Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Transportation Wireless Networking

First US Mile of Wireless EV Charging Road Coming To Detroit (axios.com) 145

Posted by BeauHD from the no-cables-required dept.
The nation's first stretch of road to wirelessly charge electric vehicles while they're in motion will begin testing next year in Detroit. Axios reports: "Electrified" roadways, which have wireless charging infrastructure under the asphalt, could keep EVs operating around the clock, with unlimited range -- a big deal for transit buses, delivery vans, long-haul trucks and even future robotaxis. In-road charging could also help pave the way for more widespread EV adoption by relieving consumers of the need to stop and plug in their cars. Electreon Wireless, an Israeli company whose plug-free charging infrastructure is already being tested in Europe, will deploy its first U.S. pilot in Detroit's Michigan Central district, a new mobility innovation hub near downtown. The electrified road, up to a mile long, would allow EVs to charge whether they're stopped or moving, and should be ready for testing in 2023. The state will contribute $1.9 million toward the project, which will also be supported by Ford Motor, DTE Energy and the city of Detroit.

Wireless EV charging systems use magnetic frequency to transfer power from coils buried underground to a receiver pad attached to the car's underbelly. An EV can pull into a designated parking place with an underground charging pad and add electricity the same way a smartphone charges wirelessly. Along an electrified road, vehicles with wireless charging capability can suck up energy as they drive, but for all other cars, it's an ordinary road. Wireless charging can add $3,000 to $4,000 to an already pricey EV, notes Meticulous Research. Electreon, which is working with carmakers to add receivers to their vehicles, aims to get the cost down to $1,000 or $1,500, Stefan Tongur, Electreon's vice president of business development, tells Axios. Users would likely access the feature through a monthly subscription, he noted.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

First US Mile of Wireless EV Charging Road Coming To Detroit More

First US Mile of Wireless EV Charging Road Coming To Detroit

Comments Filter:

  • We can't keep roads free of potholes (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jfdavis668 ( 1414919 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2022 @10:14PM (#62232535)
    How are we going to maintain a wireless charging road?

    • Re:We can't keep roads free of potholes (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Nkwe ( 604125 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2022 @10:23PM (#62232557)

      How are we going to maintain a wireless charging road?

      At least this is being tested in a place with cold harsh winters where snow, ice, and salt are commonly found on the road. It's a real test instead of trying it in a place with "ideal" conditions.

      I am skeptical that this can be made to work efficiently, or at least in an economically viable way. As you point out we have have enough trouble keeping regular roads in decent repair, keeping ones that have lots of tech embedded into them is even harder.

      • I really cannot imagine this working. I grew up in the midwest. Roads would have craters in them that could literally swallow your car by spring.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jbengt ( 874751 )
          Having lived most of my life in the midwest, there have been years where I welcomed heavy snowfalls because they filled the potholes on my street.
        • not just the midwest, from whence I hail but even on the left coast where I now live, the condition of the roads are atrocious. indeed, we get potholes here after the infrequent rainstorms have passed through, typically the road paving seems to be thinner and less durable than back east so it takes little to crack the pavements, and getting the holes repaired is often a task measured in decades. look at how they maintain the super high voltage electric transmission lines, and extrapolate that to a magnetic

      • Re:We can't keep roads free of potholes (Score:4, Insightful)

        by arglebargle_xiv ( 2212710 ) on Thursday February 03, 2022 @01:31AM (#62232849)

        I'm sceptical for a different reason, transferring large amounts of energy wirelessly over the required distance is going to be virtually impossible unless you start with enormous amounts of energy at the transmitter, with the difference between "enormous" and "large" being "waste".

        Then you have to deal with people who are nervous about living near power lines now being positioned directly over the equivalent of an induction cooker while driving...

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Nkwe ( 604125 )

          I'm sceptical for a different reason, transferring large amounts of energy wirelessly over the required distance is going to be virtually impossible unless you start with enormous amounts of energy at the transmitter, with the difference between "enormous" and "large" being "waste".

          Then you have to deal with people who are nervous about living near power lines now being positioned directly over the equivalent of an induction cooker while driving...

          And.. that induction cooker needs to turn on and off as each vehicle passes over it and only do so if the vehicle does some sort of safety and billing handshake. I can see it working in a stationary parking space, but it's hard to envision it as a car moves across at any reasonable speed.

          • The French have already made a working prototype some years back. Shame they didnâ(TM)t do more with EVs.

          • I can see this in a downtown stop and go where there is alot of stop and go. The actical points it be more for the bus system than for average electric cars even though they can be used by them. I just want to know the cost. These types of chargers are more or less safe even at high power levels but they need ALOT of copper for that 3 foot range.
        • This. I remember reading an article about how wireless phone charging wasted significant amounts of electricity. Are we supposed to be reducing the energy we use to save the planet or something, i.e. more green energy available to replace fossil fuel use? It's a transition that we need to make as quickly as possible. Stuff like this just slows us all down.

      • I've always thought that industrial areas around Chicago (maybe around O'Hare) that are full of heavy shipping trucks would make a perfect test bed.

        In these spots, left-turn lanes get deformed during the summer and deal with sub-zero temperatures with nasty amounts of snow, ice, salt, and plows.

        I assume Detroit is very similar, and will be curious to see what conditions they're confident enough to put this stuff in.

      • Yep, i think the only places it makes sense is at bus stops or taxi ranks and maybe truck stops.
    • They are not. They are going to be in experimental phase as long as there is tax dollars. Once that runs out they go for some other scam.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AvitarX ( 172628 )

      By charging 3-4x what electricity costs, but allowing EVs to be $5k less so everyone wins?

      I'm not saying it will happen (because I'm not a crazily extreme optimist), but that is a revenue source.

      What would an electric semi cost if it needed only a 25 mile battery? Could it cover its road damage and save money over the current ones (that don't even close to cover their road damage with fuel tax and tolls)?

      Realistically, it seems like a technology that even if it had promise, would be obsolete by battery adva

    • How are we going to maintain a wireless charging road?

      Or snow.

      Surely if we can do this, then a network of heated roads in the North would provide way better returns?

    • How are we going to maintain a wireless charging road?

      I'm sorry sir, can you phrase that in the form of a pothole joke?

    • How are we going to maintain a wireless charging road?

      Or maybe wireless charging road maintenance will mean the end of potholes.

      Because it's clearly not the case that we can't keep roads free of potholes. We absolutely can. We choose not to spend the money that it would cost. If wireless charging makes spending on road maintenance easier to justify, it could solve the pothole problem. Apropos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

  • Stupid (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Shaiku ( 1045292 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2022 @11:03PM (#62232615)

    This is the dumbest idea since solar roads. The power of RF fields decreases with the square of the distance and wireless power transfer is already inefficient. Think about the amount of energy each car expends and how many cars would be on the road. The cars would need to be scraping the road and the road would have to be melting from heat before there was enough energy being transferred for this stupid roadway to be beneficial to anybody.

    Way easier to just put a rail like an electric train, or turn the road into a chain-driven sled that pulls cars around. This is basically the dumbest and most expensive form of a train/mass transit that an electrically illiterate English major could think of.

    This is probably the first and last time you'll ever hear about this expensive failure of a project.

    • For the 'developers' of course.

      This will rake in plenty of government greenwashing money with little risk, and therefore achieve exactly what it is intended for.

      Of course it is completely ridiculous as far as any practical use, unless energy is nearly free, and even then they infrastructure spend would be environmentally devastating (think of the gargantuan masses of metals just for the transmitter coils for any practical nation wide, or even state wide rollout).

      Someone, however, will be making plenty of ni

    • Re:Stupid (Score:5, Informative)

      by ras ( 84108 ) <russell+slashdot ... rt DOT id DOT au> on Thursday February 03, 2022 @01:11AM (#62232823) Homepage

      The efficiency problems are mostly solved. From https://www.electricmotorengineering.com/the-road-that-charges-electric-vehicles/ [electricmo...eering.com] describing the state of play of this about a year ago:

      This was achieved along a 20-metre long section of track equipped with coils embedded in a section of the road. During the test, ElectReon proved an energy transmission of 8.5 kW with an efficiency of more than 91%. Electron Wireless has another project planned for a small area in Tel Aviv this summer, before implementing a test in Sweden by the end of 2020.

      It looks to about double the cost of the road per mile. from $5M/mile to $10/mile. source [electrek.co].

      • 91% sounds great but that's still a lot of power being lost compared to traditional charging. Is having a bus pull into a charging station once a day really such a big problem? Plus vehicles will need maintenance regardless of how they're charged.

        • Is having a bus pull into a charging station once a day really such a big problem?

          It depends on how large the bus's battery has to be so that it only has to charge once per day. Bigger batteries are costly in two ways: First, there's the obvious cost of the battery, second there's the extra energy required to accelerate that battery all of the time (most of which you can recover with regenerative braking, but not all).

          The ideal is not to have a battery on the bus at all, but to run it off the grid. This makes for the lightweight, very efficient buses. But it means that the bus is comp

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Socguy ( 933973 )
      Dude. This is not theoretical. Witricity, as an example, is selling wireless charging systems right now that match wired connections in transfer efficiency..

  • WHY?! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2022 @11:15PM (#62232649)

    Seriously, people: is stopping for 20 minutes to recharge your car so bad that you would drop $4K on a low efficiency charge system?! I love EVs an drive one exclusively but NOTHING about this is sane! Why the time this test strip is ready, the EV range on the latest low-end cars is going to be 150 miles. By the time they get the price down, the range is likely to be 200+ miles. When solid state battery manufacturing catches up, the range is going to be the same or better than any ICE car because they are much lighter and don't need a cooling system.

    Not a single cent of taxpayer money should be invested in this destined-to-fail crap.

    • No. But it's bad enough that I would never buy an electric vehicle while living in an apartment. If I can get there faster by bus than I can in my fancy EV, why would I go with the EV?

      • I'm in favor of people using public transit. Few people use it (with a few exceptional places/uses) in the US because we have a poor public transit system.

        • I'm in favor of people using public transit. Few people use it (with a few exceptional places/uses) in the US because we have a poor public transit system.

          Yep, the fact that it is inconvenient, rarely on schedule, nowhere close to door-to-door (important as that in the US we have some pretty extreme weather on both ends of the scale)..all contribute to non-use of public transport.

          Besides, who wants to ride next to a smelly bum?

    • There could be advantages. A charging system enabling a smaller battery could lower the cost of a car overall. And the ability for a large truck to trickle charge could be the difference between electrical long haul trucks catching on this decade vs thirty years from now.

      But yeah, I'm generally skeptical of this too. For practical and efficiency reasons.

      • Long haul trucks shouldn't be a thing at all. They are only profitable because they externalize the cost of the damage done to roads. If they had to pay for the damage they did to roads then every company would be using trains for long hauls.

        • Long haul trucks shouldn't be a thing at all. They are only profitable because they externalize the cost of the damage done to roads. If they had to pay for the damage they did to roads then every company would be using trains for long hauls.

          I think they would still be a thing, but only for a very narrow segment of cargo that can't wait for train schedules and isn't worth putting on a plane.

          • Not if it's heavy because if you scale the gas tax ($0.5421/gal) by the amount of damage done compared to regular cars (10000x) then it would be $5K/gal for heavy trucks.

            • Re: WHY?! (Score:4, Interesting)

              by swillden ( 191260 ) <shawn-ds@willden.org> on Thursday February 03, 2022 @06:33PM (#62235025) Journal

              Not if it's heavy because if you scale the gas tax ($0.5421/gal) by the amount of damage done compared to regular cars (10000x) then it would be $5K/gal for heavy trucks.

              Nothing like that. I did an analysis a couple of years ago, based on 2016 data (latest available at the time), and found that trucks would need to pay $4.03 per gallon in fuel taxes to cover highway maintenance. Feel free to point out any errors you find: https://docs.google.com/spread... [google.com].

              Note that I used a damage factor of 9600, not 10000.

              • Interesting! The numbers seem sound because of the decreased the costs for regular vehicles. The remaining issue is we need to have an "carbon tax" (emissions tax) added to hydrocarbon-based products like gasoline and plastics (since plastics eventually get burned). There is no point in only addressing one issue when a quick shift could address two at once.

                I agree with your analysis of there likely being a small segment for long haul trucking. I like this idea a lot which is why it's a shame that we have

                • +1 to carbon tax, based on our best current estimate of the net present value of cumulative future costs of mitigating the damage of each ton of CO2.

                  I'm a big fan of properly internalizing externalities, then letting the market sort it out. The market is great at that sort of thing.

                  • I'm a big fan of properly internalizing externalities, then letting the market sort it out. The market is great at that sort of thing.

                    If that's the case, then what do you think of every product having it's own specific medical tax to pay for a national healthcare program? Basically, if product X increases your chance of you developing ailment Y then every time you buy it, you pay Z cents for a medical tax. You could go for perfect one-to-one cost associations via statistical analysis but it would be a bit intrusive as everything you buy is recorded. However, if what you buy was treated as being medical data then it would be much harder

    • Last I checked, EVs needed to spend about 1/3rd of the travel time charging for long distances. EVs are great for shorter distances where you can charge at home or leave it to charge at a station while you do other things. They're not so great when you want to, say, visit a friend in another state and don't have a way to charge at the destination. This would neatly solve that problem if it were implemented in enough places. It would probably also make electric-powered public transportation more feasible
    • I can see it for busses though. Each bus stop has a high powered charger, it can run for a few min while loading a bus, etc. At the very least a bus doesn't have to depot itself for charging/refueling during its route. While wireless charging is safe even at high current, you would have to push a HELL of alot of current in these quick stops though and this system dosn't seem to do that, so yea. Not sure why they would make something like this.

      • The bus idea is actually a good one! Though yeah, you would have to push a huge amount of current out all at once... which may be a limitation of the wireless charging system.

  • You won't even get to the first base (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2022 @11:37PM (#62232691) Journal
    I like driving around rural Western PA. Nice relaxing pretty landscape.

    Suddenly, in one tiny hamlet, there were lawn signs Beware of the towers and many similar scary anti-towers. Turned out some High Tension line was proposed to go through the hamlet and they were upset about it. These Nimbys don't want to live 50 yards below and 500 yards away from some scary "lectric thingie". You want them to drive over the same "lectric thing"? There are people who refuse to wear a mask and refuse to get vaccinated ...

    Perfect proof Darwin was wrong. Human beings are not evolving, they are devolving ...

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AvitarX ( 172628 )

      I think you'd be surprised about how our of sight out of mind works.

      • Out of sight will get rid most of the simple Nimbys.

        But it feeds right into the conspiracy theory Nimbys. You have less number of Nimbys but their paranoia level is much higher. They get excited and jump over from the noise maker level to activist mode. Trouble. Big trouble.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jbengt ( 874751 )

      I like driving around rural Western PA. Nice relaxing pretty landscape. Suddenly, in one tiny hamlet, there were lawn signs Beware of the towers and many similar scary anti-towers. Turned out some High Tension line was proposed to go through the hamlet and they were upset about it. These Nimbys don't want to live 50 yards below and 500 yards away from some scary "lectric thingie".

      Are you sure they weren't more concerned about how those big ugly towers would ruin their nice relaxing pretty landscape?

    • It is funny finding out there have been anti-maskers even 100 years ago. Stupidity has always been a problem, its just now they know how to communicate with one another. I still thing its funny and sad that Q-on (I think that's how it spelled) started as a 4chan joke and now its just there:P

  • Who's going to pay for this? (Score:3)

    by Hans Lehmann ( 571625 ) on Thursday February 03, 2022 @01:10AM (#62232819)
    Assuming this idea is even feasible and passes some prototype tests, who's going to pay for it if it's ever rolled out on a larger scale? Who's going to pay for the electricity (both that which is used to charge cars and that which is wasted due to the horrible efficiency)? Will there be transponders attached to cars that can use this charging method, and they'll get a charge on their credit card whenever they drive over these roads? Who's going to pay to maintain this system every spring when it's time to tear up and repave the roads. Yes, this is just as stupid as the solar roads.

    • Re:Who's going to pay for this? (Score:4, Informative)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Thursday February 03, 2022 @06:04AM (#62233131) Homepage Journal

      Already deployed in Europe: https://youtu.be/aq7SP18sPKw [youtu.be]

      Commercial vehicles like taxis and busses are using it. 55kW charge rate is pretty good.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Megane ( 129182 )
      Don't forget the cost of adding a Big Freaking Coil to your car to receive the power, regardless of how efficient it might or might not be. On the bright side, it'll give the catalytic converter thieves something to steal when ICE engines are gone.

    • https://www.congress.gov/bill/... [congress.gov]

      The people with the big checkbook, and no accountability.

  • Not the first (Score:5, Informative)

    by ISayWeOnlyToBePolite ( 721679 ) on Thursday February 03, 2022 @01:17AM (#62232833)

    This has been tried in Sweden https://hardware.slashdot.org/... [slashdot.org] and then Germany and Los Angeles https://tech.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Keick ( 252453 )

      They aren't claiming first in the World, but first in the US. I'm pretty sure that's why the title of the post starts with "First US Mile ..."

      • From the second link above:

        The technology has been tried in Sweden and, in 2017, on a one-mile stretch near the Port of Los Angeles.

        I believe that Los Angeles is in the US, but I could be wrong. I have heard people joke about California not being in the US, but I think they were only joking.

        • To be fair, this is the first wireless charging road, the one in the link above is an overhead wire style, which makes WAY more sense than this.

  • Roads should not be energy dumps.

    With almost 4 million miles of roads in the US alone, there would enough room to replace most, if not all, of current energy sources with solar roadways.
  • FFS just plug the damned car in, okay? It's not that hard.

  • Linear induction motors (Score:3)

    by Miamicanes ( 730264 ) on Thursday February 03, 2022 @02:03AM (#62232887)

    How, exactly, is attempting to wirelessly charge a moving vehicle even remotely cost-effective or sane? Even if you use the electricity DIRECTLY to turn the cars into parts of a big linear induction motor (like Disney's WEDway Peoplemover), the net efficiency is low compared to pretty much anything that involves a direct connection to wires (like a catenary + pantograph, side rail, etc).

    Seriously. Just widen the damn road to add a lane each way, and enable vehicles that need to charge to move to the innermost lane, reach up or sideways, and draw power from a catenary wire or side rail for 10-30 minutes to charge.

    Wireless charging of vehicles in motion would NEVER get used, even if it worked, if drivers had to pay the full retail cost of all the electricity it took to get {n} joules INTO their car wirelessly. It would be like paying $70/gallon for gas if it were sprayed through the air (with ~5% actually ending up in the tank, and 95% ending up wasted) as you drove past a moving pump, compared to having a gas truck pull up next to you as you drove down a freeway to fill your tank like a fighter jet doing in-air refueling for $5/gallon (vs $3/gallon to stop & fill up "normally". People might pay a small premium (like a buck or two) for convenience & speed, but NOBODY will pay a literal order of magnitude more for it.

  • 'Member those cars on the plastic track we used to play with as kids? So now we're back to that, eh? Cool.

  • Nothing like building a highly complex high tech road in a city where infrastructure is literally falling apart in disrepair.

    America has a massive tax problem. The idea that money comes from nothing, tax rates are low, property taxes are low, infrastructure is insanely massive, properties have a low tax payer density, and that all leads to the ability to build something once and then watch it fail as no one has a budget to keep it maintained.

    More expensive roads is not the answer.

  • I want personal transportation to be flying — whether it is a "flying car", or a helicopter, or whatever. Had the $trillions spent on road-building and maintaining stayed in the taxpayer's pockets, perhaps, we would've had that by now. Or even decades ago...

    My office is only about 20 miles away from my house, for example — that's 20 minutes at the measly 60mph, which a flying vehicle can achieve easily. Yet, it takes me over an hour to get there by train — due to schedules and transfers,

    • Given the idiots you see out on the road when really all they have to do is watch in front of them to not run into things, you really want to see idiots zooming around in flying cars?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mi ( 197448 )

        you really want to see idiots zooming around in flying cars?

        Yes, it is much safer in the air. You — and the idiots — aren't confined to the paved road. Nor are you stuck in 2D — you can avoid a collision by ducking up or down as well as left or right. Indeed, your — and their — vehicles can be equipped with proximity-sensors and programmed to perform such ducking automatically.

        (The self-driving also becomes a much easier problem to solve in the air.)

        • You can dive down...and conflict a building or the ground. You can pull up...and conflict somebody in the lane stacked above you.
  • A battery powered bus has the advantage compared to a trolleybus that doesn't need infrastructure on the road. But if one has to use a new infrastructure to recharge them, explain why putting the proven ad effective overhead wire solution it's a bad idea.
    If you want some hi tech idea, you could use a computer vision system to reseat the trolley on the wires if the bus got detached from the line, instead of rely on the driver.

  • Instead of charging them, why not propel them? Cars have tons of iron.

  • We have mass corruption, our city is turning back into prarie and forest land, and most people wouldn't even think of visiting this hell hole, but look, we got "Lektrik Roadz"!!!1!

    Seriously, they should've done this in Los Angeles, or any other highly populated city with lots of traffic.

  • Elon bashed wireless charging years ago so the Tesla club is ready to pounce whenever the topic of wireless charging comes up to make sure the great prophet Elon remains infallible.

    In the real world wireless charging has advanced by leaps and bounds and now offers great advantages to supplement wired charging. But first, people need to update their knowledge on the efficiency of wireless charging. Companies such as Witricity are selling wireless systems that charge your car with transfer efficiencies

Slashdot Top Deals

"It's the best thing since professional golfers on 'ludes." -- Rick Obidiah

Close