Barrett Easton
In the suddenly
booming electric car market, new innovations seem to coming up left and right;
yet even with all these new innovations many limitations still exist. One of
these limitations is charging. You have to charge you electric car almost every
time you’re not using it, due to fairly short miles per charge. The brand new
Audi eclectic SUV only gets about 310 miles on a full charge, far less than any
gasoline vehicle. (Thompson) So with this shorter mileage comes more frequent
charging, and the only way to charge your car was to plug it in when you are
not using it. Thankfully one of these new innovations is a wireless induction
car charger, which can portably charge your car from simply driving on top of
it. All that the operator needs to do is simply drive on top of the charging
pad, which can easily be installed into garage floors and carports. This now
makes it easier and faster to charge your electric car. No more trips to the
gas station, no more plugging in your car; simply drive it into your garage and
let the charger do the rest. But this new technology has endless potential,
reaching out much farther than just portable home chargers. “Wireless charging systems are also being designed for use
inside the car so that passengers find it easier to keep their smartphones
charged over the course of a long road trip… ZENS, a manufacturer of wireless
charging systems for mobile devices, has created a Qi wireless charger for
vehicles which is shaped to fit securely within a cupholder, providing a slot within which a smartphone can be
easily slipped.” (Brachmann) This new innovation may end up raising the price
of the vehicle, but it also increases customer’s willingness to pay. Just
parking your car at home charges it, and just putting your phone into a cup
holder charges it, who wouldn’t want that for their car? But why stop there, imagine
if at intersections these chargers were installed so while you wait at a red
light your car is being charged. What if they were strengthened and put into
highways, so as you take a long road trip, you would never need to stop to
re-charge. What if cars were lined with them, charging your phone without you
even having to take it out of your pocket?
Wireless induction charges could revolutionize the electric car market, as they
are now becoming more practical than ever. We could soon see a day where
gasoline cars are a thing of the past, and induction chargers are a big step in
that direction.
Articles:
Brachmann, Steve.
“Wireless Induction Charging Is Coming to Eletric Vehicles –
IPWatchdog.com” IPWatchdog. 18 June
2015. Web. 16 Sept. 2015.
Thompson, Cadie. “Audi Just Unveiled a New Eletric Car That
Should Worry Tesla.” Tech Insider. 15 Sept. 2015. Web. 16 Sept. 2015.
Even with the installment of the charging pads in garages, you would still need to stop the car and stop driving. This would just make charging your car slightly more convenient than plugging in your car. In progress right now however is an automatic car charger, designed by Elon Musk at Tesla. It’s a tentacle kind of robotic arm that automatically plugs into the charging port of the car, once the car stops near it. Also, although the charging pads for electric cars while on the move would be quite an innovation, it would also be quite expensive and impractical. The installment of these would require the closing of lanes on major highways, which would be a major inconvenience to daily drivers. Something that Elon Musk is currently working on is the creation of charging stations all across the continental U.S. At this time, although I am not certain on the time, I believe that the charging of the car would take somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes, which is a relatively short time for free fuel. Because these charging stations are being created now, the charging pads would make these charging stations a complete waste of time to make. Instead, I think that we should stay with the charging stations until we are able to perfect the highway charging pads and be able to effectively utilize them.
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