wireless charging uses huge embedded electromagnets - by-comparison,wired uses an exposed wire
(might be lockable, but still very vulnerable to cutting, if you're collecting massive quantities of copper for the scrapyard!)
see this research program., which should yield way faster highway charging speeds in the next five to ten years, - and if you want it to be a success, just-TIE-It-in to existing Tennessee valley authority law (allows standardization of sources, building the network under interstates, and minimizing rates!)
www.ornl.gov
I...do people really read these types of articles and not immediately do the basic math required to think them through?
Let me logic this out.
Wireless charging (like with phones and such) takes two separate coils , induces a magnetic field in one with an electric flow, and then the proximity of another coil to this magnetic field generates a flow in the opposing direction because of physics. Basically, as long as the fields expand and contract you can create a flow of energy.
Alternatively, a magnet travelling through a copper coil induces an opposing magnetic field to its direction of motion.
This is great...but there's a problem. It's stupidly simple to see. Take a strong magnet in tube form. Create a large number of coils in a tub around the magnet to form a tunnel to travel along, orient vertically with respect to gravity, and release the magnet. Despite the induced counter force from the coil, the magnet still drops in the direction of gravity. Likewise, a magnet in a vehicle and loops of wire in the road can't charge the vehicle faster than it loses charge due to forcing itself forward....so that charging method is stupid.
The alternative works. Two coils inducing a field in one another...but they have to be very close. The problem with a magnetic field is that it's 3d....so the energy loss is insane as distance increases. Think surface area of a sphere...or 4*PI()*r^2... so a doubling of r increases the surface area by 4...and because flux is a surface calculation you obviously lose too much energy.
So...idiotic question. Who's going to install millions of miles of coils...meaning literally billions of miles of wire...meaning trillions of dollars of cost? Let me show you the math there...so you don't think I'm silly. The US has 47,432 miles of just interstate highway. It has 4.09 million miles of navigable highway. If we only installed into interstates, and they have on average 4 lanes (2 in each direction) 47,432*4 = 189,728 miles. If each linear mile of road had a coil about 0.1" wide, at just a 6" diameter, you'd have 189,728 miles * 63360 inches/mile * 10 coils/inch * PI()*6 linear inches/coil = 2,265,936,422,670 linear inches = 35,762,885 miles of wire.
36 million miles of wire with only a 6" diameter...to cover a small fraction of roadways...not to mention the huge amount of iron core to make these into the electromagnets we need...not to mention the huge losses we'd have due to hysteresis in the metal coil...not to mention the installation costs...not to mention the raw costs of the components.
Do you get it yet? If not let me try and offer a similar example. Some idiots decided roads could be made out of solar panels...and somehow they could use the solar energy to melt snow off of the highway. Never mind that the conversion from light to electric is less efficient than the conversion of light to heat on a black surface (like asphault)... and the current asphault didn't melt the snow...somehow the solar panel road would defy physics....because.
Bringing this back to the topic at hand...wireless charging of cars on the roads is stupid. It's inefficient if you're stopping. Hydrogen similarly is a great idea...except when you come the the question of convenience. That's why technologies stagnated...and it's why we can't have nice things. Every couple of years someone snookers idiots investing into green projects...with no possibility of working. Hydrogen, likewise, is a solution waiting on safety and convenience to catch up. Otherwise, it's a rolling bomb that doesn't yet have the materials technology behind it to be viable.
