Electric vehicles that charge as they drive

I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to afford an electric car, but I would love one, so the idea of being able to charge the EV from the road itself is incredibly exciting.

“Wireless power transfer is based on the same underlying physics used to send messages through radio waves to spacecraft in deep space, things like Voyager,” the researcher said in a statement. “Except now we are sending much more energy across much shorter distances, to moving vehicles.”

https://futurism.com/roadway-charges-electric-cars-while-driving?mc_cid=93c2f6287b&mc_eid=bbf5c06f50

The technology is still some way off, and even when it’s finished it will take time to re-engineer our roads and sort out a way for users to pay* for the electricity their cars consumer, but the idea is so elegant I hope it happens in my lifetime.

cheers
Meeks

*I’m no expert, but it occurs to me that Blockchain would make it possible to charge the right amount to the right person without fear of the transaction being hacked or otherwise misused. Time will tell.

…an eCar for car lovers :)

I’m not exactly a petrol head, but I do love beautiful cars, and the new EMotion by Fisker is extraordinarily sexy:

According to futurism.com:

‘The car will, reportedly, have a range of over 643 km (400 miles), a top speed of 260 km/h (161 m/h), a charge time of nine minutes for 100 km (62 miles), and utilizes the wonder material graphene in its battery, which was developed in collaboration with Nanotech Energy Inc.’

You can read the full article on:

https://futurism.com/heres-a-first-ever-look-at-the-new-electric-vehicle-that-charges-in-9-minutes/

As for me, I’m very happy because this news drives another nail into the coffin of the polluting technology of the past. Electric cars now have range, speed and sexy. All they lack is a pricepoint suitable for the average driver, but with competition, the prices will drop. And guess what? Tesla now has competition.

I won’t be driving one of these beauties any time soon, but I predict that by the late 2020s, electric cars will be as popular as the SUV is now.

Have a great weekend,

cheers

Meeks

Electric roads coming to a year near you

One of the biggest hurdles for electric vehicles to overcome is the…inconvenience…of batteries. With a battery-dependent electric car, you can’t just drive into a service station and ‘fill’er up’. You have to wait, but we live in a society which has lost the art of patience. That is why we need to change the way we build roads:

We already have huge, road-building machines that lay bitumen at phenomenal speeds, so adapting them to build new, electric roads should not be a major problem. Adapating existing roads would be more time-consuming and expensive, but as the video clip shows, the technology is doable. Just imagine never having to worry about ‘filling ‘er up’ again!

For more details, please read this Quartz article:

https://futurism.com/scientists-have-officially-started-testing-wireless-charging-roads-for-electric-vehicles/

Back in my post about distributed power generation via solar and Tesla batteries, I explained the idea of distributed power generation via our homes. The electric roads of the future could allow us to do something similar with transportation. Imagine a future in which the electricity grid is powered not by one or two huge, highly vulnerable power plants but by millions of distributed generators – in our cars, in the home, on top of our buildings etc. Instead of being at the mercy of prices set by power companies, we would become the power companies with onboard accounting systems updating our net ‘worth’ in real-time.

And who knows? Maybe after homes and roads, we’ll add small scale power generation to every object and device we use – like mini-generators in the heels of our shoes. So much better than Get Smart’s shoe phone. 😀

cheers

Meeks