If the road can be recharged, will the electric car owner still have the mileage mileage anxiety?
Editor’s note: This article is from “Future Car Daily” (WeChat public ID: auto-time), author: compile future car group.
Editor’s note: How far is the drone from us? It depends on the development of artificial intelligence, but energy is also an important factor. Is the car smart enough to go to cheer? Or let it replenish energy at any time? This is not an illusion, it is already a reality. This article is translated from The New York Times, author Clifford Krauss, originally titled Electric Roads Could Be a Path to a Driverless Future.
Translator | Zhang Yuan
In theory, electric vehicles can significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, the popularity of electric vehicles still faces enormous challenges: the price of batteries is high, the number of charging stations is small and the distribution is far away, and the time for charging cars is much longer than that at gas stations.
So many companies are researching how to make cars charge faster and last longer, but progress is slow and frustrating.
A small Israeli startup called Electreon has a unique idea: power the roads so they can be charged while the car is driving.
At the test site of a boarding school on the outskirts of Tel Aviv, the company placed a copper conductive coil under a 900-foot loop to wirelessly charge a Renault electric test vehicle on which it was driven.
Electreon plans to first provide charging services for Israeli city bus and shuttle routes, with the intention of reducing air pollution and reducing the country’s dependence on imported oil.
Electreon executives hope to gradually make “all-electric city transportation” a global future. Noam Ilan, the company’s co-founder and vice president of business, said: “This project has great potential and we hope to use it to promote the mass adoption of electric vehicles.”
Electreon is planning to implement two separate pilot projects.
The city of Tel Aviv and the local private bus company (Dan) are planning to deploy a mile of electrified roads by the end of the year and will gradually expand their power deployment to designated lanes around the city to provide charging services for buses and trucks. Future service areas will also cover autonomous vehicles. The Israeli Ministry of Transport has provided $2 million in start-up funding for the project, while Dan contributed an electric bus and invested $3.3 million in Electroreon.
At the same time, Sweden is planning a similar project on Gotland in the Baltic Sea, using Electroreon’s technology to charge an airport shuttle bus and an electric truck for Dan, with a project cost of 12 million. In the US dollar, most of the funds are provided by the Swedish government. The Swedish government plans to spend more than $3 billion to build an electrified highway that is more than a thousand miles. The experimental project in Gotland is the first step in the plan.
In May of this year, Electroreon announced that it won the bid for the Swedish project. By offering different technical solutions, it defeated Alstom and Volvo in the global heavyweight company. This victory has greatly enhanced. Electreon’s reputation.
Electreon’s victory in Sweden this time is very meaningful, after several other companies have tried the charging road project, but the results have been minimal. So far, wireless charging technology has been mainly used when vehicles are parked.
Electric vehicles are becoming more popular around the world. But apart from China, the development of electric buses in other countries is almost blank. In China, electric buses have government subsidies and other incentives, and their applications are already very broad. However, there are only a few hundred electric buses operating in the United States, which is much behind China and Europe. The application of electric trucks worldwide is even more backward.
If the economic feasibility is demonstrated through the above series of projects, Electroreon will revolutionize urban public transport. The company proposed the concept of “smart road”: wirelessly transmitting electricity to the road and charging the vehicle through a lightweight receiver mounted under the bus chassis. Of course these vehicles need to be on a fixed route. Run on; this type of charging can also be spread to trucks and other vehicles.
Dan Becker, head of the Climate Security Campaign in Washington, said: “This is a technical and financial challenge, but if it succeeds, it may really change the rules of the game in the electric car industry,” his organization is committed to. Advocate to reduce vehicle emissions. Dan said: “There is no need to charge the plug in this car, and it will also reduce the size of the battery. The battery is the most expensive part of the electric car, and the weight of the car can be reduced.”
The famous international consulting firm Sullivan predicts that by 2025, Electroreon will lay electrified roads in more than 150 locations in Israel and Europe. The consulting firm believes that Electroreon’s technology has great potential for environmental protection. According to one study, nearly two-thirds of vehicles travel in cities, and nearly a quarter of carbon emissions come from transportation.
The operation of the Electreon system requires the car to be equipped with a battery, but the battery can be made smaller and lighter because the vehicle is continuously charged, so the minimum battery capacity can meet the demand.
Executors say that road reconstruction is also easy, and nearly two-thirds of a mile can be built in one night. The forklift first digs a shallow ditch on the road. The other car then installs the charging line in the ditch and then re-uses the asphalt. The power is transported from the grid to the road through power inverters installed on both sides of the road. However, once these lines are laid, it is not easy to dig up the roads.
Future electric buses may become more economical, as batteries for electric buses cost $250,000, or more, for cities like Tel Aviv that have more than 1,000 buses. A huge expense.
Israeli officials are very interested in this, but they are not entirely convinced. “I don’t think the technology has been stable,” said Ofer Bloch, president of the state-owned power company, Israel Power, but he added, “The things they do may be successful someday.”
Electreon was founded in 2013 by two engineers at Elbit Systems and has global operations. It is a well-known aerospace company in Israel with approximately 20 employees. Their labs look like temporary builds, like a high school electronics lab. The charging device for the test track is fixed to the back seat of a car with a bicycle bracket and metal rod. The wall is surfboard and you can relax at the nearby Mediterranean beach.
Ilan said that such a break will stimulate creativity. He believes that Electreon’s potential source of income can be said to be uncapped, such as charging road tolls, charging car users will also pay. He said that the income earned may be shared with local public utilities.
Michael Webber, an energy expert at the University of Texas at Austin, warned that a major breakthrough in battery technology could eclipse Electroreon’s technology. He also said that Electroreon needed to prove their wireless charging traffic system, which is more economical, cleaner and more efficient than compressed natural gas or electric buses that already run on Seattle, Berlin and many other urban roads.
“But we have to admit that maybe this new technology will be better,” Webber added. “I think Israel and Sweden’s attempts in this regard are worthy of recognition.”
Ilan says his system is more advantageous than a car that uses compressed natural gas because natural gas combustion can cause a greenhouse effect. He said that although overhead power lines can be used, “it looks too ugly, no one wants.”
Ilan said: “Automatically driving vehicles and trucks will be our future. Their batteries are small and do not require long-term control, including drivers will no longer exist.”