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Electric car w/ 20kW inductive charging (no cables! you park over it!)

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I just saw a Fifth Gear TV show (that's the other British car show, and frankly a lot better IMO), and there was featured a land speed record attempt for an electric car.

This is not news per se since it happened a year ago, but I haven't seen much coverage of its innovative battery charging system.

I can't find any footage of the Fifth Gear episode on the web, though here is an Autoweek coverage of it -
204.185mph in an electric car - a new world land speed record - autocar.co.uk - YouTube

The Autoweek coverage is not very informative, sadly, but the Fifth Gear episode is. (you will just have to find it some other way)

According to Fifth Gear, the car has 30kWh of storage, composed of two batteries each with about 2,500 lithium-ion cells.

The car is charged inductively... no wires. It uses a 20kW charger to charge the battery inductively by simply parking over the top of the charging pad... and it charges from flat up to full in 90 minutes. 20kW is of course the same power as Tesla's HWPC... but there is no cable to plug in.

Here is a 3yr-old press release regarding the car. The induction charging system is manufactured by HaloIPT Ltd. There's quite a lot detail in the press release.
Drayson Racing Technologies : News : Announcement - Details of all-electric race car partners

Interestingly, exactly two months after that press release from Drayson, HaloIPT was acquired by Qualcomm:
Qualcomm buys wireless electric car charging tech Tech News and Analysis

Qualcomm seem to be pretty enthusiastic about it:
Overview | Halo | Qualcomm

Anyhow... would be nice if one of the "cards" Tesla is holding that we don't know about yet... would be an adaptation of this inductive charging system, that allowed cars that aren't parked in garages to easily charge up. Very important for appealing to all those markets that aren't houses with built-in garages. Perhaps there will be some patent-swapping going on between Tesla and Qualcomm.

A single layer of the 10% larger "new tech" batteries in a new pack that also included an induction pad on the bottom could have decent capacity and still be just as thick (or "thin" depending on your POV) as the current pack form factor.

Just some late night pondering :)
 
Inductive charging is really cool tech, and has a lot of uses, but so far what I've seen just isn't as good as a good old fashioned wire when it comes to charging a car. Induction systems are less efficient, even when the device being charged is placed very well within the charging zone, and as you deviate from the optimal point the efficiency drops further.

With a phone, remote control, laptop, or other personal electrically powered device, the power needed is pretty small, so a little inefficiency is worth the convenience of not having to find the correct wire, and fiddling with the port on the device to get the thing plugged in, and being tethered while charging. Cars don't move at all when they are charging, as the movement required to be useful is far greater than an inductive charger's range. The power lost to inefficiency is greater, as the total power required for a car is far greater than something like a phone, so the same percentage loss equates to a greater total loss.

Unless there is a significant advance in wireless charging (which isn't out of the question), plugging in a car is worth the 10-30 seconds for the significant energy savings it provides.
 
Wireless charging is a future of EV. And current tech is plenty good enough. Problem is that EV-producers had to actually implement it as a commercial product. A let the consumers to choose what type of charging they would prefer, but I quite sure most will opt for cableless solution.
 
Inductive charging is really cool tech, and has a lot of uses, but so far what I've seen just isn't as good as a good old fashioned wire when it comes to charging a car. Induction systems are less efficient, even when the device being charged is placed very well within the charging zone, and as you deviate from the optimal point the efficiency drops further.

With a phone, remote control, laptop, or other personal electrically powered device, the power needed is pretty small, so a little inefficiency is worth the convenience of not having to find the correct wire, and fiddling with the port on the device to get the thing plugged in, and being tethered while charging. Cars don't move at all when they are charging, as the movement required to be useful is far greater than an inductive charger's range. The power lost to inefficiency is greater, as the total power required for a car is far greater than something like a phone, so the same percentage loss equates to a greater total loss.

Unless there is a significant advance in wireless charging (which isn't out of the question), plugging in a car is worth the 10-30 seconds for the significant energy savings it provides.


++1
 
Wireless charging is a future of EV. And current tech is plenty good enough. Problem is that EV-producers had to actually implement it as a commercial product. A let the consumers to choose what type of charging they would prefer, but I quite sure most will opt for cableless solution.

The same is true of hydrogen. Not a wireless soliton, but the "convenience" of paying the equivalent of $10 gallon of gasoline for a fossil fuel product (natural gas) that can refuel in minutes.
 
The same is true of hydrogen. Not a wireless soliton, but the "convenience" of paying the equivalent of $10 gallon of gasoline for a fossil fuel product (natural gas) that can refuel in minutes.
??? Wait WHAT???

With wireless charging one sacrifice few percent of total power. Should we "save" those few percent[SUP]this[/SUP] and have less convenience? If your answer is YES...

If electricity is problem, much more effective solution would be to give up performance sedans like Teslas and drive econoboxes like Spark EV. Check Spark's Wh/mile... Or even better, one could go with public transportation. In both cases savings would be more substantial.

There are environmentalists who hate Tesla and think that there is no need for all that luxury and convenience. Why waste energy? Moreover, there ones that think that world would be better place without humans. Looks like you are one of those.

As for your pathetic hydrogen remark, going gas station(filling station) is absolutely backwards of what wireless charging represents. One waste time instead of saving it. But you know that. You are trying to misrepresent mine words with totally ridiculous idea. Pathetic.

Anyhow, adding couple solar panels to the roof will more than cover for any losses from wireless charging...
 
Wireless charging is a future of EV. And current tech is plenty good enough. Problem is that EV-producers had to actually implement it as a commercial product. A let the consumers to choose what type of charging they would prefer, but I quite sure most will opt for cableless solution.
With current technology I doubt that most people would opt to spend 10 to 20% more on their energy consumption to save 10 seconds in connection time.

However, I do believe wireless charging is in the future of EV adoption when there are more EVs than ICE vehicles. At that point something like dynamic inductive charging, where EVs charge while driving, will be a game changer. At that point someone may figure out an economical method to plow charging coils into existing roadbeds. With dynamic inductive charging available in major highways expensive, heavy batteries can be downsized and sized to get you from home over secondary roads that don't have the dynamic inductive charging infrastructure to major highways that do.

Larry
 
With current technology I doubt that most people would opt to spend 10 to 20% more on their energy consumption to save 10 seconds in connection time.

Some will definitely choose convenience. There was a celebrity, do not remember who, but an old guy. He got Volt and his complaint was that he do not like daily routine of plugging it in. Or, another example, I read it on this forum, TMC, so a lady had corporate Volt, gas also paid by a company. She never plugged her Volt in. I doubt she was trying to save couple buck on electricity bill, but she did care about her convenience. And there are rumors of fleet Volts that were rarely plugged. Someone around here even suggested that such Volts could be a good deal because battery was barely used.

Current crowd buying EVs are an early adopters, most are "environmentally conscious", it is not a big deal for them to tolerate some inconvenience. But as an EV adoption will grow toward mainstream consumer crowd many people will complain. I think eventually most will choose wireless charging at home, but even if you are right and that would be only a minority, an option to have such option is better than not to have a choice.

PS. If family lives in a decent house, I think EVs should take less than 50% of total energy consumption. And roof solar should cover 100% of that anyway, well ideally.

PPS. There was a funny video, a comedian(EV hater) was making fun of hypothetical couple who were fighting over who "plug it in" today... Too bad I could not find it.
 
There was a system, several years ago, that used a paddle at the cable end. It fit into a slot for induction of power.
Paddle was about 8 by 10 inches and smooth; no contacts. Seemed OK and eliminated 'contact anxiety'.
Paddle at cable end is just stupid. Exactly same inconvenience as conductive coupling.
Wireless charging makes sense when you don't even notice it.

About 10 seconds needed to plug in .. let's see: one needs to go to cable holder and reach for connector, unfold the cable, open charging port, plug in and check everything is fine.
In the morning one needs to repeat the process in reverse - go to charging port, unplug, take care of cable, close the port.

10 seconds? Who do you kidding? I'd say half a minute (15s plug out + 15s plug in) per day. In two weeks those times add up to 5 minutes. If there are any "strange things happening" with cables, add at least 5 minutes.

And it adds up to time it takes to fill up gas once per few weeks.
 
Assuming 20% loss, on a full charge for the 85KWh pack, and considering this 10% is not only on the 85KWh, but also added to existing charging losses, we're talking close to 20kWh... that's a LOT of loss, in fact it means that you would waste more electricity through inductive charging than it takes to fully charge a Volt, almost enough to charge a Leaf.

As for the paddle chargers, all the convenience of plugging in, with all the efficiency of inductive chargers... oh, wait...

If I have to drive my car on to a special pad in my garage to charge, forget inductive, I would much rather that it contains a motorized arm that automatically extends up and connects to charging contacts on the bottom of the car. Not really any harder to implement than inductive charging, and far more efficient.
 
Basic question. Where does the list power go? Heat in the inductive coils on both ends?
Exactly. All lost power is just heat, inductive losses are heat in the coils, and radiated to the environment. Existing charging losses are heat in the chargers, cords, and cells.
(technically all the non lost power also eventually goes to heat, but you have more fun getting it there ;) )
 
Even with a 10% loss, it's still way more efficient than an ICE. If this is the tech that will get some people to switch, I say great.

I'm an efficiency miser and even I have to admit I'm drawn to this. I have a pretty tight garage and it's a pain to have to step over and around the cord sticking out the back of the Tesla to walk through the garage. Add in the fact that I have two small kids and this takes on a pretty strong appeal.
 
No. Only about 99.9% of it goes to heat. The rest goes to sound.:tongue: (and if you're up on your thermodynamics, you can dispute that silly comment as well).
well a large portion of it goes to motion, and sound is another form of motion... but it's all heat eventually. (yeah entropy!)
As far as I'm concerned the important part isn't where it goes, it's how much use it is to me before it gets there. propulsion and charging losses both go to heat eventually, but one benefits me, the other does not.