In a landmark step for sustainable transport, France has deployed the first motorway in the world equipped with a dynamic wireless charging system that allows electric vehicles to recharge directly while driving.
On the A10 motorway, about 40 km (25 miles) southwest of Paris, a consortium led by VINCI Autoroutes alongside Electreon, VINCI Construction, Gustave Eiffel University, and Hutchinson has launched the “Charge as you drive” project.
AffectionatePlastic0 on
I like this genre. “We are trying to invent trolleybus, but in a way that noone will understand that we invented trolleybus”
Tech_AllBodies on
As with any new technology, you can tell if it will catch on based mostly on the economics, and a bit on whether it dramatically improves what it is intending to replace.
On this:
* Extremely expensive and time/logistics nightmare. As it involves resurfacing roads
* Slower and less efficient than a cable or tightly coupled stationary wireless charging
* Requires cars to have new/extra hardware fitted to them
* Effectively targets range anxiety, which is not necessary for 99.9% of use cases, and battery range/weight is improving all the time anyway
My personal verdict – **won’t be adopted**, but similar tech may find uses at taxi ranks or bus stops, to give extra juice to full-EV taxis/buses while they’re waiting.
AffectionatePlastic0 on
>The inductive system has delivered peak power above 300 kW and average power above 200 kW under optimal steady-state conditions
Yes, that’s definitely a “we are trying to invent trolleybus, but in a way that noone will understand that we a trying to invent trolleybus”
One ZIU-9 depending on a modification consume from 110 kW to 150 kW, so this “innovative” solution can feed up to three vehicles simultaneously, if the drivers careful enough not to push the accelerator hard. Glad that they are capable to achieve almost same results that Soviet used to be able to do with overhead wires but on a larger scale in the 1960s.
Smartimess on
That”s just a dumb idea. You lose a lot of energy doing it this way and it is the best way to explode the price for copper to astronomical dimensions.
All these proJets have to compete with new batteries and charging technologies and are therefore dead on arrival, because they are not only extremely expensive but technologically obsolete too.
AthleticAndGeeky on
What ever happened to the solar charged 5 mile stretch of wireless charging road back in the 2010s?
Deep_Age4643 on
This is idea that have been invented a lot of time. I guess that every time at the end the conclusion is that the road construction is too expensive, and the energy loss too big.
In the current situation for trucks and normal cars this is also not a good idea, because driver need to rest sometimes, an endless range is exactly not what you want. Combined with autonomous driving, this could be ideal, because then you drive and sleep at night long distances without stops.
costafilh0 on
Cool! From money pit cars to money pit roads. Fortunately, the French are used to paying sky-high taxes, so they won’t complain when they increase even more.
Zarochi on
This is going to be awful for the already low life batteries in these cars.
rosen380 on
I wonder what the efficiency differences would be if they did this in the parking spots rather than the road?
“No cable required” charging while parked would be awesome… though I guess the road has an edge if we’re more looking at buses, taxis and such, since they’ll spend a much higher percent of their time driving than parked.
zeltrabas on
Not worlds first.
Germany had the ehighway from 2019 to 2025.
It recently shut down earlier this year, with results still needing to be made public.
Early reports state that it worked good on the technical side, but not on economics since it charged too slow and just a few kilometers after the end of the ehighway, trucks had to drive using a combustion engine again
11 Comments
In a landmark step for sustainable transport, France has deployed the first motorway in the world equipped with a dynamic wireless charging system that allows electric vehicles to recharge directly while driving.
On the A10 motorway, about 40 km (25 miles) southwest of Paris, a consortium led by VINCI Autoroutes alongside Electreon, VINCI Construction, Gustave Eiffel University, and Hutchinson has launched the “Charge as you drive” project.
I like this genre. “We are trying to invent trolleybus, but in a way that noone will understand that we invented trolleybus”
As with any new technology, you can tell if it will catch on based mostly on the economics, and a bit on whether it dramatically improves what it is intending to replace.
On this:
* Extremely expensive and time/logistics nightmare. As it involves resurfacing roads
* Slower and less efficient than a cable or tightly coupled stationary wireless charging
* Requires cars to have new/extra hardware fitted to them
* Effectively targets range anxiety, which is not necessary for 99.9% of use cases, and battery range/weight is improving all the time anyway
My personal verdict – **won’t be adopted**, but similar tech may find uses at taxi ranks or bus stops, to give extra juice to full-EV taxis/buses while they’re waiting.
>The inductive system has delivered peak power above 300 kW and average power above 200 kW under optimal steady-state conditions
Yes, that’s definitely a “we are trying to invent trolleybus, but in a way that noone will understand that we a trying to invent trolleybus”
One ZIU-9 depending on a modification consume from 110 kW to 150 kW, so this “innovative” solution can feed up to three vehicles simultaneously, if the drivers careful enough not to push the accelerator hard. Glad that they are capable to achieve almost same results that Soviet used to be able to do with overhead wires but on a larger scale in the 1960s.
That”s just a dumb idea. You lose a lot of energy doing it this way and it is the best way to explode the price for copper to astronomical dimensions.
All these proJets have to compete with new batteries and charging technologies and are therefore dead on arrival, because they are not only extremely expensive but technologically obsolete too.
What ever happened to the solar charged 5 mile stretch of wireless charging road back in the 2010s?
This is idea that have been invented a lot of time. I guess that every time at the end the conclusion is that the road construction is too expensive, and the energy loss too big.
In the current situation for trucks and normal cars this is also not a good idea, because driver need to rest sometimes, an endless range is exactly not what you want. Combined with autonomous driving, this could be ideal, because then you drive and sleep at night long distances without stops.
Cool! From money pit cars to money pit roads. Fortunately, the French are used to paying sky-high taxes, so they won’t complain when they increase even more.
This is going to be awful for the already low life batteries in these cars.
I wonder what the efficiency differences would be if they did this in the parking spots rather than the road?
“No cable required” charging while parked would be awesome… though I guess the road has an edge if we’re more looking at buses, taxis and such, since they’ll spend a much higher percent of their time driving than parked.
Not worlds first.
Germany had the ehighway from 2019 to 2025.
It recently shut down earlier this year, with results still needing to be made public.
Early reports state that it worked good on the technical side, but not on economics since it charged too slow and just a few kilometers after the end of the ehighway, trucks had to drive using a combustion engine again