How the World's Fastest Electric Car Is Pushing Wireless Charging Tech 49
An anonymous reader writes With the first ever season of Formula E revving up in China next month, it's clear there's more to electric cars than Tesla. But the race cars hitting the track in Beijing don't have anything on the speed of Drayson Racing Technology's Lola B12 69/EV, which holds the record for the world's fastest lightweight electric car, and which uses the kind of power technologies that could one day have applications off the track too—like charging your phone wirelessly.
Not worth it. (Score:5, Insightful)
For $$$ amount of electricity lost buy using this method of charging a car would pay for a holiday after a decade. (25Kwh * 20%loss * 10c * 365days * 10years = $1825)
Why is plugging in a charger difficult? With my phone I'd say plug-in is more convenient because I don't have to worry about dedicating a flat surface for charging, the phone get plugged in and chucked wherever at whatever angle.
Re:Not worth it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Just stop it with the 'zero emissons' claims (Score:2, Insightful)
One of the articles cited says the car "produces zero emissions". Perhaps we can coin a new phrase for electric cars: "zero direct emissions".
Most people reading this implicitly understand that if an electric car is charged using electricity from a coal- or gas-fired power plant it really doesn't have zero emissions. But a very large percentage of the public simply doesn't get that, and thinks of electric cars as an immediate way to address the greenhouse gas problem.
Sure, electric cars probably, (depending on a host of factors), result in fewer emissions per mile driven. But if every car in North America magically became an electric vehicle overnight, we'd need a huge amount of electricity to charge them all, and the energy would have to come from fossil fuel, (not zero emissions), or nuclear, (huge political problem) - never mind the insane costs of the required infrastructure buildout in either scenario. The general public needs more information to help them understand these things, not more "zero emissions" spin.