Charge as you drive

[oakwcj]

Stanford team develops plan for electric highway:

"With new state regulations demanding an increase in the number of clean and green cars, the future is looking bright for electric cars, such as the Nissan Leaf.

The problem is, most electric cars can’t go more than about 100 miles without being recharged.

But a team of Stanford University researchers may have come up with a novel infrastructure design that could solve this problem. They see a future in which magnetic fields could transmit electrical currents on highways, charging cars while they drive.

“Our vision is that you’ll be able to drive onto any highway and charge your car,” said Shanhui Fan, an electrical engineer at Stanford and a co-author of the paper."

http://californiawatch.org/dailyreport/stanford-team-develops-plan-electric-highway-14781

 

[Pipcecil]

I only wish this could happen, but I think it will be infeasible for a very long time. Working in the transportation industry directly, the government barely has enough money to maintain its current infrastructure much less build new stuff (and its taking out massive loans to build new stuff). Having a highly sophisticated highway means more money where there is none. Until this is extremely cheap (like really cheap) or there is a large increase into highway revenue this won't happen for a long time.

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

for the same cost as you could implement this, you could put a battery swap station on every corner in America.

it is a great idea and maybe its cost could be justified when repaving the roads.

 

[gbarry42]

If it takes around 20kW to go down the road, multiply that by the number of cars you see on the road, and I think you'll realize this is a lot of juice you have to bring in. Maybe DOT can get out of paying demand fees?

It might be more practical to just use a moving magnetic field to push the cars along, rather than going through the whole field-generate/pickup-coil/motor-drive business.

 

[amtoro]

To be able to drive continuously the car would have to be able to draw enough power from the lane to maintain cruising speed and then use the battery as a buffer for hills and overtaking. That means the lane would have to provide at least 20kW to each car continuously... a difficult thing to accomplish.

 

[gbarry42]

Unless the cars going down the hill can regen power into the system to help the ones coming up

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

To be able to drive continuously the car would have to be able to draw enough power from the lane to maintain cruising speed and then use the battery as a buffer for hills and overtaking. That means the lane would have to provide at least 20kW to each car continuously... a difficult thing to accomplish.

someone somewhere (probably Priuschat) determined that you could only average something like 45-50 mph but still would extend a one hundred mile range by nearly double. that would be almost 3 hours of driving at 65 mph which i think is an acceptable period between a 20 minute QC boost.

now with an 80% charge you would only be able to go another 2 hours or so before the next stop but that might be lunch where a fuller QC maybe to near 100% would be in order

 

[toasty]

would solar panels on the car help at all?

 

[davewill]

would solar panels on the car help at all?

Nice try, but the surface area's too small to do any real good.

 

[LTLFTcomposite]

What's all the hype, this is a mature technology

 

[MarkBC]

Just make a 10 kW propane powered genset trailer, voila problem solved.

 

[billvon]

It might be more practical to just use a moving magnetic field to push the cars along, rather than going through the whole field-generate/pickup-coil/motor-drive business.

Heck, just have a hook under the car and a moving chain. No modifications to the car at all other than the hook and it's cheap. (Even regen charge while you're being towed!)

 

[TomT]

Or simply buy a PHEV in the first place... :lol:

Just make a 10 kW propane powered genset trailer, voila problem solved.

 

[MarkBC]

Or simply buy a PHEV in the first place... :lol:

Just make a 10 kW propane powered genset trailer, voila problem solved.

But then I have to cart around the thing all the time, when I only need it 1% of the time. And it takes up space.