The entire automotive world is utterly absorbed with building a better battery. The 500-mile battery has become the newest Holy Grail, the imagined solution to the inconveniences and anxieties assumed to be associated with current batteries’ limited ranges.
As the dark shadow of the Gulf oil spill has extended its ruination over a precious ecosystem, the search has intensified, symbolizing the urgency of transitioning the world away from oil dependency. The battery electric vehicle (BEV) is most certainly the answer to the ills of oil dependency but it will require drivers to learn to recharge after driving an all-electric vehicle (EV) 100 miles or switch to gasoline after driving a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) 40 miles. The 500-mile battery would make BEV-driving more like driving is now.
The transition to plug-in vehicles constitutes a revolution in personal transportation and – aside from ending dependence on coal for electricity, which the shift to BEVs will support – no transition today is more urgent. But according to Technology Improvement Pathways to Cost-effective Vehicle Electrification, from senior research engineers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, there may be an even better way to make the transition to electric personal transportation, a way that doesn’t require a miracle breakthrough in auto battery technology.
It’s called dynamic charging with inductive power transfer technology (IPT). It is as old as the concept of electric streetcars and trolley cars and as new as wirelessness.
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