England will have wirelessly charging roads for electric cars
Sure, we are not in the future yet. There are feasible ways being worked out in various part of the world that suggest the future is not too far. One such initiative is underway in England where Highway England has announced it will begin working on roads of the future – yes, roads made to charge cars running on them – wirelessly.
Don’t just start imagining a future where your self-driving electric car never needs refueling!
Highway England has affirmed that proposed idea will be put to testing on non-public roads as early as next year – 2016.
The technology will reach the Motorways and A-roads (major public roads) only after the technique has been tested successfully for at least 18 months. There is no point expecting wirelessly charging roads anytime soon since, presently there are no vehicles available for purchase which are able to recharge wirelessly.
The main idea behind the exciting proposal of wirelessly charging roads is to encourage development and use of electric cars. And to ensure this, infrastructure that supports electric cars has to be in place. Today, the major road block that electric vehicles have to face is the unavailability of charging stations – maybe a road that charges EV as it drives could certainly be a worthy solution.
For the backgrounder, Netherlands has plans for developing wireless charging roads with wind-powered location-activated lights. This means, besides charging the vehicles, roads will have lights the turn on when a car approaches and go off as it passes.
Interestingly, South Korea has a stretch of some 7.5 miles with embedded cables – the road creates electromagnetic field, which is picked-up by coils embedded in buses that convert it into electricity.