Wireless, On-Road Electric Car Charging Patent Could be a Game Changer

[La Huerita]

Check this out!

A German supplier of electronics and powertrain design to most of the major automakers for the last 25 years has just secured a patent that could be a game changer for electric vehicle adoption. Their technology would allow electric vehicles to be charged as they drive over any road embedded with a recessed wireless recharging strip, using electromagnetic induction.

Ingenieurgesellschaft Auto und Verkehr (IAV) says the technology will be available commercially within 3 years, is insensitive to weather conditions, and is not susceptible to mechanical wear.

As Wilfried Nitschke from IAV says, “The road is then the range extender.”

More at http://gas2.org/2009/10/07/wireless-on-road-electric-car-charging-patent-could-be-a-game-changer/

Of course this is all way down the road (no pun intended) and would depend on the highways getting the technology installed, etc., but this is what innovation is all about. I wonder what other new technologies are out there already or being developed that will help change the way we do things (like the Industrial Revolution did) in the future?

Change comes hard to people, doesn't it? (Rhetorical question)

 

[Roberto]

There has always been a lot of speculation about the effects of electromagnetic energy on living things. Sometimes good, sometimes bad. I wonder about that.

 

[La Huerita]

That's definitely worth investigating. I wonder if it would depend on the type of electromagnetic energy, on the wavelength and frequency? Like gamma rays are very high energy and bad for us, but visible light, with longer wavelength and less energy, not so much?

But electromagnetic induction is nothing new to science. I think it was Faraday who "discovered" it? It underlies the operation of all electric motors, transformers, solenoids and most other electrical stuff that I can't think of right now. I certainly don't know enough about this new patent to make any kind of informed opinion about it.

 

[Stuart]

Quote Dr. Evil - "All I want is a frickin' shark with laser beams, is that too much to ask?"

I think all roads should be mini-magnalevs. We could just zoom up and down the highway without wheels! Although I will have been dirt napping a long time before then, it would so cool to have insight into the next century and see if the Jetsons become reality.

 

[Seadweller]

that electromagnetic induction stuff messes with the steel plate in my head...