Coming off its study of stationary vehicle wireless charging, Volvo will turn its attention toward on-road charging of its Hyper Bus diesel-electric in a year-long study with partner Swedish Transport Association.
Autoblog reports the two parties will build a 300- to 500-meter section of electrified road that would use inductive charging for the PHEV’s batteries while shuttling passengers back and forth along the way. Currently, the buses use charging stations at either end of the route, delaying further travel until fully charged.
The road will be located in central Gothenburg, and is expected to be the herald for the ElectriCity route between Chalmers and Lindholmen, which will provide more data on charging and electric power for heavy vehicles such as buses for future industrial and political decisions.
The intended result of the study is to prove the viability of electric roads, including their impact on the environment as a piece of a greater puzzle involving sustainable transportation.
When I ride that bus, I should be able to charge my smartphone (with an inductive charging add-on) and get free testicular cancer as well!
I’m sure if you got testicular cancer and lost the ability to reproduce, the entire would be saddened ;)
You won’t be laughing when I find some 6’4″ Blonde to impregnate and use her uterus to clone a race of 7′ HEMI HELLCAT drivers/ pro-Chrysler trolls.
…thing is, most kids are completely rebellious of their parents, so with my luck, they’ll probably end up driving Goddamned Genesises or some crappy econobox from Toyota/Honda or Nissan.
…If however – they want GT-R’s… Maybe I can be OK with that.
They might (shudder) eschew driving altogether and ride the electric bus…
or a “self-driving” Prius.
I can see in-road inductive charging as a serious future roadway revenue source for toll roads. Roads like a Penn Turnpike or Garden State Parkway are limited access often used for longer trips (one hour +) and sooner or later, everyone using these roads will be required to have an E-ZPass transponder (that’s inevitable) so payment for the streaming charge should be seamless.
Imagine having even a plug-in hybrid with a 20 mile range that self-charges on your way to work and leaves you with enough juice to get to your place of employment after you leave the road.
Even better, industrual roads like the NJ Turnpike could host charge for all the heavy truck traffic and drastically reduce I/C engine noise and emissions. Sooner or later, heavy trucks will also go the way of the rail locomotive and be ‘hybrids’ themselves..
The amount of copper wire to do this would be prohibitively expensive, because the wire must be coiled to concentrate the magnetic field, and the vehicles traversing these coils could only glean a small percentage of the power available, thus much power would be wasted. Inductive charging is only feasible when the vehicle is motionless and is maximally coupled to the charging coil.
The only reason this is feasible is that modern semiconductors allow switching the induction coil at much higher frequencies than the available 60-Hertz line power; at normal 60-Hertz frequencies, a huge iron core would be required in both the vehicle and the transmission coil to reach the required efficiency. /geek
Around the world our governments can’t keep basic asphalt roads properly maintained, and the future is electrified roads? Get serious.
The money would be better spent on a hydrogen distribution network.
I may be confused, but if hydrogen usage becomes popular, isn’t the distribution network water and electricity to on site disassociation and cooling stations?
Inductive charging in buses will provide an easier and more convenient means to powering. Must be of low maintenance compared to cable based charging.
If this technology works out, there is another advantage:
Put it only in the right lane of hwys, so all those Prius drivers that people hate so much will have to drive in the right lane to get their charge. (Yes, I realize Prii are hybrids not EVs, but if we’re assuming there’s charging roads, then we can assume cars like the Prius will be plug-ins, and will benefit from charging.)
I would clarify if this was Volvo AB or Volvo Cars (Geely). Sounds like Volvo AB.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volvo
@28-Cars-Later
It is Volvo AB
Thx, I thought as such.
This method will work extremely well once roadways are upgraded to International Standards Organization specifications for jet airport runways. For a start, 5 metres of graded ballast, then riprap and finally 4 feet of concrete slab. This prevents frost heaves from happening that would otherwise rip apart the electric network wiring. $20 million per lane per kilometre. Done.
Yet another great idea from the mind of man.