Experiment charges your Tesla with footsteps

[Lump]

Experiment charges your Tesla with footsteps

Eventually, you might not have to find a charging station when you park your electric car downtown -- pedestrians could do the work instead. Pavegen has teamed up with Tesla to show off an experimental charger that tops up your EV through kinetic energy from footsteps. You'd need "several hundred thousand" steps just to drive a Model S for 20 minutes in a downtown area, the company tellsPSFK, so you won't power your vehicle just by running in place. However, this isn't as daunting a challenge as it sounds. Many urban hubs are chock-full of foot traffic, and a sufficiently long stretch of sidewalk could speed up the charging time. It'll be a long while before you see this in action. Pavegen is crowdfunding the technology, and it'll depend on adoption from cities and corporate offices after that. If all goes well, though, people power might be all you need to complete your commute home.

 

[Chipper]

Probably a much better idea than solar paneled roadways.

 

[deonb]

This is utterly unrealistic. Look 6 seconds in - he closed a Model S door handle by hand. Tsk, tsk...

 

[Zarwin]

Utter nonsense. They are fishing for investors, and that video is a complete lie. Each tile can only generate 7 watts during a footfall, so very short 7 watt bursts, averaging far less than that. They show two tiles being used, so best case, if someone were to stomp back and forth on those tiles as fast as they can, you're still looking at far less than 7 watts sustained, I would imagine. Perhaps about the same as an iPhone charger. The overhead to charge a Model S is in the 300 watt neighborhood, so unless I'm bad at math, 50 tiles would be needed to be constantly used, just to get to the point of powering the car up to charge, then a couple hundred more to actually charge the car.

PaveGen - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Edit: Look at the 25s mark in the video. After connecting the two 12v, 7 watt(burst) panels to the car they show a shot of the center screen implying the car is charging... at over 2000 watts, lol.

 

[santana338]

As unrealistic as this is, I've always wondered if I could connect my bike trainer to my Model S somehow to charge with the wattage I am putting out on a stationary bike. I know the wattage is low, but it would take the energy from the workout and do something with it.

I could imagine an entire spin class charging my car so I could get home.

 

[the dude]

As unrealistic as this is, I've always wondered if I could connect my bike trainer to my Model S somehow to charge with the wattage I am putting out on a stationary bike. I know the wattage is low, but it would take the energy from the workout and do something with it.

I could imagine an entire spin class charging my car so I could get home.