Detroit is installing charging coils under one mile of of one lane of a street in the city so people with electric cars can charge them as they drive. This is a crazy idea that I suspect has no future.
To start with, the city is spending $1.9 million to install the charging coils. As the above video notes, installing them throughout the city would cost billions.
Second, wireless charging is less efficient than wired charging, and it rapidly loses efficiency if the item being charged isn’t perfectly positioned on the charger. Since vehicles tend to weave around within a lane, it will never be very efficient.
Third, while the story notes that the chargers won’t do anything for (or to) petroleum-powered vehicles, it fails to note that it also won’t do anything for electric vehicles unless they have a charging receiver installed underneath the car able to collect energy from the chargers. Most electric vehicles today don’t have such receivers. They can cost $3,000 to $4,000 if ordered with a new vehicle, and probably more if installed later.
The roadway charging system is being installed by an Israeli company called Electreon, whose web site doesn’t seem to provide any specifications for its system.
How does it compare with level 1, 2, and 3 chargers? Level 1 requires more hours of charging than the car can drive on the charge; level 2 requires roughly as many hours of charging as the car can drive; level three can allow 2 or 3 hours of driving for every hour of charging.
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To be worthwhile, an electric street would have to be at least equal to level 2. But even level 2 won’t recharge the battery so much as keep the battery at whatever charge it had when it started driving over the electric road. To truly recharge the vehicle would require level 3, which I suspect would cost a lot more than the Electreon system.
Once Detroit has installed the charging coils, electric vehicle owners will have to get a subscription from Electreon to use the charging system, just as they may already have subscriptions to use stationary chargers from companies such as ChargePoint and EVgo. But this becomes a chicken-and-egg problem: few are going to get such subscriptions from Electreon, especially if they don’t already have charging receivers installed in their vehicles, until there are enough miles of electric roads to actually charge their vehicles on a daily basis. No one is going to install those miles unless they already have a subscription base to pay for them.
Electreon hopes that the government will install the miles. The recent infrastructure bill allocated $7.5 billion to electric vehicle charging stations. If all of that were allocated to electric roads instead, it would be enough to install around 4,000 lane-miles of roads, or about 0.05 percent of all lane-miles in the country. Of course, if Electreon’s chargers are equal to level 3 chargers, they wouldn’t need to be installed in all roads — only a third to half of them, which at $1.9 million a mile would cost at least $5.5 trillion.
One of my basic mobility principles is that new transportation technologies will only succeed if they can use existing infrastructure. Systems like pod cars and hyperloop can’t work because the cost of installing enough infrastructure to make them go enough places to attract business away from existing systems is too great. Self-driving cars can work because they can use existing roadway infrastructure. For that matter, the earliest automobiles worked because the United States already had 2 million miles of roads when they were developed.
Electric vehicles require new charging infrastructure, but they might work because early adapters are willing to drive in areas where they can find chargers and in the long run battery and charging technology might improve so that charging doesn’t take much longer than filling a gas tank. But installing charging coils in enough miles of road to make mobile charging a reality does not seem feasible.
If battery ranges were acceptable, we’d only have to charge once every 3-4 days…
Electric cars ain’t proliferating anytime soon. As had been shown repeatedly, this is just a drop in the bucket. The growth of ICE cars around the world is going to outstrip EV manufacturing capability for years to come. Once subsidies become too high for taxpayers to accept, EV sales will crash. EV cars measure just 0.167% of global auto fleet, One out of every 600 cars, Auto industry Spent Tens/billions outfitting factories to make cars that only saturate 1% of all new auto sales. Environmentalists whine it takes 30,000 lbs (15 tons) of raw material to make a 3000 lb car. It takes Over 4000+ tons of rock/ore to make ONE EV car, ICE engines made with iron/aluminum come from melting down cans and scrap. EV’s require fresh resources of cobalt, lithium, copper, etc. You have to start an industrial revolution over again but instead of coal/iron; you’re now digging up HALF the periodic table all of which is dug, mined, processed, manufactured, and shipped using fossil fuels. Under the guise of technology which is supposedly gonna “Rid us” of fossil fuels. Driving is only a small portion of a cars energy embodiment/life cycle, there’s heavy energy investment in the beginning and late stages of it’s life, namely manufacturing and recycling.
-EV’s manufactured in 2020: Few hundred thousand
-Global production of motor vehicles: 78 MILLION
-EV auto fleet: 7.2 Million (took 15 years)
-Global motor vehicle fleet: 1.4 Billion cars, not including moped, scooters, motorcycles.
“Electric vehicles require new charging infrastructure, but they might work because early adapters are willing to drive in areas where they can find chargers and in the long run battery and charging technology might improve so that charging doesn’t take much longer than filling a gas tank. But installing charging coils in enough miles of road to make mobile charging a reality does not seem feasible.”
This might be the first time I agree with you Randal, but I am critical of cars in general as being the future.
Why?
Why people drive?
(1) They want to go to places.
(2) They want to transport stuff.
Many trends will make (1) and (2) increasingly irrelevant.
(a) The digital world with remote work and online shopping will make driving and transporting stuff less relevant.
(b) People increasingly get rid of personal property. They increasingly rent homes. Renters don’t need to transport much stuff, especially not apartment renters. People don’t want to waste their time on having to make buying choices, being responsible for property like cars, for its maintenance and care. They want a service. In other words, they want bike sharing, e-scooter sharing and they want transit. The times when people associated ownership with freedom and wealth are over. We are living in times of abundance, even during an economic depression people are better off than ever before and don’t even know where to spend their money on. People are moving away from consumption lifestyle to a lifestyle that focusses on the important things in life. Ownership is no longer important. It is important the services provide the things they want when they want them.
In other words, they want bike sharing, e-scooter sharing and they want transit. ”
If that’s the case show me statistic evidence of
-e-scooter
-bike purchases
or transit RIDERSHIP
“Want” and “Will” are different things
(1) Sharing programs: https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/17/shared-electric-scooter-rides-accounted-for-45-8-percent-of-all-micromobility-trips-in-2018/?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAFXR6UmkD1c7MJlo9OvX1f-cibQgxZICTvmMdw1PgfSIuNRoV5Q-T2N9JbzvgNf1mc9TPq6XswLcLk9TAK57MeH5LKA27ZtyWGPtAGfzaLpsvGVYnP6rfLUfkKqYdpRGx7i7IfwjTlfl46n2LhAqGcgUXxhZoV755DdE7MTLhmxD
(2) The global mass transit revolution: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-20/the-global-mass-transit-revolution
Both of those links were from before Covid. Since, transit has crashed.
Detroit is installing charging coils under one mile of of one lane of a street in the city so people with electric cars can charge them as they drive.
At 30 mph a car would spend two minutes over the coils. A “Typical mid-power DC charging station” takes 22 minutes to add 100 km of range to a “Tesla Model S Long Range per EPA”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charging_station
Smell test? FAIL!
This post is about a specific charging technology.
UTISOC, rather than comment on charging technology writes about, “Why people drive”, “Sharing Programs” and “The Global Mass Transit Revolution.”
Many would call these comments, “Off Topic.”
It’s paid to disrupt or suffers from a mental disorder. Ignoring is the best tactic.
What about bumper cars…….electric car tech that’s been around for 100 years……..
”
One of my basic mobility principles is that new transportation technologies will only succeed if they can use existing infrastructure.
” ~anti-planner
There’s an idea in the biz world that there are something like 3 or 5 categories. And if your product requires that someone change more than 1 of those categories, it will fail.
The anti-car crowd constantly claim that it’s only subsidies on why cars caught on. What they refuse to see is that, like they are, people act on feelings. Having a point to point service is always going to __feel___ faster and better.
Note that this isn’t about total trip time being anyfaster, the mechanics make it feel faster. How it feels is what matters.
There’s a body of work demonstrating in study after study when people stand around doing nothing, time moves slower. Often times a few minutes will feel like 10 or 20 to the person waiting. Again, it may not be that much slower but transit with all it’s standing around waiting for the bus or train makes it _feel_ slow.
And this is something to think about for EVs. Why does Tesla put games on it’s cars screen? To help the 47 minutes you sat at the charging station behind the Double Tree feel like it was just fine.
Likewise, the issue for charging isn’t if you can charge but how often you charge. Everytime you have to stop for that it’s going to feel a lot slower.
The issue to solve for EVs isn’t # of charging stations That will solve itself once ( or really, IF ) the frequency of charges is lowered.
Ted wrote correctly, “It’s paid to disrupt or suffers from a mental disorder. Ignoring is the best tactic.”
An exercise in futility I agree but I can always use the exercise.
This a a great example of a government using a new technology without thinking how it should be used.
Assuming the technology worked, it would make much more sense to install it under the surface of large parking garage where people would park cars for a period of time while shopping or working. Rather than charging for a minute or two while driving over a road, the cars can be charged for much longer periods while the cars sit there doing nothing.
A mile of road 8 feet wide is approximately an acre. An acre of parking spaces could charge many cars at once while saving a great deal of the cost of installation. Digging up a roadway is more time intensive and expensive than blocking off a portion of a parking lot while installing the cables.
And you can charge people for parking there, thus getting income to install even more charging cables. THIS COULD ACTUALLY WORK WITH A LOT LESS MONEY–IF THE TECHNOLOGY IS FOR REAL.
Just in case no one notice, the global mass transit revolution already happened 130 years ago. In the more recent revolution aka the pandemic, transit lost.
John1000,
The problem with putting inductive charging systems in parking lots is that wired charging systems cost less and are more efficient, so why bother to install charging coils under the ground?
Hoverboard
Investments in infrastructure make economic sense if…….
-it’s used very frequently by a massive group of people.
-users contribute a significant portion of its cost of upkeep.
Technology trends don’t belong in infrastructure decisions….no one can anticipate predict what technological trends will/might potentially usurp it.
USB and HDMI replaced virtually all port access the point they’re now in TVs…instead of the myriad of video game ports now obsolete. If electric cars evolve…and their energy flow needs outmoded it’s charging infrastructure….then what.
The Antiplanner:
That’s the question. How efficient is inductive battery car charging, both stationary and moving? Efficiency must be taken into account in addition to the capital costs of digging holes at a greenfield sight or ripping up existing pavement and digging holes at a brownfield site.
Certainly copper conductors plugged directly into battery cars is more efficient. My inductive charged electric toothbrush works just fine but probably puts out 50mA. 100 amps is a whole ‘nuther level.
I was impressed with the expert in the video. He was noncommittal about the viability of the technology ever being implemented on a large scale and refused to fall into the Yurope is way more advanced bait so fashionable among today’s US leftists. The ditzy newsreader in contrast was entertaining in her cheer-leading cluelessness.
CapitalistRoader wrote, “Certainly copper conductors plugged directly into battery cars is more efficient.”
And preferred.
There was a time when attendants put gasoline into customers’ tanks so they wouldn’t be exposed to the sun or get their hands dirty or something. No more.
It’s not a pit-stop at Le Mans. A little stretch is often welcome.
UTISOC idea of micromobility isn’t a farfetched concept. EV scooters… and hybrid bikes… with electric ranges if 25 miles and top speeds pushing 30 mph….. there’s nowhere you can’t go with a 10 mile radius in half an hour or a mile every 5 minutes. What he forgets is micromobility is modular and eats into old school 19th century transit model further accelerating its obsolescence….
Modular, cellular, individualistic transportation is virtually superior to antiquated Monolithic transit.
LazyReader wrote, ” … with electric ranges if 25 miles and top speeds pushing 30 mph….. there’s nowhere you can’t go with a 10 mile radius in half an hour or a mile every 5 minutes.”
The downside is, “Bicycle trips account for only 1% of all trips in the United States. However, bicyclists face a higher risk of crash related injury and deaths than occupants in motor vehicles … In 2015 in the United States, over 1,000 bicyclists died and there were almost 467,000 bicycle-related injuries … Data from 2010 show fatal and non-fatal crash-related injuries to bicyclists resulted in lifetime medical costs and productivity losses of $10 billion.”
https://www.cdc.gov/transportationsafety/bicycle/index.html
Two wheeled vehicles, powered or not, are more dangerous to their operators than are automobiles. They are unusable in snow, impractical in rain and … have neither air conditioning for hot weather nor heat for cold.
I appreciate the responses to my comment.
I was not promoting the use of this technology, just saying that if it is going to be used, use it in a manner that will save money, and actually help people–rather than using tax dollars to play with the newest “in” thing.
If it worked (A BIG IF), being able to charge a large number of cars at once might be a lot better than having a few cars sit at charging stations for hours–while everybody else waits.
And now for something (almost) completely different …
Volvo will start testing wireless charging with XC40 taxis
The charging stations come from American company Momentum Dynamics. They’re embedded into the pavement of the Volvos’ parking spaces and begin charging automatically when parked correctly (which is aided by the on-board surround-view camera). The charging speed is 40-kW, which is close to the maximum charging speed of many electric cars’ on-board chargers when connected to a DC station. Interestingly, Momentum Dynamics lists systems capable of charging speeds as high as 450 kW on its website.
https://www.autoblog.com/2022/03/03/volvo-wireless-charging-xc40-recharge-gothenburg-taxis/
A real company with real money and a real plan.