Ever since my interest in Tesla started about 4 years ago I thought there had to be a way to charge the cars while travelling the roads. Streetcars do this today but with wires but many companies have been working on wireless charging over the last few years so I had thought - why couldn't we charge through our roads? It appears that someone had the same idea and is in the process of trying this. See the link below for details: http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/techandscience/uk-testing-wireless-charging-for-electric-cars/ar-BBlFsx3?ocid=spartandhp If there is anyone in the UK that knows more about this or has the ability to try it, please report in here.
It's not very viable, except in places you might have intense stop and go traffic (city cores for example would work out pretty well for this tech, although still would be incredibly expensive). The reason is that the fastest wireless charging standards are extremely tiny compared to outputs required to sustain highway speeds, and not only that there's not much wiggle room for positioning for high-speed wireless charging. A car may receive charge for a tiny fraction of a second. It'd be extremely expensive to maintain and to pump that energy out for not much benefit unless this company has made significant advances in distance and alignment issues at EV-grade power levels. Cities however have had great success with wireless charging busses, under bus stops. Many Korean cities have busses with maybe 10-20 mile range batteries, that can run 24/7 because they'll receive a small top-up charge on every bus stop. This not only substantially reduces the cost of the bus's cost (small battery = cheaper than ICE), but it saves significantly on fuel consumption in a stop and go city situation. It'd be possible to replicate this slightly with city traffic though would be much harder without advances in omnidirectional high-power wireless power.
