This year has been filled with all sorts of fascinating innovations. One of these was the road a company known as Electreon was building in Sweden that allowed electronic vehicles to charge wirelessly while driving. A company that has now installed the same in Michigan.
It accomplishes this by building copper coils into the road that charge similarly to Qi does for your mobile devices using a magnetic field. The vehicles on those road require the company’s receivers to be installed so that it can collect this energy while passing over them.
Detroit DOT and Electreon have been working together on the project and have been using it as a form of test demonstration in an effort to eventually expand it out in the next few years to become something that the general public can make use of. For the moment, it only exists within a 3/4 mile section of a road and involves a test vehicle to collect data.
This November, Electreon was chosen by SAE International ot be a global standard in wireless charging for vehicles. electric. With the idea that it will be eventually globally accepted as a solution that can be installed on any street, or even built into parking spots. Reducing the demand for charging stations.
For now, though, it is just a test and won’t be rolling out throughout Michigan unless it can prove to be successful enough to matter. Even then, many questions will form, such as how easy (or possible) it will be to retrofit current models to make use of this new technology. It may only be reserved for commercial vehicles and future consumer models that release with the receiver as part of the design. We will know more as/if it continues to roll out.
1 Comment
This is the way!