Nissan Wireless Charging System

Charge your Leaf over a spot on the ground:

http://www.nissan-global.com/EN/TECHNOLOGY/OVERVIEW/wcs.html

foolios said:

Charge your Leaf over a spot on the ground:

http://www.nissan-global.com/EN/TECHNOLOGY/OVERVIEW/wcs.html

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It's more a gee-whiz thing than anything else, unless there is some real advantage beyond end-user convenience at play.

Pointless for home use, imho.

But for public charging I can see that has potential to mitigate problems with wear, vandalism and theft if the pad can be hardened or put under pavement.

Nubo said:

Pointless for home use, imho.

But for public charging I can see that has potential to mitigate problems with wear, vandalism and theft if the pad can be hardened or put under pavement.

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Yes. But the only real wear problem would be in the public station. It's unlikely that wear would affect individual vehicles which would only be plugging in a few times a day at most. And in that case, we'd have to consider the costs of the infrastructure, the vehicles, and the parts whose wear you would be preventing. Sounds like a real luxury feature to me. Probably not something which would be used on a non-premium vehicle.

A wireless charging system would allow a self-driving vehicle to charge itself without user intervention.

bluedream42 said:

A wireless charging system would allow a self-driving vehicle to charge itself without user intervention.

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True, but I think self-driving cars as a widespread thing are a ways off. Not due to technology, but due to municipalities not wanting to lose the revenue of ticketing drivers and the issues it would cause in prosecuting the drug war ("probable cause" stops due to minor infractions are common. How does that work with computers doing the driving?).

bigrob90 said:

bluedream42 said:

A wireless charging system would allow a self-driving vehicle to charge itself without user intervention.

Click to expand...

True, but I think self-driving cars as a widespread thing are a ways off. Not due to technology, but due to municipalities not wanting to lose the revenue of ticketing drivers and the issues it would cause in prosecuting the drug war ("probable cause" stops due to minor infractions are common. How does that work with computers doing the driving?).

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"Any algorithms in this car that I need to know about"?

Nubo said:

bigrob90 said:

bluedream42 said:

A wireless charging system would allow a self-driving vehicle to charge itself without user intervention.

Click to expand...

True, but I think self-driving cars as a widespread thing are a ways off. Not due to technology, but due to municipalities not wanting to lose the revenue of ticketing drivers and the issues it would cause in prosecuting the drug war ("probable cause" stops due to minor infractions are common. How does that work with computers doing the driving?).

Click to expand...

"Any algorithms in this car that I need to know about"?

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Hahaha. Yes. I think there will be real pushback on this, though. And I don't think most of the self-driving car proponents have given consideration to how various city and county governments actually fund themselves.

I could see this being cool if they could install these in the pavement on major highways, so you could recharge the car while driving 65mph in the right lane. They'd ideally being higher output than 6kW, and there would probably have to be some "autopilot" stuff going on to get the car perfectly centered on the line while driving, and then there's the whole issue of the car not charging while powered on.

But still, imagine if there was a constant 10kW or whatever available to you, even if it bypassed the battery and just went to the motor, it would make road trips in a car like the Leaf a reality. In fact, if it could charge the battery, it would make road trips in an EV superior to ICE because you'd literally never have to stop (unless you don't like peeing in an empty bottle?)

I think that the Tesla snake is the hot ticket,
Pull in the garage and have it automatically plug itself in
Get in the car and have it unplug.

I had thought of that idea a while ago, hopefully it will apply to all cars and not
Get locked into a Tesla patent

foolios said:

Charge your Leaf over a spot on the ground:

http://www.nissan-global.com/EN/TECHNOLOGY/OVERVIEW/wcs.html

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"The unique technology achieves a charging efficiency of 80-90%, equivalent to that of cable charging."

I am not sure how they twisted the number to come up with this result. The loss in a 20 feet #10 AWG cable at 30A is less than 1%. All other things equal I can not believe the loss in the inductive transfer is just 1%.

camasleaf said:

foolios said:

Charge your Leaf over a spot on the ground:

http://www.nissan-global.com/EN/TECHNOLOGY/OVERVIEW/wcs.html

Click to expand...

"The unique technology achieves a charging efficiency of 80-90%, equivalent to that of cable charging."

I am not sure how they twisted the number to come up with this result. The loss in a 20 feet #10 AWG cable at 30A is less than 1%. All other things equal I can not believe the loss in the inductive transfer is just 1%.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductive_charging#Disadvantages" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Disadvantages[edit]
Lower efficiency, waste heat – The main disadvantages of inductive charging are its lower efficiency and increased resistive heating in comparison to direct contact. Implementations using lower frequencies or older drive technologies charge more slowly and generate heat within most portable electronics.[citation needed]
Slower charging – due to the lower efficiency, devices can take longer to charge when supplied power is equal.
More expensive – Inductive charging also requires drive electronics and coils in both device and charger, increasing the complexity and cost of manufacturing.[1][2]
Newer approaches reduce transfer losses through the use of ultra thin coils, higher frequencies, and optimized drive electronics. This results in more efficient and compact chargers and receivers, facilitating their integration into mobile devices or batteries with minimal changes required.[3][4] These technologies provide charging times comparable to wired approaches, and they are rapidly finding their way into mobile devices.

For example, the Magne Charge vehicle recharger system employs high-frequency induction to deliver high power at an efficiency of 86% (6.6 kW power delivery from a 7.68 kW power draw).[5]

THanks for that added info.
Very interesting stuff.

The Detroit Auto show had wireless charging on display there. Neat stuff.

now if they could line the roads with those coils so you could charge while underway... now that would be something!

wireless charging is something quite new to. just got my first experince with it i bought a phone case that allows me wireless charging. is charging a car wirelessly a similar process?

Via GCR:

Electric Cars Sans Cords: Nissan Readying Higher-Power Inductive Charging

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http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1100946_electric-cars-sans-cords-nissan-readying-higher-power-inductive-charging

~7kW, greater gap (4-6") and alignment errors (4") than previously.