all the road surfaces. At least partially.
  - ChuckMcM 14y ago
    They seem to do that every other year in bad weather areas :-)
adaml_623 14y ago
Article says they need 50W * 100 = 5KW. That's reasonable as that's roughly the amount of energy you need to keep a car moving at road speed. And with a quoted ffficiency of 80-90% this is equivalent to 10-20% being lost probably as HEAT into the roadway. So that means we are turning our roads into long low power electric hotplates. Okay perhaps it's not that extreme and possibly less waste heat than an IC engine. Maybe the idea isn't so crazy in a densely populated city.
- tocomment 14y ago
  That would be great to melt snow and ice though.
- excuse-me 14y ago
  If it uses inductive technology then the current doesn't flow unless the tire is 'receiving' so it loses energy - but only when a car is running over it, not 24x7
- Androsynth 14y ago
  But combustion engines operate somewhere around 50% efficiency? (i dont remember exactly, but I remember it being pretty bad). So the 10-20% lost through the road and the (presumably) small amount lost through electric, battery-less cars may actually be less overall than from combustion engines. I am assuming that electric engines dont generate much heat if they dont have batteries and assuming that roads dont have the power on unless theres a car nearby.
- xxpor 14y ago
  But we already have a much better solution for densely populated cities: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleybus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleybus
tcbawo 14y ago
It seems to me that the obvious application here would be wireless charging parking spaces, not electric roads.

30 points by iProject 14y ago

"through" or "around"

Wireless power transmission seems like a great idea, but it can't be billed by usage, and kills everyone who has a pacemaker.

jakeonthemove 14y ago
It'll get there soon enough :-)
pliny 14y ago
Is there a reason why you can't legislate that every electric car that can use ubiquitous wireless charging be fitted with a meter that reports usage, just like house have?

jakeonthemove 14y ago

I just can't help but think that Nikola Tesla was right - he had the same idea (and possibly the means to do it) a full century ago... We'd also be driving electric cars today if not for the oil and auto industries (read up on how they buried the electric transportation in its infancy)...

rheide 14y ago
citation needed
- jakeonthemove 14y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car%3F http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car%3F http://books.google.be/books?id=MyZo7EhN8-MC&pg=PA58&dq=Sloan+1922+general+motors+streetcar&hl=en&ei=ZG1DTuvXFMPrmAX0_cmvCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Sloan%201922%20general%20motors%20streetcar&f=false http://books.google.be/books?id=MyZo7EhN8-MC&pg=PA58&#38... http://earlyelectric.com/carcompanies.html http://earlyelectric.com/carcompanies.html http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/06/henry-ford-thomas-edison-ev/ http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/06/henry-ford-thomas-ediso... Granted, it was cheaper to go with oil-powered cars because of the incentives, but in the long run, we would've been better off with electric. Oh well, more opportunities for innovative business today :-)
  - slug 14y ago
    I think you missed the part where battery technology one century ago wasn't as advanced as it is today.
    - rhizome 14y ago
      Copper was much cheaper, though!
      - BystanderX 14y ago
        Not to mention demand and continued production drives research and improvement, so it would have been self reinforcing.
jerf 14y ago
Electric cars are barely practical with all the 21st century technology we can muster, and still come with some fairly enormous asterisks. I don't think over a century would have gone by without anybody noticing that the internal combustion engine was a great deal more practical. To the extent the oil industry buried the electric car, it was wasted effort. It would have buried itself.

westbywest 14y ago

"To put the technology into practical use, the electric power needs to be increased by 100 times. But the group said that the parts needed for it are relatively cheap and that there is no major problem." I have to admit some skepticism about this claim. 2-3 orders of magnitude increase in output power delivered may very well expose non-trivial problems. I.e. making the effort of scaling this technology up more than just linear.

ams6110 14y ago
Not to mention the need to rip up and replace all the road surfaces. At least partially.
- ChuckMcM 14y ago
  They seem to do that every other year in bad weather areas :-)

adaml_623 14y ago

Article says they need 50W * 100 = 5KW. That's reasonable as that's roughly the amount of energy you need to keep a car moving at road speed. And with a quoted ffficiency of 80-90% this is equivalent to 10-20% being lost probably as HEAT into the roadway. So that means we are turning our roads into long low power electric hotplates. Okay perhaps it's not that extreme and possibly less waste heat than an IC engine. Maybe the idea isn't so crazy in a densely populated city.

tocomment 14y ago
That would be great to melt snow and ice though.
excuse-me 14y ago
If it uses inductive technology then the current doesn't flow unless the tire is 'receiving' so it loses energy - but only when a car is running over it, not 24x7
Androsynth 14y ago
But combustion engines operate somewhere around 50% efficiency? (i dont remember exactly, but I remember it being pretty bad). So the 10-20% lost through the road and the (presumably) small amount lost through electric, battery-less cars may actually be less overall than from combustion engines. I am assuming that electric engines dont generate much heat if they dont have batteries and assuming that roads dont have the power on unless theres a car nearby.
xxpor 14y ago
But we already have a much better solution for densely populated cities: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleybus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleybus

tcbawo 14y ago

It seems to me that the obvious application here would be wireless charging parking spaces, not electric roads.