road powered vehicles.

[JohnRoberts]

I have been ranting about this for years as the most efficient way to supply power electric vehicles. Putting electrical coild beneath the roadway and using this to transmit power to the vehicle wirelessly.

Update #1... In 2002 US patent  6421600 was issued, so not a crazy idea.

Update #2,,  In Italy some electric buses use a german system to wirelessly charge batteries at bus stops (clever).

Update #3,,  http://www.nydailynews.com/autos/road-recharges-electric-vehicle-article-1.1425624  Two new Korean buses charge wirelessly while moving.

While perhaps not crazy, this is very expensive infrastructure wise to wire up ling enough stretches of road to power vehicles. It seems to me that if a local government invests in delivering power to a roadway, why not allow citizens to use this common infrastructure for  personal transportation?

I expect very dense cities to consider something like this to reduce pollution at least in the inner city.

JR

 

[emrr]

I love the idea.  I suppose the hydrothermal infrastructure in Iceland is the closest parallel  I've seen personally, and that's a tiny footprint compared to anything here.  The argument for is long term, the argument against is primarily short term.  Short term has kept electric transmission above ground in places it would appear to work underground in the long term, and everyone moans when an ice storm takes everything down. 

 

[JohnRoberts]

Without some major breakthrough in battery technology i see modern electric cars as glorified golf carts. An old technology that died under it's own weight almost a century ago.

Tesla is making waves with brilliant execution, selling a premium vehicle to wealthy customers. I still don't see this as a broad solution.

Wiring the roadways only makes sense in densely populated cities and is currently being pursued is parts of Asia that have those conditions.  Might make sense in europe, if they didn't already spend their money on solar and wind farms. The US is mostly to spread out to use this technology Except for maybe NYC...

JR

PS: Elon's hyper loop is a gas... the guy who re-invented the electric car is reinventing the pneumatic mail tube. I think he gets his design ideas from the museum. Note: this doesn't mean the idea isn't good, just not very fresh.

 

[iomegaman]

Super conductors...not feasible yet, but the technology is on the brink...there was a TED demonstration where the guy used a super-cooled sapphire disc and defied gravity because one of the properties of SC is they do not like energy loss due to magnetic interference...

http://www.ted.com/talks/boaz_almog_levitates_a_superconductor.html

 

[PRR]

> Elon's hyper loop ... reinventing the pneumatic mail tube.

That was one thought. The drive-through-bank money-canisters still work this way.

The other is that, back in the mid-1800s, some guy did run a pneumatic subway under the street in NYC. It made sense because coal/steam locomotives in tunnels is nasty. It carried people for a few months, mostly thrill-seekers. He wanted backers to expand the service, but got back-slap from myriad vested interests, and generally yawns. The tunnel was bricked-up, then re-discovered a few years ago.

1960s Popular Science (and much sci-fi) explored evacuated tube transport. With an incredibly good drill, you could tunnel coast to coast on a parabola; with low-friction wheels it would coast to high speed then coast to a stop just short of the end. Minor added power to cover losses. You can build very high speeds on 1% grades (see recent train wreck) so NYC-LA might be "only" 15 miles deep under Denver; perhaps nicer to take 2% at first, 0.1% to maintain speed, maybe only a mile or two under. Still a HELL of a drilling operation.

We are never going to see electricity under our roads here. It's all mud and large rocks just under the pavement (my road unusually has a foot of sand, the guy who planned it also lives here). Over winter the frost grinds the rocks against the frozen mud and the pavement. In Spring Thaw it all melts at different rates, leaving potholes of no-support. Traffic over 5 tons is banned for a couple months because it would goosh the mud-slush out between the rocks even worse.

One thing has changed. Metering power consumption used to be impractical. Now your ECU (MCU?) would count the KWH inside a secure subroutine, and report via wi-fi or cell-fone to a billing office. Don't pay your bill, your car goes dead/weak when you get on the road. (Need enough storage or limp-mode so deadbeats can get OFF the road.)
_________________________________________

> Super conductors...not feasible yet

They are right around the corner. Just like fusion power too cheap to meter. Flying cars. Personal jet-packs. Car-Phones. (Oh yeah, we did get that one, tho we not supposed to use them when driving a car.)

 

[soundcollage]

design a rugged, modular solar panel system that can be used instead of pavement, that powers said induction coils and lasts longer than our current quick to crumble roads. plenty of job creation and no lost work for construction crews. i have read that an appropriately located 100 square mile solar array would meet the power needs of the US (though, have not fact checked that). there are 61,000 square miles of pavement in the US.

 

[Spiritworks]

Tesla is making waves with brilliant execution, selling a premium vehicle to wealthy customers. I still don't see this as a broad solution.
JR

I'm seeing several Teslas on the roads, per day, around here. John knows the area - wealthy NYC suburb. With my electrical contracting business, we're starting to get requests for installing charging stations in a lot of the new/remodel home jobs that we're quoting.
These cars are expensive, and the people buying them are not concerned with being green, only with making a statement.
Personally, I don't feel it's my responsibility to provide tax dollars for this type of infrastructure. Though I'd rather those dollars stayed here instead of being used to rebuild places destroyed by wars around the world...................

 

[Gus]

What is the coupling efficiency of the coils in the road to the coil in the car compared to an metal core transformer?

I would guess much less than plugging in and if so how is that "green"?

 

[JohnRoberts]

What is the coupling efficiency of the coils in the road to the coil in the car compared to an metal core transformer?

I would guess much less than plugging in and if so how is that "green"?

The article I rad about the korean bus stated something like 90% transfer efficiency. It seems they could sense when a vehicle is present and cycle on/off but there are losses. No free lunch.

I still like the conductive tires/road surface idea... I love the smell of ozone in the morning.  8)

JR

 

[JohnRoberts]

design a rugged, modular solar panel system that can be used instead of pavement, that powers said induction coils and lasts longer than our current quick to crumble roads. plenty of job creation and no lost work for construction crews. i have read that an appropriately located 100 square mile solar array would meet the power needs of the US (though, have not fact checked that). there are 61,000 square miles of pavement in the US.

I found one website pimping solar arguing that a 100 mile long by 100 mile wide solar array could make 50x the electricity used by CA but that is 10,000 square miles not 100... and I didn't check their math.

I could imagine solar shingles covering most roofs in some distant future, with more insulation to cut down on heating/cooling losses.

Solar road surfaces seem even less practical than my idea. ;D  "Hello boss, sorry I can't come to work today, it's cloudy and the road is not putting out enough electricity." And then how do you drive home at night? Vampires would absolutely hate it...

JR

 

[emrr]

It's all about loan terms isn't it?  How many points can you afford to buy up front, today, to keep future costs lower?  Or do you need to pay more over time to keep it cheaper now?  To what end? 

 

[JohnRoberts]

Tesla is making waves with brilliant execution, selling a premium vehicle to wealthy customers. I still don't see this as a broad solution.
JR

I'm seeing several Teslas on the roads, per day, around here. John knows the area - wealthy NYC suburb. With my electrical contracting business, we're starting to get requests for installing charging stations in a lot of the new/remodel home jobs that we're quoting.
These cars are expensive, and the people buying them are not concerned with being green, only with making a statement.
Personally, I don't feel it's my responsibility to provide tax dollars for this type of infrastructure. Though I'd rather those dollars stayed here instead of being used to rebuild places destroyed by wars around the world...................

The ugly secret about zero emissions cars is that the energy needs to come from somewhere. They are closing down nuclear power plants left and right, and Harry Reid is still stonewalling the waste storage plans, even though they are mandated by law.

Solar and wind power sound good on paper but are expensive. What is the expected life for these big installations? As usual the government thinks they are smarter than individuals and spend our money for us.  In Europe where solar and wind are more mature (think Holland windmills), consumer electricity costs are as much as double or triple in some countries. Not unusual for consumer electricity rates to subsidize industrial rates to hang onto local manufacturing jobs.

Ironic how the Chinese government spent their yuan subsidizing manufacturing side, so now they own the low cost solar market... I see lots of western government (our) money supporting buying chinese panels for western companies to instal in the west...  Europe momentarily threatened duties on imported panels to support local manufacturing but China responded with a threat of counter duties against european wine, and the wine makers lobby squashed the solar panel makers with their old school political power. Crony capitalism exists even in socialist leaning nations.  8)

If I had too much money I'd like to own a Tesla, but I sure don't like the idea of my tax dollars supporting Richey Riches buying them.

JR

PS: Yup I know Southern CT.. Lived in Westport for several years just a stop or two up the railroad line from Stamford. Now that CT has medical marijuana legalized good luck... 

 

[JohnRoberts]

It's all about loan terms isn't it?  How many points can you afford to buy up front, today, to keep future costs lower?  Or do you need to pay more over time to keep it cheaper now?  To what end?

I wish it was a simple undistorted actuarial exercise, but the government thumb on the scale changes the math.

In CA there are so many subsidies that some leases for electric vehicles are virtually free after tax breaks and everything. But there is no free lunch in life. The rest of us, or our children pay.

Tesla has adressed the battery replacement issue with some kind of warranty swap. But most electric vehicles have this expensive major drive train component that must  be replaced after several years. Imagine a ten year loan on a car with a 7 year battery pack.  The popular hope is that government money thrown at research will magically revolutionize battery technology as if the golf cart industry hasn't wanted that for 100 years.

In my judgement solar panel technology is still not mature, and I expect higher efficiency/lower cost at some future time when it might make more sense. Wind power, well that too is very old technology and large machinery with moving parts that will wear out and require maintenance. Not to mention the wind is not where we need the electricity. Super conductors would help for moving power around  if/when we perfect them. Think of the great science fiction disaster flick when terrorists disable the cooling machinery and the super conducting power lines turn resistive. 

I would rather see effort into the low hanging fruit, reduce home heating/cooling losses, but stop trying to dictate where the future will take us.. only it knows where we are going. Energy is still cheap for now, we have time to come up with futuristic solution when we get closer to needing them, we always have before.

JR

 

[JohnRoberts]

> Elon's hyper loop ... reinventing the pneumatic mail tube.

That was one thought. The drive-through-bank money-canisters still work this way.

;D ;D

The other is that, back in the mid-1800s, some guy did run a pneumatic subway under the street in NYC. It made sense because coal/steam locomotives in tunnels is nasty. It carried people for a few months, mostly thrill-seekers. He wanted backers to expand the service, but got back-slap from myriad vested interests, and generally yawns. The tunnel was bricked-up, then re-discovered a few years ago.

Not the first or last time that has happened I fear...

1960s Popular Science (and much sci-fi) explored evacuated tube transport. With an incredibly good drill, you could tunnel coast to coast on a parabola; with low-friction wheels it would coast to high speed then coast to a stop just short of the end. Minor added power to cover losses. You can build very high speeds on 1% grades (see recent train wreck) so NYC-LA might be "only" 15 miles deep under Denver; perhaps nicer to take 2% at first, 0.1% to maintain speed, maybe only a mile or two under. Still a HELL of a drilling operation.

I remember that but it never seemed practical. At least Elon's above ground mail chute is doable. In CA the establishment wants to finish their high speed rail to nowhere. They could build Elon's idea, leap frog the high speed rail technology, and get money back but I don't see that happening in LaLa land..

We are never going to see electricity under our roads here. It's all mud and large rocks just under the pavement (my road unusually has a foot of sand, the guy who planned it also lives here). Over winter the frost grinds the rocks against the frozen mud and the pavement. In Spring Thaw it all melts at different rates, leaving potholes of no-support. Traffic over 5 tons is banned for a couple months because it would goosh the mud-slush out between the rocks even worse.

Maine is not the target demographic... Maybe if the original Tesla's ideas about wireless transmission of power got dusted off.

One thing has changed. Metering power consumption used to be impractical. Now your ECU (MCU?) would count the KWH inside a secure subroutine, and report via wi-fi or cell-fone to a billing office. Don't pay your bill, your car goes dead/weak when you get on the road. (Need enough storage or limp-mode so deadbeats can get OFF the road.)
_________________________________________

> Super conductors...not feasible yet

They are right around the corner. Just like fusion power too cheap to meter. Flying cars. Personal jet-packs. Car-Phones. (Oh yeah, we did get that one, tho we not supposed to use them when driving a car.)

I am still optimistic about future developments in this area. but government can't make it happen just because they want it to... Flying to the moon was a relatively straightforward extrapolation of existing technology compared to some of the current dream projects.

As usual thanks PRR for the rest of the story...

JR