One of the biggest hurdles to EV adoption is the fear of running out of battery before it reaches its destination. Roads that can charge your car while you drive could be the solution, and they could get closer.
The range of electric vehicles has grown steadily in recent years thanks to the rapid development of battery technology. But most of them are still far from gasoline-powered cars in this regard, and take longer to refuel if they run dry.
One solution that has been discussed for years is to introduce some sort of on-the-road charging technology so that the car can charge the battery while driving. Most plans charge your smartphone using the same technology as the wireless chargers you can buy.
Upgrading thousands of miles of highways with high-tech charging equipment is no joke, but progress has been slow so far. But recent events suggest the idea could catch on and move closer to a commercial reality.
Last month, the Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) announced a partnership with Purdue University and Germany’s Magment to test whether cement containing magnetized particles could provide an affordable road charging solution.
Most wireless vehicle charging technologies are based on a process called inductive charging, in which applying electricity to a coil creates a magnetic field that can induce current in any other coils nearby. Charging coils are installed under the road at regular intervals, and cars are equipped with pick-up coils that receive the charge.
But laying thousands of miles of copper wire under a road is obviously quite expensive. Magment’s solution is to incorporate recycled ferrite particles into standard concrete, which are also capable of generating a magnetic field, but at a much lower cost. The company claims that its product can achieve transmission efficiency of up to 95 percent and can be built at “standard road building installation costs.”
It will be some time before the technology is actually installed on real roads. The Indiana project included two rounds of lab testing and a quarter mile trial run prior to installation on the highway. But if the cost savings turn out to be real, this approach could be a game-changer.
Several electric road testbeds are already underway and Sweden seems to be leading the way so far. In 2018, an electric railway was laid in the middle of a 1.9 km stretch of road outside Stockholm. It can transmit power to the vehicle through a movable arm attached to its base. An inductive charging system built by Israeli company ElectReon has been successfully used to charge a mile-long all-electric truck on the island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea.
These systems are not cheap. The cost of the first project is estimated at about 1 million euros per kilometer ($1.9 million per mile), while the total cost of the second test project is about $12.5 million. But given that building a mile of conventional roads already costs millions, it may not be a smart investment, at least for new roads.
Automakers seem to be backing the idea, with German auto giant Volkswagen leading a consortium to integrate ElectReon charging technology into electric vehicles as part of a pilot project.
Another option would be to leave the road itself untouched, but run charging cables over the road that would charge the trucks, as the city trams are powered. Created by German engineering giant Siemens, the system has been installed about three miles of road outside of Frankfurt, where several transport companies are testing it.
Installing the system isn’t cheap either, at around $5 million a mile, but the German government thinks it could still be cheaper than switching to trucks powered by hydrogen fuel cells or batteries big enough to cover the long run. to the New York Times. Time is the transportation of goods. The country’s transport ministry is currently comparing the three approaches before deciding which one to support.
Even if it were economically viable, deploying on-road charging infrastructure would be a huge undertaking, and it could be decades before every highway can charge your car. But if technology continues to improve, one day empty cans may become a thing of the past.
Post time: Dec-20-2022