Toyota signs wireless charging deal with WiTricity

Toyota makes multi-million-dollar investment in WiTricity Corp., developer of wireless car-charging technology

Toyota and WiTricity To Develop New Wireless Charging Tech That Requires No Contact | Inhabitat - Sustainable Design Innovation, Eco Architecture, Green Building
Posted April 27, 2011 04:10 PM

 

Awesome technology. Great demo.

 

I assume the idea is you would the locate power unit on the floor toward front of vehcile and pull in to a certain mark. Wonder how many amps it draws? Pretty cool so PiP you have no inconvenience plugging in you just pull into your garage and that's it (for the next model).

 

Nice technology when one parks at home, in an enclosed water-free space, and on the same spot every time. Hopefully, there will still be a plug option for when one is not able to park on that same spot.

 

Let's see ... I lose 5% to 9% percent just from charging on a wired system. But now - I can add another 10% loss on top of that by charging wirelessly. And the device itself is more expensive than a simple wired pass-thru-through EVSE. Oh hell yeah - where do I sign myself up. Money is no object and the sky's the limit .

Everytime this topic comes up ... and it comes up all too regularly - it never ceases to amaze me how the techno entrepreneurs pushing these things quickly forget how crappy our national electric grid health actually is. Hey I got a great idea ...let's NOT put the cart before the horse.
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Wonder if the inductive charging that buses are starting to use will work? Or would we be charged with theft of that too?

 

There actually are buses in one Province of China that are using something tantamount to a big slot car shoe. Pull the shoe up to disconnect - then you run on batteries until you get back on the main line. You ask me - that would be a much more efficient way to recharge batteries if we were wildly dreaming of putting real infrastructure in our country like we used to do decades ago. Baaah - that's crazy talk
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Utah State has developed a system to charge wirelessly at bus stops. The inductive charger is located at bus stops along the route. They're in talks with NYC, Seattle and others to put these buses in service by Q4 2015.

 

This is going to send those who are already afraid of supposed EMR given off from regular Prii into another class of paranoia. And they'll be posting their fears on the forum pretty soon now. Funny, but this time, they might just be right. When I watched the video above, the first thing I was thinking is how much of that energy signal might not be picked up or used by the target device. The 10% loss hill mentioned above might prove to be too low of an estimate.

 

This might work in such implementation. The stops and routes are known variables. If the charge pumped out at a single stop is strong enough the bus total EV range for the day can be extended or the battery pack reduced.

Unless a wireless charge standard is in place for public wireless charging of cars, this will be of limited to just home charging. I think most will find the cost vs. convenience hard to justify then.

 

Neat, and I'm for advances in technology. Given a choice, give me more EV range with conventional charging. My charging at home and work is almost effortless. After all these years, we're still pulling up at the gas station and filling by hand.