US firms to develop wireless electric charging point

[jpak]

http://www.energysavingtrust.org.uk/Resources/Energy-saving-news/New-Technology-Innovation/US-firms-to-develop-wireless-electric-charging-point/(energysavingtrust)/792062

The electric vehicle (EV) market has taken one step closer to wireless charging as two firms in the US have formed a partnership to develop the technology.

Delphi Automotive and WiTricity Corp will work to create the wireless electric charging point, which could then be installed in all EVs of the future.

Using no plugs or charging cords, the infrastructure would see EVs park over an energy source on the garage floor or parking spot and automatically charge the battery.

Randy Sumner, director of global hybrid vehicle development at Delphi Packard Electrical/Electronic Architecture, commented: "This is groundbreaking technology that could enable automotive manufacturers to integrate wireless charging directly into the design of their hybrid and electric vehicles.

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[Posteritatis]

1. If that pans out, on a 1-10 scale it'll be about a (ridiculously great).5. (nt)

[Tunkamerica]

4. why is that?

they've already got the technology as a poster downthread mentions.

[tinrobot]

18. It takes me less than 10 seconds to plug my car in.

It's not that big of a deal. Induction is nice in that it's convenient and semi-automatic, but there are much bigger problems to solve in the area of EV technology - battery capacity, range, and charging times being the main ones.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

2. Magnetism, it's not just for

breakfast anymore....




http://www.thesurfaceofthesun.com/

[Lochloosa]

3. That's how I charged my Wii controllers now...

[gristy]

5. The manufacturer claims a 90% energy transfer efficiency.

I have 3 problems with this:

1. The cost of not plugging in raises your cost of fuel by 10%. That's the equivalent of 28 cents/gallon price premium for the luxury of not plugging in.

2. That 10% lost energy is going somewhere. Some of it is being lost to heat, and some of it is radiating into the air. Into your home, your business, and your body. People don't like radiation, regardless of the frequency.

3. The efficiency claims are almost certainly and without question overblown by a startup (Evatran) that has a few patents.

http://www.goodcleantech.com/2010/07/evatran_previews_cordless_elec.php

[TheWraith]

13. I'll agree with number three, but 1 and 2 are horseshit.

Yes, your costs rise by 10 percent, but comparing it to the price of gas is nonsense. You're talking about adding 10% to the raw cost of electricity, which is vastly cheaper than fueling something with, say, gas. As in a third of the cost.

Current battery chargers are a LOT less than 90% efficient, more like 50-70%. You don't hear anyone griping about plugging in their laptop when it gets low.

Two, the lost wattage from an inductive charger is microscopic compared to the "radiation" you absorb every single day by walking outdoors in the morning. Calling it radiation to be scary is ridiculous.

[tinrobot]

17. Do you even know how battery chargers work?

Current battery chargers are a LOT less than 90% efficient, more like 50-70%.

Those numbers are way low, but even accepting them, the process is not inefficient because of how you plug in the charger or the charger itself, it's in the chemistry of the batteries.

The circuit for a battery charger is very simple, it's basically a fancy DC power supply. Usually it's just a transformer, some rectifiers, and a circuit to shut off the juice when the batteries are full. The charger itself is highly efficient - over 90% of the current from the plug goes out the other side to the batteries.

Where the charging process loses efficiency is at the batteries, which waste charger power as heat due to internal resistance. This is why batteries get warm when charging. Changing the input on the charger from a hard wire to induction does nothing to solve the problems of battery chemistry on the output side.

On top of that, induction is by nature less efficient than a hard wired connection, so while it's more convenient, I seriously doubt it's more efficient.

[TheWraith]

25. I apparently know more about the process than you do.

Including the actual, scientifically tested numbers for modern lithium ion battery charging, where about one third of the electricity gets wasted. I also know that the biggest source of waste heat isn't the batteries themselves, it's the transformer that steps down the voltage. For anyone on a laptop computer right now, feel the battery. It's probably warm from the ambient heat of the laptop, but not really hot. Then feel the power brick your laptop attaches to. It's probably quite hot.

In any event, try re-reading my point: people don't complain about much larger losses in battery charging systems, why would 10% suddenly be a deal breaker?

[gristy]

22. Oh, my.

1 gallon of gas = 124,238 BTU = 36.41 KW-hours of electricity
Cost of 1 gallon of gas = $2.83
Cost of 36.41 KW-hours of electricity = $3.64

So the cost of gasoline is actually less than the "raw" cost of electricity. The price of electricity is higher in part because of transmission and generation inefficiencies. Certainly the electric motor is more efficient than the gasoline motor.

To accurately calculate the cost of the 10% wireless inefficiency, you would need to consider the losses in the charger itself. I had used the price of a gallon of gas as a ballpark figure to show that the 10% losses are not insignificant.

Your use the cost of powering your laptop to argue that a 10% inefficiency in powering your car is nonsense.

At the link that I gave in my post, you will see that the 10% in-efficiency is relative to plug-in chargers. Sorry I didn't make that clear.

[TheWraith]

26. Those numbers are completely imaginary.

You cannot convert the raw thermal of a gallon of gas into electricity. There is no engine or generator in the world that can convert with that efficiency. The proper equivalent is work produced.

Let's take raw numbers for an electric car, which gets a plug to wheels efficiency of about 330 watt-hours to the mile. With the average American driving about 12,000 per year, that comes to an electric bill of $475.20 per year for charging your electric car, charging system inefficiency included. Now, that breaks down to $39.60 a month, or about $1.30 a day. To add another 10% on top of that is 13 cents a day, or $47.50 per year, for the convenience of not having to plug in your car every night, and never having to worry about whether you forgot to.

[madokie]

6. I've often wondered why on the bottom of the auto there isn't one half of a transformer

and in the parking space the other half and then when you turn the auto off or indicate that you want to charge up the half connected to the auto lowers down to the half that is on the surface that you're parked over. We have induction heating pads for cooking on that uses no electrical contact other than a pot/pan that a magnet will attach too sitting on its surface and the eddy currents in the pan and food does the heating.

http://theinductionsite.com/

http://theinductionsite.com/proandcon.shtml

I plan to purchase one for use in cooking

Our local gray iron foundry uses induction to smelt the iron and to keep it hot once its melted

[jberryhill]

7. Weight /nt

[madokie]

8. Weight?

You lost me with that

[jberryhill]

9. You want to put 1/2 a transformer in the car?

The core material with sufficient magnetic permeability and the coil don't come free.

[tinrobot]

15. Transformers are made of an iron core and copper wire

Iron is heavy.

[madokie]

19. So is brains

and I suspect that is why you don't weight very much :-) :sarcasm:

In the whole scheme of things the secondary half of a transformer for the charger wouldn't be all that large unless they were using an extremely high primary voltage. The charger my neighbor has that charges his EV weighs maybe twenty pounds at most, more like 10 or 12 actually and that is with both primary windings, core and secondary windings all in one box. The battery charger for my yard cart weighs maybe a pound and a half to 2 pounds most and after a hard days use it takes about 3 maybe 4 hours to recharge the batteries.

I don't think weight would have anything to do with it if they decide to not do this. OK

peace

[jberryhill]

10. Good luck with your pacemaker

Instant charging is simple.

Charging station has charged batteries on charging rack. Batteries have standard form factor. You pull in, discharged batteries come out, charged batteries go in, you leave.

Same deal as propane tanks for barbecues. Finding someone who actually fills them anymore is getting harder since it is simpler just to swap the tanks.

To make it even easier, you don't buy the car battery. That takes the whole battery life cycle problem out of the owner/operator's hands and builds it into the fueling infrastructure. It also allows continued improvement of battery technology without an obsolescence problem.

[txlibdem]

11. Embed it in the freeways and put the other half in the cars and trucks

No more BS about range anxiety. You can rent the power receiver for the car so you're not hauling around any extra weight.

Electric vehicles for everyone!

[lfairban]

12. See 7 above . . .

. . . , weight.

For the coils to supply enough energy, they will weigh the car down too much.

The wireless technology will work for commuters that drive for half an hour and leave the car parked for 8.

For a "Charging Station" to work like a gas station, a plug will be required, along with a very high voltage.

[txlibdem]

16. That is why I said the coils (or whatever) would be removed when not needed.

For instance, at freeway onramps an EV could be fitted with the necessary equipment either underneath the vehicle or as a towed trailer sort of thing. Then as the electric vehicle exits the freeway the process would be reversed, removing the power receiver.

A side benefit would be that your electric vehicle would be charging its battery the whole time you're on the freeway.

I don't agree that the power receivers need be all that heavy. It depends on the exact technology used. The Toyota Rav4EV and the EV-1 both used the same kind of technology to transfer power to the vehicle and (in the case of the Rav4EV) has been used safely and successfully for over a decade.

[tinrobot]

21. A lot of technical and financial issues there....

The Rav4EV did use an inductive connector, but it took 8-10 hours to replace the charge consumed in about 90 minutes minutes of driving. For it to work on the road, you'd at least need to replace the power consumed by the vehicle as it drives -- if not more to actually charge up the batteries. That requires a much bigger inductor and a lot more power.

The inductor in the Rav4EV was also a tight fit - on the order of millimeters. In order for induction to work efficiently on the road, the gap would have to be much wider and the inductors that much bigger again. Even then, you'd still need a very close connection - measured in inches for it to work. For that to happen at freeway speeds, you'd need a perfectly flat and smooth road with no bumps or potholes. Considering the condition of the freeways I've seen in the US, that's a tall order and expensive to maintain.

On top of that, the cost of the embedded electronics in the road would be very expensive. An inductive road is not too far away from the technology used by a maglev train track - and how many cheap maglev trains do you see in the world?

[txlibdem]

27. Yup. It's just too hard. We might as well quit before even trying...

The Rav4EV charger paddle is about 3" wide and 6" long so 18" square inches surface area. 10 hours of charging for 90 minutes driving means 1.111 hours per minute of drive time, which would make the wireless power receiver 66.66 times the size. That would make it 25" wide and 48" long, which doesn't seem too huge to me.

/edited for math foulup and to add:

The difference between a passive alternating current coil embedded in the road is only a few percent more complicated than our freeways already are (if you've never seen them during constructions I would highly recommend it). It could be done by machine rather than by hand but maybe it's not so much to expect workmen and women to add the coil grid right on top of the rebar grid and the other stuff they already have to put down before the blacktop or concrete are piled on.

[tinrobot]

28. You're solving the wrong problem.

Wiring freeways for EVs doesn't make much sense at all when less than 1% of the vehicles on the road are EVs.

We need to get EV ownership rates up first. That should be the top priority. This means making the vehicles themselves more attractive to the average consumer.

Focus on bringing vehicle costs down, increasing range, and decreasing charge times. That's how you get the majority of people to want an EV. Only when you have a LOT of EVs on the road will people even consider something as esoteric as on-road charging.

Even then, the reason people mention on-road charging today is because EV's can barely go 100 miles without running out of juice. They're trying to solve a problem that will probably not exist in 10-15 years. When the average EV gets a few hundred miles on a charge and recharges reasonably quickly, the need for on-road charging diminishes or goes away completely.

[txlibdem]

30. Solving a problem that will likely not exist in 10 or 15 years

That's a valid argument. Battery research that is going on now will bear fruit, it's just a question of when. IBM is working on Lithium-Air batteries that would be 10 times lighter and cheaper for the same amount of energy storage. Others are working on Zinc-Air, or carbon nanotube batteries, or silicon based. One of these are going to succeed. Not to digress my main point too much but it's just not within the realm of possibility that this much money and these large numbers of very smart people can be thrown at a problem yet all be unable to make an improvement over present Lithium-Ion or NiMH battery technology. So, given all that, I totally agree with you.

But let's say that we went ahead anyway and put wireless power into the freeways. Given that Nissan has stated that the battery in their Leaf EV will cost $9000 when their factory is up to speed in 2012 and it has a 100 mile range (YMMV), a 10 times improvement would make it cost $900 and therefore a Leaf in 10 years could cost $17,000. That's assuming that no other component of the vehicle benefits from cost reductions or increased efficiency in any way. But do you actually NEED 100 miles of driving off of the freeway? If the freeways all had wireless power then 90% of people would need far less and so could get a car with an even smaller battery (which would be even cheaper to buy).

[tinrobot]

33. But when batteries get that cheap...

...you can pack a car full of them.

My laptop has 6-7 hours of battery life. I rarely use more than 2 hours at a time. I could probably do with a 2-3 hour battery, but 6-7 hours is nice to have on those rare times when I fly cross country.

Using your numbers, if a 100 mile battery costs $900, a 300 mile battery would costs $2700. You may rarely ever need more than 100 miles, but for the cost of the $1800 leather trim package on a car, that extra 200 miles would be real nice to have when you drive cross country.

[bananas]

14. Japan is working on this. nt

[txlibdem]

20. I like the idea, did you see the video?

I had to chuckle when I saw the vehicles in the video. Golf cart meets mad max???

[bananas]

23. Which video?

I've seen this one from JAXA: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D56vRfv71OA
the cars charging are around timestamp 4:45

[txlibdem]

31. No, that's not the one. I like that video you linked, however.

I'm still looking for the one I was talking about. It showed a couple of vehicles that look like golf carts but even narrower driving along slooowwwwllly. It looked like a comedy bit rather than a serious endeavor. I'll keep looking but I'm already way past my usual limit of work I'll do just to make a joke.

:hi:

[NickB79]

24. It would be nice, but we'd have to revamp our entire highway system

Probably to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars.

We can't even get the political will to invest in a few billion worth of renewables right now.

[Bill USA]

29. very cool.

[OnlinePoker]

32. Electromagnetic Sensitivity

At what point should we allow a technology that may be good for the planet's health interfere with the well being of people? There is a small number of people that have E.S. that have been effected greatly by the planet going wireless. Do we ignore their concerns with something like this, or if not, how do we lessen the impact they will feel?