New York City To Get Manhole Covers That Wirelessly Charge Electric Vehicles 112
Lucas123 writes "A new project between NYU and start-up HEVO Power will disguise wireless charging stations in manhole covers. The wireless charging stations are aimed at providing fleets of delivery vehicles with power in parking spaces around the city. Next year, Toyota plans to test a wireless charging Prius in Japan, Europe. And, U.S. Auto electronics giant Delphi is developing technology for electric vehicles that could be used industrywide. The charging stations could be embedded in asphalt or pads that lay on garage floors. Wireless charging, however, still has many obstacles to overcome, including the time it takes to recharge a vehicle, cost to deploy the technology and power loss during electrical transfer."
ConEd has had that for a while (Score:5, Funny)
I recall news stories from over a decade ago lamenting the fact that ConEd manhole covers were being used to charge dogs. Inadvertently, and sadly fatally, but this technology has been around for a while.
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I recalled this too and had to find the article
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Wait until you see what happens to the first drunk guy to piss on a manhole cover...
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My colleague came in to work one day and told me the funniest story. He was standing on the tube subway platform the previous night in London, and some guy down at the end of the platform started to take a leak on the tracks. Maybe funniest wasn't the best choice of words. Fortunately for the guy taking a leak, someone with CCTV started screaming into the PA system to stop, and the guy on the platform did, in time. Be careful and think first guys.
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I recall news stories from over a decade ago lamenting the fact that ConEd manhole covers were being used to charge dogs. Inadvertently, and sadly fatally, but this technology has been around for a while.
This is possibly the funniest post I have ever read on /.
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Tragedy is when I get a hangnail.
Comedy is when you piss on a manhole cover, get electrocuted, and it burns your schmecky off.
/ I think that was Mel Brooks I just parodied
Now THAT is E/M radiation (Score:5, Funny)
Will the nutjobs afraid of wireless routers be able to survive walking down the sidewalk in NYC now?
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Eh, I think the drivers will be more peeved. Low on battery? Just stop in the middle of the street on top of a manhole cover. Traffic hilarity ensues.
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Ah yes. But most people think the traffic can't get any worse in NYC. HEVO Power is about to prove them wrong!
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Well, you could always go *over* the vehicle on the sidewalk, you know...
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Well, you could always go *over* the vehicle on the sidewalk, you know...
I'd say "go around", but that's probably just me. The important question is how many pedestrians did the electric vehicles go over to get to the charging manholes on the sidewalk?
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Well, the article is fairly vague on the exact details of the technology but it did say:
HEVO's manhole covers work via electromagnetic resonance, which makes a magnetic connection between a charging coil to a car equipped with a wireless charging coil.
Without some NFC communications built in, I don't see how they monetize that, or even control the on/off condition of the system.
If they simply leave them on all the time, simply driving over one of these could induce eddy currents in any passing vehicle, (like passing a wire through any magnetic field), which might prove uprising on a rainy day, not to mention induction in re-rod built into sidewalks, lamp poles, underg
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If they actually make it so it can charge an EV in a reasonable amount of time then you won't have to be a nutjob to be afraid of it.
Tax dollars at work? (Score:3, Interesting)
So who pays for this? Is it everyone or just those that own electric vehicles?
I have a diesel car and nobody is helping to pay for my fuel consumption.
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It's New York City. Everyone pays, well, except for the well-connected political elite, anyway.
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I drive an EV because it's better for the environment
You depend on a healthy environment, so this benefits you too
Yes, but unfortunately all the environmental benefits are offset by the hot, noxious gas emanating from your ego-inflated sense of moral superiority.
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Time for a "smug alert"?
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I drive an EV because it's better for the environment
Apart from the huge amount of pollution created by making the batteries your EV runs on. The pollution break-even point is something on the order of a decade or two.
Tesla is installing free charging stations (Score:2)
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Your diesel car isn't being refueled simply by virtue of which parking spot you chose.
If it were, you'd be paying.
I suspect it will have to be done via a metering system triggered by NFC transducers on the vehicle.
Sort of like you ezpass, but located on the bottom of the vehicle.
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No, they don't. (as your won link shows).
They collectively, get to write off 4 billion of taxes for foreign tax paid, depletion allowance, domestic manufacturing, all of which are tax breaks available to any industry. Depletion allowance can even be claimed by a Gravel Pit owner. The oil industry is Huge, and the total tax writeoff is only 4 billion.
That's less than the cost of one Navy DDG-51 destroyer.
Apple alone wrote off 1.1 billion all by itself.
You don't get to call a general tax write off a
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...aside from the soldiers that we send over when an oil supplying country looks wobbly, the externalized pollution that petroleum-burning engines make, etc. You're clueless.
OMG TEH MAGNETS (Score:2, Funny)
They forgot to mention the potential issue with all those alternating magnetic fields everywhere. What happens when they start resonating? We could end up with a building pulled down like that old Tacoma bridge [youtube.com] example.
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I almost took this post seriously. You're flying too low, man! You're about to crash into what people actually believe.
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They forgot to mention the potential issue with all those alternating magnetic fields everywhere. What happens when they start resonating?
Then it's time to bust out the crowbar and ask yourself: WWGFD?
Recycling bonus (Score:3)
Cool, my Manhole cover recycling business will get a boost from all the extra tech I can resell!
What? If they don't want me to take them, why do they leave them lying on the ground?
Disguise? (Score:5, Informative)
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This is not a recharge while driving technology; it is a recharge while parked technology. The problem is that almost all existing manhole covers are not located where people park. They would need to be within a few feet of the pickup coil in the vehicle to be effective. The better the alignment the better the transfer.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics isn't your friend (Score:5, Insightful)
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So are electic cars really better, manufacturing included? And does the even lower efficiency of this system change that ratio?
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Electricity wouldn't be cheaper if what you've said is true.
The difference is that the cost of coal is much lower than the cost of oil. Coal costs $58/ metric ton a barrel of oil costs about $100/bbl. Heat energy in coal is about 34GJ/ton or about $1.70/GJ. Heat energy in oil is about 6.34gJ/barrel or $15.77/GJ. In raw heat energy costs oil is 9 times as expensive as coal. You also burn a lot more coal and produce a lot more C02 when burning coal than when burning oil.
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I don't spill much gas when I fill my tank.
Now, for people who like to hold the nozzle a couple feet away from their car and aim it generally in the right direction, you've got a point.
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I don't spill much gas when I fill my tank.
From http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/evtech.shtml [fueleconomy.gov]:
Electric vehicles convert about 59–62% of the electrical energy from the grid to power at the wheels—conventional gasoline vehicles only convert about 17–21% of the energy stored in gasoline to power at the wheels.
So you may not lose anything on filling up, but it sounds like plenty of it gets wasted for nothing in other ways.
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Electric vehicles convert about 59–62% of the electrical energy from the grid to power at the wheels—conventional gasoline vehicles only convert about 17–21% of the energy stored in gasoline to power at the wheels.
"From the grid" is the key flaw in your argument. In the electricity production line there are similar losses upstream before it even gets to the power outlet. In fact, if only 60% of the electricity taken by the car reaches the wheel, that is disgracefully inefficient - no doubt much of it due to the poor air connection between "manhole cover" and car.
Personally, I don't get this obsession with avoiding the need to plug in a charging lead. People have managed for years with fuel pumps. It seems some
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"From the grid" is the key flaw in your argument. In the electricity production line there are similar losses upstream before it even gets to the power outlet.
It's not really my argument, but doesn't the same go for fuel? You need to burn it to transport it, after all.
In fact, if only 60% of the electricity taken by the car reaches the wheel, that is disgracefully inefficient
But still far better than petrol.
no doubt much of it due to the poor air connection between "manhole cover" and car.
The quote I took is only about electric cars in general, so I suspect the losses it's talking about are nothing to do with induction, and presumably more to do with powering the lights, the AC, the power steering, the DVD player, and the dashboard waffle iron.
Personally, I don't get this obsession with avoiding the need to plug in a charging lead. People have managed for years with fuel pumps.
If there was any way to do away with the physical connection, it would be done, but that's always been imposs
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"From the grid" is the key flaw in your argument. In the electricity production line there are similar losses upstream before it even gets to the power outlet.
It's not really my argument, but doesn't the same go for fuel? You need to burn it to transport it, after all.
Oh dear, where do I start. The electric car is only the last stage in a system starting with a power station. To consider the efficiency of that system you must consider the efficiency of all stages combined, and the lower efficiencies (the weak links in the chain) of that system will be upsteam, at the power station and in the transmission of that electricity to the car batteries, including through the "manhole covers". Even if the electric cars were 100% efficient in themselves, if the power station bu
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To consider the efficiency of that system you must consider the efficiency of all stages combined, and the lower efficiencies (the weak links in the chain) of that system will be upsteam, at the power station and in the transmission of that electricity to the car batteries, including through the "manhole covers".
And exactly the same goes for the transport of fossil fuels, doesn't it? It doesn't get from under the ground to the gas station for free.
if the power station burns fossil fuels the efficiency of the whole system will be lower than that of an internal combustion engine car.
Emphasis mine, in order to ask: why must this be true?
In fact, I'm not exactly sure what you're comparing here. Are you saying the efficiency of the whole (power station-electricity grid-electric car) system will be lower than that of just the ICE car? Or lower than that of the whole (oil platform-transport system-gas station-ICE car) system?
I am shocked at how low this 60% is. An electric motor should be around 90% efficient,and the gear train (if needed) better than 95%, so total ~85%. What are they doing with the rest - are the batteries that lousy?
But it's still far more ef
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NYC had a big surplus of low-cost, zero-carbon energy sources
Um, NYC is primarily powered by the Niagra Falls.
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Um, NYC is primarily powered by the Niagra Falls.
[citation needed]. Niagara Falls is a long way from NYC and doesn't generate that much power. Ravenswood Generating Station in Queens generates almost as much power as the Niagara Falls hydroelectric station. It burns natural gas and a variety of petroleum products, and is far from the only such power plant in NYC.
Furthermore, Indian Point (nuclear) generates ~30% of the electricity that NYC and Westchester County consume (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/04/nyregion/04indian.html?_r=0).
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My grandfather, now 92 years old, has been screaming at his condo building for two decades now. They have a pool, and a sauna. It's an electric sauna. Because it takes time to warm up, people turn it on, go for a quick swim, and come back to it 15 minutes later when it's hot. In the end, the electric sauna runs electric current through a resistor for an hour to heat up and stay hot for the people inside. It winds up being something rediculous like 10 kWh for a 1 hour sauna, where just a few drops of li
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From the US Energy Information Administration [eia.gov]:
According to EIA data, national, annual electricity transmission and distribution losses average about 7% of the electricity that is transmitted in the United States.
Sounds pretty good to me.
(And please realize that liquid fuel doesn't happen for free, either. And that all electric heaters are damn near 100% efficient at converting electricity into heat.)
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Many link me to those numbers. But they miss 90% of the cradle-to-grave. Think about before and after those measurements are taken. Think about repairing all of those lines after storms and damage.
We're not comparing grid-efficiency to fuel-efficiency. We're comparing grid-efficiency to nothing and fuel-efficiency to nothing. We'll then compare those final numbers.
The nice part about fuel like gasolene, is that the explosive force carries quite well into turning an axel. Most electric motors work thro
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My grandfather, now 92 years old, has been screaming at his condo building for two decades now. They have a pool, and a sauna. It's an electric sauna. Because it takes time to warm up, people turn it on, go for a quick swim, and come back to it 15 minutes later when it's hot. In the end, the electric sauna runs electric current through a resistor for an hour to heat up and stay hot for the people inside. It winds up being something rediculous like 10 kWh for a 1 hour sauna, where just a few drops of liquid fuel would easily achieve the same levels of heat, at a tiny fraction of the cost.
The energy loss across the electrical grid is staggering when you look at it from cradle to grave. It winds up being close to or over 40%, and it's absurd.
Since we're supposed to blame Edison, maybe we should also blame your grandfather for not punching him in the nose when he had a chance?
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(: I'm not sure that the two were both alive and able to speak at the same time. I'm also not sure that saunas existed during that overlap. I do know that they were not in the same country.
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I see: making excuses for your ancestor not punching out Thomas Edison.
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My grandfather, now 92 years old, has been screaming at his condo building for two decades now.
Mine used to yell at clouds.
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it is hard to imagine
So is relativity of simultaneity, but that doesn't automatically make it not true.
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10% shit. I heard 85%.
Anecdote annihilation!
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They waste public money because there's no consequences for them. And if you object you'll just get called a Koch-funded teabagger who wants to shut down the government.
Apparently not. At least, not the 1% whose corporate vehicles might actually gain value from this.
Um, if you think it's "sexier" no
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Apparently not.
They manage to fill liquid fuel, which takes longer, so clearly they can. The reason electric cars have not hit it off yet is nothing to do with having to plug a wire in.
Um, if you think it's "sexier" not to plug in, you just might be doing it wrong.
You missed his point. He does not give a shyte whether it is sexy or not, and neither do I.
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Wireless charging is hugely wasteful; ..... Is there a good reason to be, essentially, throwing this (public!) money away?
Let me answer that :- NO
is this being done strictly to make electric cars "sexier?"
Let me answer that one too :- YES
Utterly impractical, at the first glance (Score:1)
85% efficiency (Score:2)
What is needed is a simple mechanical design standard to 'plug in' the car that doesn't require extra steps for the driver. Like, when you drive into a car wash, you feel the wheels come to rest in a track. Use the weight of the car to raise a positive contact under one side and a negative on the other. The contacts drop when you back off. Something simple like that.
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Or the driver can get out and plug in the standardized cable. That method greatly simplifies the gear and uses the already existing plug standard. If you are going to plug in and you need to do it automatically you are just lazy.
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If we could do it with 99% efficiency then the cost of being lazy would be acceptable. But 15% seems like a lot. (And frankly, I am kind of doubting that you can actually get that much.) Essentially it means that the power is 15% more expensive (at least) just for the luxury of not plugin a cable. If I could not get out of my car but still get gas at a 15% surcharge, well, I'd get out of my car and pump my own gas...
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If you are going to plug in and you need to do it automatically you are just lazy.
Dude - lazy is the true name of progress.
If not for the inherent laziness of humans, there would be no such thing as automatic transmissions, power windows/locks, window defrosters, and pretty much ever other invention in the history of mankind.
Seriously - do you want to spend the majority of your waking hours hunting, gathering, and fleeing from predators? No?
Then quite whining, you lazy bastard.
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What is needed is a simple mechanical design standard to 'plug in' the car that doesn't require extra steps for the driver. Like, when you drive into a car wash, you feel the wheels come to rest in a track.
I was just thinking about a solution for that: A combination of self-parking mechanism and a magnetized connector (like the power cord on my '08 vintage MacBook) would take care of it.
Basically, any vehicle that's part of the system could pull up next to the spot, at which point the computer-assist would take over and park the vehicle so that the charging pads lined up. Once the vehicle shifts into park (or the key is removed), sensors would communicate with the charging system to release the magnetic lock
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Yeah, the hard part is making the infrastructure port extremely cheap and robust (if there is to be one retrofitted in every parking spot)
Of course, since any mechanical part is prone to failure. This is the point at which the engineers who frequent Slashdot should say, "ooh, hey, that is a good idea, and here's how it should be done!"
Anything that requires lining things up to within a couple inches will require either a mechanical means (like driving into tracks) or precise maneuvering. If self-driving cars catch on, then precise maneuvering becomes an option.
Since they have self-parking mechanisms on many non-automated vehicles already, I don't think we have to wait for Google cars for the concept to be feasible; although, regardless of implementation it would require some sort of consensus and work-together spirit on the part of auto makers. That seems like the log
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The article says 85% efficiency, which may be raised to 90%. 15% is a lot to give away.
And how efficient is a petrol engine?
Spoiler alert: not very [fueleconomy.gov].
Location, Location, Location (Score:1)
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I guess manholes just happen to be located in those same places that rechargeable vehicles tend to park. And for those that aren't, we'll just move em!
It's bullshit. They are not manhole covers, they are chargers. Someone has called them "manhole covers" to give the impression to non-technical politicians and councils (they are all non-technical BTW) that you just convert existing manholes to chargers by waving a magic wand over them without digging up the road etc.
Its bull shit because :-
1) Existing manholes will never be in the right place.
2) Existing manholes are needed as er... manholes
3) Existing manholes are not likely to be the optimum s
Michael Bay! (Score:4, Funny)
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I've seen manhole explosions on Tosh.0. I've seen some stuff, man.
Why the hell not... (Score:2)
They already have ones that wirelessly charge people and their dogs.
http://www.examiner.com/article/new-yorkers-and-dogs-risk-electrocution-on-city-streets-how-to-be-safe [examiner.com]
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They already have ones that wirelessly charge people and their dogs.
http://www.examiner.com/article/new-yorkers-and-dogs-risk-electrocution-on-city-streets-how-to-be-safe [examiner.com]
Thank you for posting a reminder as to why I'm glad I don't live in New York.
How much do they charge? (Score:2)
And will they accept Visa?
My phone (Score:1)
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Sure, just toss it under the truck.
You will be able to tell the proper location to position it, because there will be a boatload of smashed phones
down there from where owners didn't hang around to retrieve them before the truck pulled away,
Seriously, why not a robotic arm? (Score:2)
.
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You pull into the designated space, a robotic arm deploys from the pavement underneath and plugs you into the grid. You start your vehicle, the arm retracts. And of course you'd design the connection to easily detach if the vehicle suddenly peeled away. More efficient connection, less people freaking out about EM. .
But the first hapless Volkswagen that pulls into the space gets the robotic arm spot welded to the frame.
Data Acquisition is Proabably the Real Motive (Score:3)
Who needs old fashioned tracking devices that have to be surreptitiously installed under a vehicle? You just gave them permission to track you full time.
Famous last wordzzssst (Score:1)
"Quick, let's hide down here..."
Lay what? (Score:2)
They lay... power-up eggs that the pac-man vans pick up? This makes no sense.