Wireless charging brewing electric car new revolution

The concept of wireless charging has been popular for a long time, and is regarded as the technology that will change human life in the future. Apple, Samsung and other mobile phone manufacturers and even chip giant Qualcomm are actively developing wireless charging technology that can improve charging efficiency. However, research and development is still focused on private wireless charging devices in the home, such as using wireless charging to charge mobile phones and laptops. If you are trying to extend the concept and technology of wireless charging to electric vehicles, can you charge your electric vehicle immediately when you wait for the traffic lights?

Electric vehicle bottleneck: battery capacity and shortage of charging stations

In the past five years, the progress of electric vehicles has been a thousand miles. Although Tesla and Nissan's electric vehicles are equipped with high-efficiency and high-capacity battery devices, they still require frequent charging. Nissan's electric vehicles need to be charged about every 100 miles (about 161 kilometers), Tesla. The Model S can last longer and charge every 265 miles (about 426 kilometers). In order to increase the capacity of the battery and thus reduce the charging frequency, various types of battery technologies have been developed or tested, and lithium ion batteries have been regarded as the most suitable battery type for mass storage and fast charging.

Although the large-capacity battery can provide long-distance driving, when the battery is dead, the problem of finding the charging station still exists. When driving the electric car out, in addition to checking the weather and map, the driving of the electric car needs to be based on The location of the battery charging station determines the route to drive. Therefore, the wireless charging technology is extended to electric vehicle charging, or the charging problem can be greatly improved; the car can be charged more frequently, and a large-capacity battery is not required, and the cost of the electric vehicle can be further reduced. In addition to the great interest of American and Japanese electric vehicle manufacturers and research institutes in this technology, the EU is also concerned about the convenience of using wireless charging technology to improve the charging of electric vehicles.

Waiting for the traffic lights to charge? Turn public places into wireless charging stations

A research team (note) from a group of European countries proposed the idea of ​​setting up a wireless charging station in public places and actively researched and developed related technologies. At present, the charging stations installed in European countries vary greatly in the distribution or number of infrastructures. For example, there are currently more than 2,000 charging stations in France, but there are only 60 charging stations in Poland. Therefore, if a wireless charging station is set up in a public place, the electric vehicle can have a longer driving distance in response to the problem of insufficient number of conventional charging stations.

But to achieve this, there are several technical challenges that need to be overcome. First, how to make the wireless charging device and the wireless charging station of the electric vehicle connect and transmit power to each other. Second, how to get cars to charge next to charging stations up to 50,000 watts. Finally, the most difficult challenge is how to let the driver accurately park the car next to the coil of the wireless charging station, because it needs to align the induction coil of the charging station with the induction coil inside the vehicle during charging, and use the magnetic field to convert into current, and then The battery is charged, and if the car cannot be accurately parked next to the charging station coil, the charging efficiency will be greatly reduced.

In order to solve the above problems, in addition to setting up a wireless charging station, the research team also developed a vehicle guidance system with a photographic lens and an RFID, and considered two modes of charging in a public place: 1. The electric vehicle has a long stopping time, and the charging time can be Elongated, for example, parking in a supermarket. 2. The parking time of electric vehicles is only a few minutes, such as taxi stops, bus stops and even waiting for traffic lights. In addition, another technical challenge is to allow the same charging station to charge electric vehicles of different specifications and brands. At present, the EU authorities are also very interested in this concept and research results, especially in the future urban planning, the wireless charging station facilities can be pre-arranged according to the needs.

The research team's top Italian power company Enel has partnered with the Italian government to set up charging stations in major cities such as Milan, Rome, Pisa and Sicily, while Enel's Spanish subsidiary Endesa announced that it has developed the car's electricity for 15 minutes. Up to 80% of the 50K watt wireless charging system, in addition to the 200-meter-long inductive charging system in Malaga, Spain, allows the bus in transit to be wirelessly charged immediately.

Charging while driving? Feasibility of wireless charging road

The British government has gone further and invested a lot of money and manpower to develop a "wireless charging dedicated road", hoping to reach the final state of charging while driving. The project will begin in the second half of 2015, when engineers will embed charging equipment under the highway, and the sensors on the road will detect that the car is about to pass and start generating magnetic fields. Therefore, when a car passes, the wireless charging receiver on the car can receive and convert directly into electricity.

Although wireless charging technologies such as mobile phones and laptops are not yet popular and mature at this stage, the development of wireless charging on electric vehicles may take some time, but it is certain that wireless charging technology will greatly improve human life in the future.