Volvo's Electric Roads Concept Points To Battery-Free EV Future 216
Zothecula writes "While quick charging technology installed at strategic points along a planned route might be a good fit for inner city buses, it's not going to be of much use to electric vehicles that stop infrequently. Volvo sees our future long-haul trucks and buses drawing the juice they need from the road itself, making large onboard batteries a thing of the past. 'The two power rails/lines run along the road's entire length. One is a positive pole, and the other is used to return the current. The lines are sectioned so that live current is only delivered to a collector mounted at the rear of, or under, the truck if an appropriate signal is detected. As an additional safety measure, the current flows only when the vehicle is moving at speeds greater than 60 km/h (37 mph). "The vehicle is equipped with a radio emitter, which the road segments can sense," explains Volvo's Per-Martin Johnansson. "If an electric vehicle passes a road segment with a proper encrypted signal, then the road will energize the segments that sense the vehicle.'"
Re:VOLVO STILL MAKING TIN BUCKET CARS ?? (Score:5, Informative)
Volvo, the truck company (The one we are talking about), spun off Volvo, the car company, a long time ago.
Re:What? (Score:5, Informative)
Since a typical electric car needs about 5x as many fill-ups as a typical gasoline car, you'd need five times as much 'refuelling' capacity. And since they take about ten times as long to charge, those cars would be staying at those 'refuelling' stations for ten times as long.
Electric cars are a silly idea until we have Mr Fusion units or batteries made from unicorn farts.
Re:Magnets? (Score:5, Informative)
No free lunch. Any electricity you make by passing a a coil over a magnet is coming from loss of forward velocity.
There are wireless charging methods, but they again require outside power.
Re:so much for environmentally friendly (Score:5, Informative)
I think volvo, and most people, forget that the benefit of fuels (solid, liquid, or gaseous) is that they are very cheap to transport. Electricity, on the other hand, is insanely expensive to transport. Think about a 10% loss for every major hop. The middle of the road in a large city is likely 4 major hops from the power plant. That takes 100 down to 65. That's up to a 35% total loss.
It took me all of thirty seconds to find a quote on that:
Transmission and distribution losses in the USA were estimated at 6.6% in 1997[10] and 6.5% in 2007.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission [wikipedia.org]
This is a fair cry from the 35% losses you are postulating.
And let's not forget that an electric motor is 90%+ efficient, while an ICE is somewhere around 18%-20%.