Inductive-charging startup wins $13.3 million bid to build wireless EV charging technology...

[Cal Jeffrey]

Why it matters: One of the most significant drawbacks of electric vehicles is the battery. Currently, EVs are limited by long charging times and the lack of facilities on heavily traveled highways. Florida authorities believe the problem might be partially mitigated by building inductive chargers beneath the state's highways.

The Central Florida Expressway Authority (CFX) has awarded Norwegian startup ENRX a $13.3 million contract to build a test strip for its induction charging system on a one-mile stretch of State Route 516 near Orlando. The company claims its "dynamic wireless charging" technology can accommodate passenger vehicles, heavy-duty commercial trucks, and medium-duty delivery vans.

The system uses a proprietary receiver pad installed on the bottom of any EV that connects to the battery. Coils embedded in the road can deliver up to 200kW to the vehicle's battery, even at freeway speeds.

"When you can charge while driving, range anxiety and frequent charging stops will be a thing of the past," said ENRX CEO Bjørn Eldar Petersen in a press release. "Our unparalleled expertise in induction technology allows us to deliver charging at 200kW even at high speeds. No one else has the technology to offer anything similar."

Similar technologies have existed for a few years but deliver less than 100kW. Likewise, stationary wireless fast-charging tech only provides up to 150kW. If ENRX's claims are valid, its roadways should charge batteries faster than most other inductive tech.

The company didn't reveal too many specifics but did mention that its system is flexible enough to apply to virtually any EV currently manufactured. Individual receiver units have built-in settings to adjust power output for different vehicles and battery types. Users or installers can also manually define the ground-vehicle distance for optimum charging efficiency.

The infrastructure is supposedly weather-proof and maintenance-free once installed. Presumably, ENRX means the coils are maintenance-free because we have yet to see any technology that can create a maintenance-free highway.

In addition to the one-mile stretch in Florida, CFX included funding for an 80-meter test track for the Aspire Engineering Research Center at Utah State University. The shorter test track will allow SAE International (formerly the Society of Automotive Engineers) to test various aspects of the charging system to create global standards for future implementation.

State Route 516 is not the first US motorway to test the viability of wireless charging while driving. Last year, Israeli developer Electreon revealed plans to construct a similar charging method on a one-mile unnamed stretch of road near Detroit, Michigan. That project is slated to begin testing sometime this year.

Image credit: Studio Roosegaarde

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https://www.techspot.com/news/98611-inductive-charging-startup-wins-133-million-bid-build.html

 

[antiproduct]

Why Florida though? They're either going to get destroyed by hurricanes or by drunk rednecks complaining about "woke roads" or some crap.

 

[AlaskaGuy]

$13.3 million for a one mile strip of highway. Epic

 

[someOtherGuy]

What are the losses accompanying these "wireless charging systems"? I assume they're bad, since you have to weather proof all the stuff involved, including a structure strong enough that allows "even trucks" to drive over it while being "transparent" enough for the EM wave to traverse. This all sounds very magical.

 

[AlaskaGuy]

Going to be interesting to say the least when they try this on a highway in the northern parts of the US. I can only guess how many people get killed when charging their vehicles only to have a car slide into them during a snow and or / ice storm.

 

[Lew Zealand]

Going to be interesting to say the least when they try this on a highway in the northern parts of the US. I can only guess how many people get killed when charging their vehicles only to have a car slide into them during a snow and or / ice storm.

What are you trying to say here? Are the tires on an EV somehow going to be different than the tires on an ICE? Is the ICE vehicle somehow interacting with the road surface differently than an EV so that it slides more?

 

[AlaskaGuy]

What are you trying to say here? Are the tires on an EV somehow going to be different than the tires on an ICE? Is the ICE vehicle somehow interacting with the road surface differently than an EV so that it slides more?

My bad, the car in the pic in the OP looked 'parked'.

 

[nulll]

I've now lived long enough to see F-zero become reality, well at least the recharge strips substituting the pits that is.

There was some research done in the 80's into conductive concrete as it's just really expensive to run conduit through it, not sure whether this would have and application here but with some of the modern advanced in materials science it shouldn't be too difficult to just imbed the charging matrix in the concrete and limit the transmission losses over a the couple off feet from inside the road bed to the underside of the vehicle. Just mark the charging lanes as such and have a seriously reduced speed limit in them so the linger time over the limit charging sections is maximized and see work out what length of road bed is needed per area. Could also be in a the guard rail or fencing along the side of specialized lanes to limit interference as well and avoid the costs of imbedding it into the road surface.

Interesting idea if nothing else and with refinement could be an efficient use of space compared to having charging stations everywhere. Won't really affect those folks with home solar or wind and a charger in their driveway or garage but in dense urban environments where condos are the norm it could be deployed in parking spaces. Not to mention the options for e bikes and smaller transports.

 

[sorten]

"Likewise, stationary fast-charging tech only provides up to 150kW"

EA offers 350kW and Tesla delivers up to 250 kW.

 

[Steveb8189]

"Likewise, stationary fast-charging tech only provides up to 150kW"

EA offers 350kW and Tesla delivers up to 250 kW.

Pretty sure the article means "stationary [wireless] fast-charging tech"

 

[neeyik]

Pretty sure the article means "stationary [wireless] fast-charging tech"

Correct, as the rest of the paragraph states:

"Similar technologies have existed for a few years but deliver less than 100kW. Likewise, stationary fast-charging tech only provides up to 150kW. If ENRX's claims are valid, its roadways should charge batteries faster than most other inductive tech."

 

[Macgyver56]

Induction charging = electromagnetic = capable of interfering with pacemakers. In Florida and presumably other warm weather states to start with. Where older folks retire. Should be interesting.

 

[Freddie159]

Why Florida though? They're either going to get destroyed by hurricanes or by drunk rednecks complaining about "woke roads" or some crap.

Tourists

 

[Neatfeatguy]

What a waste of money.

Something like this wouldn't work in northern states when winter comes. The roads up here get trashed from all the plows and constant snowfall that melts and refreezes throughout the year, roads get torn up and repaved a lot here in MN. EV aren't even that great of an idea in the winter months here, considering it can easily get into the negatives and stay there for weeks or even months at a time.

Cars already sit pretty low to the ground, sometimes you're driving over clumps of ice/snow and they're knocking on the bottom of your car. Attaching a receiver to the bottom of EV isn't going to be a viable option.

Places that have considerably less road construction, such as the southern states, this could have some practical use, but even then if it's costing $10-15million for every 1 mile of road to do this, that's just going to cost a fortune and be a really bad use of taxpayer money.

 

[UdyrL]

Many valid points mentioned here, but I also think this is not a full highway length kind of idea. Due to the (for now) high cost, I see this as multiple 1-5 miles strips along the road that should allow you to get to the nearest charging station, although this will highly depend on how much charge you can get traveling at X speed on this strip.

 

[Lew Zealand]

this could have some practical use, but even then if it's costing $10-15million for every 1 mile of road to do this, that's just going to cost a fortune and be a really bad use of taxpayer money.

It's a test.

It is veryvery likely to fail as all these road-________ things simply do not work but if it somehow does, ya think that just maybe economies of scale and improved technology might bring prices down?

Like how HDDs are a little cheaper than in the 1960s?

 

[Neatfeatguy]

It's a test.

It is veryvery likely to fail as all these road-________ things simply do not work but if it somehow does, ya think that just maybe economies of scale and improved technology might bring prices down?

Like how HDDs are a little cheaper than in the 1960s?

Nope, I've got zero faith that this will be beneficial to anyone anytime soon. Considering how much raw material is needed to make enough batteries to completely change over from ICE to EV.....it's a pipedream. Trying to retrofit roads to do charging for something we cannot viably back is just a waste of time, money and resources.

 

[Cal Jeffrey]

Pretty sure the article means "stationary [wireless] fast-charging tech"

Indeed.

 

[Cal Jeffrey]

We were discussing this in the newsroom as I was drafting this article. There are several things that can be said about it that I didn't mention because of length and to keep it from turning into an opinion piece. Regarding viability, ENRX claims successful tests in Belgium and Germany. It supposedly works for buses and cars in Belgium and for trucks and cars in Germany. And again, these are only tests, not full-on implementations. Obviously, full-to-scale five-mile charging lanes are still down the road (no pun intended).

A likely implementation, were it ever to happen, would be either dedicated charging lanes or sections of toll lanes with dedicated charging lanes. I lean on the latter because you know the state of Florida, or any other for that matter, will not give away free EV juice. Since most toll lanes in Florida, Texas, and other states are all traffic monitored to send out bills via mail, they already have the infrastructure to monitor users and bill them by mail just as they do with tolls or perhaps even added to the overall toll charge.

Of course, this all is assuming it works without a hitch, for which I still reserve some skepticism. I'm not privy to any data from ongoing tests in Germany and Belgium, so it's hard to define the word "successful" as ENRX sees it. I mean, is success just a "Yes, we actually got two seconds worth of charge on that one-mile stretch?" Or has its success been more significant? For now, it's playing its cards close to the vest. As development progresses, I'm sure it will start releasing actual data when the data looks good enough to proceed with larger projects.

For now, the main focus not just for the company to look like it has a promising solution to long-distance EV driving, but more so for the politicians in the US (and elsewhere, I suppose), is to attempt to show effort toward creating an infrastructure that facilitates everyone driving around in an EV by 2035 or whatever. Unfortunately, I suspect that fully functional charging lanes on highways will miss the party in 2035. I could be wrong, and maybe ENRX is way further ahead of the game than I'm giving credit for, but I just don't see 12 years as being a realistic time frame for implementation. Again, this is not to say that ENRX is claiming it can do it by then. This is just me saying that the politicos would like us to believe that come 2035, everything will be hunky dory, and their ICE ban will not even be felt since they have a plan for the long-distance driving quandary. I have more faith that ENRX knows what it's doing than I do in the political rhetoric surrounding the issue.

 

[sorten]

Pretty sure the article means "stationary [wireless] fast-charging tech"

Not sure I follow. Aren't EA and Tesla chargers stationary? Maybe I'm failing at reading comprehension.

In any case, I can't imagine this tech is going to make it to production. Most municipalities can't maintain regular roads. This is, however, a good time to propose projects to take advantage of federal funds.

 

[Lew Zealand]

Nope, I've got zero faith that this will be beneficial to anyone anytime soon. Considering how much raw material is needed to make enough batteries to completely change over from ICE to EV.....it's a pipedream. Trying to retrofit roads to do charging for something we cannot viably back is just a waste of time, money and resources.

I'll repeat: It's a test.

I saw nothing in the article about completely changing over to batteries or EVs. Changing the discussion to your favorite complaint is nice but not part of the scope here. Nobody's trying to retrofit roads to charge EVs because most people know this is a special case and unlikely to be viable.

They're trying a 1 mile stretch of road. Singular. To see if it works well. Some people like to test things to see if they work instead of just assuming an answer. Because data is better than random guessing.

 

[Steveb8189]

Not sure I follow. Aren't EA and Tesla chargers stationary? Maybe I'm failing at reading comprehension.

In any case, I can't imagine this tech is going to make it to production. Most municipalities can't maintain regular roads. This is, however, a good time to propose projects to take advantage of federal funds.

You still have to plug in to a Tesla charger. The comparison is refering to wireless charging

 

[sorten]

You still have to plug in to a Tesla charger. The comparison is refering to wireless charging

Oh, static & wireless. Now I get it. Thanks! I've never seen stationary wireless in the wild, so I guess I hadn't even considered that for a comparison.