Plugless Charging

[RDoc]

Deer on roadways are not that uncommon around here either.

For 2 Teslas moving at 75 mph, if the first one hits a 150lb deer in the worst case, such that it bounces straight forward down the road from the car, the lead car will slow by about 5 mph. The rear car will close the gap between them by less than 4 ft assuming the rear car starts braking 1/4 sec after the front cars slows.

If the deer does go over the top of the car or bounces off the side the distance closed will be less.

If the deer goes through the windshield and remains in the car, the car will slow by less than 2 mph.

 

[JeffK]

For 2 Teslas moving at 75 mph, if the first one hits a 150lb deer in the worst case, such that it bounces straight forward down the road from the car, the lead car will slow by about 5 mph. The rear car will close the gap between them by less than 4 ft assuming the rear car starts braking 1/4 sec after the front cars slows.

If the deer does go over the top of the car or bounces off the side the distance closed will be less.

If the deer goes through the windshield and remains in the car, the car will slow by less than 2 mph.

That's wishful thinking...

look at the platooning at 4:22. Deer don't either bounce off or go over the car, sometimes they bounce up and throught the windshield and/or cause airbags to deploy. Thing stopped car not slowed down car.

Do you think all the cars in that platoon would have been able to stop in time should the front or even a middle car stop suddenly without notice?

 

[EaglesPDX]

A vehicle, particularly a truck or bus crossing the divider and hitting the lead car head on would be a serious problem, but that's a pretty rare occurrence on a modern highway.

And the smart road system would be detecting that on the other side of the median and slowing traffic immediately. I would think there would be matching smart charging lanes in the far left on both sides of the median.

This TED Hour with Sebastion Thrun of the Google Car Project explains the speed and density benefits.

 

[drj3]

Not only will I not be spending $2000+ on an plugless charger, I doubt I will even spend the money for a level 2 charger in my garage. I currently drive a Ford Fusion Energi and my usual commute uses 2-3 kW per day in the summer and 4-5kW in the winter using the heater. It easily recharges in 3-5 hours off a 15A circuit. I don't think the Model 3 is likely to use much more energy (perhaps less), so with 10+ hours a day available to charge at home and a larger battery to work with, I don't see any reason to invest in a faster charger. (I've put 1800+ miles on the Fusion and am still on the first tank of gas.)

 

[Model 3]

if the first one hits a 150lb deer in the worst case

I guarantee you that this one here weighing a bit more then 150lb - or even 150kg.

 

[melindav]

I am pretty sure that's a moose, not deer
deer 150lbs, elk 750lbs, moose 1500lbs - any coming thru your windshield and sitting in your front seat would ruin both both of yours and his day.

 

[Johan]

Sorry I must be late to the party? What do deer, moose and elk have to do with wireless charging in the road???

 

[BluestarE3]

Sorry I must be late to the party? What do deer, moose and elk have to do with wireless charging in the road???

They can be harnessed to turn the generators to power the wireless charging grid in the roadways?

 

[Model 3]

I am pretty sure that's a moose, not deer

You are absolute correct, but they tend to run out in front of your car just like deers

... and he did ask:

What kind of animal are you thinking about? Unless it's something like an elephant or rhino, the car that hit it won't slow very much at all.

... and a moose - that we call "elg", and is not the same as you in the NA call elk - will absolutely get the car to slow down quite fast. And are not that uncommon on the roads around here.

 

[Electric700]

...To cut to the chase for my situation. Wired charging = $1.80 per day. Wireless comes in at $1.96. That's what's happening to me in real time.

So $0.16 extra for wireless charging. That's pretty good I think. Are you charging a Chevrolet Volt or something else with Plugless Power? How do you like it overall?

 

[JeffK]

So $0.16 extra for wireless charging. That's pretty good I think. Are you charging a Chevrolet Volt or something else with Plugless Power? How do you like it overall?

You shouldn't think in exacts... but it's the cost of the system plus an additional 10% of what it would cost for wired. For him that's $0.16 per day. If he were to drive the same distance seven days a week then that's $1.12

 

[Garlan Garner]

So $0.16 extra for wireless charging. That's pretty good I think. Are you charging a Chevrolet Volt or something else with Plugless Power? How do you like it overall?

I charge my MS

 

[UberEV1]

This makes pretty much no sense at all. Just calculate out the resource consumption requirements to make such a lane and where they would have to go, and sort out the energy losses.

Remember, most cars are parked, doing nothing, for 22 to 23.5 hours a day. It makes sense to deliver energy to them then as opposed to the fraction of time they are in motion.

This conclusion makes sense, today, when the average car is used 5% off the time. However, what about a future where 50% of the cars on the road might be Uber-like self-driving cars, where the business model would dictate that higher utilization is better. In this case, these cars could be driving people around non-stop with virtually no need ever to pull over and charge (may allow up to 100% utilization of the vehicle). Just a thought.

 

[techmaven]

This conclusion makes sense, today, when the average car is used 5% off the time. However, what about a future where 50% of the cars on the road might be Uber-like self-driving cars, where the business model would dictate that higher utilization is better. In this case, these cars could be driving people around non-stop with virtually no need ever to pull over and charge (may allow up to 100% utilization of the vehicle). Just a thought.

Do you really believe that the utilization rate is even throughout a day, even in that future scenario? Even with future ride sharing services, the idea that people will not own cars is one thing, but the reservation levels would have to be quite high in order to make it likely that you can make it to work. The difference is that the additional car, especially for someone that isn't working could be handled by a ride sharing service. Utilization rates would increase, but that doesn't help the wireless case, since there would still be a wide variance between peak and non-peak utilization and therefore, many vehicles would have a chance to charge. As it stands right now, to drive 200 or so miles, a Model S can charge in 5 hours. That's roughly 5 times the current utilization rate with about 1/5th of a day in charging.

The energy transfer losses is quite high with wireless. A robotic plug solves this problem quite neatly without the massive energy loss. Maybe one day, when renewables are abundant, then paying that much extra money to waste that level of power makes sense.

Wireless charging of busses on predicable bus stop routes can make sense. The energy density of batteries might make it quite difficult, but the numbers would have to be crunched... intuitively, it might make sense, but the case is close enough that one really does still need to run the numbers.

Power in the roads almost never makes sense in the foreseeable future. Pack swap would make more sense before power in the roads.

 

[jkk_]

I have yet understood how "Uber-self-driving cars" will transform the daily schedule of people so much that the utilization will change from the "work commuter schedule" utilization to "using all day long".

 

[Electric700]

I charge my MS

That's awesome, and congratulations! I didn't realize that Plugless Power had already completed some Model S installs, as I thought the first ones might be closer to the end of this month or next.

 

[Garlan Garner]

That's awesome, and congratulations! I didn't realize that Plugless Power had already completed some Model S installs, as I thought the first ones might be closer to the end of this month or next.

Plugless? No. not yet.

 

[smilepak]

1) Plugless charging is too slow. Make it almost as bad as just plug into the 110v outlet. Not worth the money

2) Get into the routine of step out of car, plug in comes naturally after awhile. Are we as a society getting lazier and lazier that we need plugless charging? lol. It sound like a nice thing, but seriously....it's only worth it if that occurs while driving on the street. To have in your garage...to me its silly

 

[cronosx]

1) Plugless charging is too slow. Make it almost as bad as just plug into the 110v outlet. Not worth the money

2) Get into the routine of step out of car, plug in comes naturally after awhile. Are we as a society getting lazier and lazier that we need plugless charging? lol. It sound like a nice thing, but seriously....it's only worth it if that occurs while driving on the street. To have in your garage...to me its silly

1) it depend of how many km you do every days, a 110v outlet may be good for everyday use, mine will surely do.
2) it's not only a "lazy" question, not everyone has a closed garage or similar, and having a cable hanging somewhere could be a bad idea.

Said that, i've a beautifull garage and i will surely use a corded version. i just think there are case when this could have sense.

closing this, yesterday i was thinking about the "put the charger UNDER the road", i think this will be a bad thing.
under the road means dubling the distance between the car and the charger, and it will fastly lose the "90% efficency" and could drop easily to 60% efficency ( no data in hand, but it stands to reason since it will be probably a degradation depeding on the square of the distance and not a linear degradation ). just take this into account.

 

[Garlan Garner]

1) Plugless charging is too slow. Make it almost as bad as just plug into the 110v outlet. Not worth the money

2) Get into the routine of step out of car, plug in comes naturally after awhile. Are we as a society getting lazier and lazier that we need plugless charging? lol. It sound like a nice thing, but seriously....it's only worth it if that occurs while driving on the street. To have in your garage...to me its silly

How do you know plug less is too slow? Are you talking about the technology of plug less or the company called plugless? Let me carefully say this.

Wireless Charging is not slow. It does indeed depend on which vendor and what equipment that vendor uses for wireless technology. That's all I'm going to say right now. The wireless charging I currently use is not-patented yet so I can't speak much about it, however I do know for sure that it's not slower. It does indeed create a bit of heat.... so as it stands right now....the current version uses more energy ( heat ) than the wired charging.