World's first electrified road for charging vehicles opens in Sweden

[acd]

I hope Sweden and Germany can make a common DIN Deutche industri normen standard for charging electric vehicles on roads. There would be an added benefit if we could build rail tracks among the electric guidance line. Rail tracks to lower the rolling resistance, metal on metal vs rubber on asphalt. We would then have a hybrid car rail track which should make it easy for autonomous driving. The aim would to bring down the total co2 emissions of transportation. Building both in ground and above ground electrification of cars would be the best system as then cars can charge during good weather conditions and trucks can always charge even during winter time. A system with electric guidance in the ground is a bit vulnerable to snow during winter times.

Here is another more rail like track which can be used by trucks but not by cars. https://www.scania.com/group/en/worlds-first-electric-road-o...

Rolling resistance coefficient c of rail c=0.001, dirty tram rails c=0.005, car c=0.02. Ie rails resistance is at least 25 times lower than rubber on asphalt 0.005/0.02. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_resistance https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/rolling-friction-resistan...

[stefan_]

Let's just only have train tracks? We can still have electric trucks for the last mile, but then they won't need electrified roads.

Long-distance goods transport with trucks is such a ridiculous concept, it's really time we just face it: it only ever made sense because the state funds the roads and road repair from general taxation, we have ridiculous subsidies for the fossil fuels that make it run and trains had the misfortune to be invented such a long time ago that the government has suffocated the industry.

Rolling resistance is somewhat of a rounding error, by the way. The big killer is aerodynamics: the power needed to push air out of the way increases quadratically with speed. But there is a cheat code: if you make the vehicle longer or add something to the back, it can ride in the slipstream. Only you can't make trucks very long at all because they need to work on public roads. Trains on the other hand can be made ridiculously long, saving massively on energy - multiple miles of wagons if you so wish.

[dest]

At high velocities (> 40 km/h?) the main drag comes from aerodynamics (turbulence, air viscosity…), not rolling resistance.

[notatoad]

This doesn't make much sense as an urban project, where chargers are close by, lane-switching is frequent, people are likely to be on the road, and which the article invites you to think about by comparing the cost to an urban tram.

but it makes ton of sense for long-distance highway journeys, which is a problem that really needs solving before electric vehicles can be practical.

[elihu]

Even on highways, you wouldn't need this to be on 100% of the roads to be useful. You could have, say, a mile of charging rails for every ten miles of road and on lanes that go uphill.

I guess the limit comes down to how much power the rails can produce and how fast the vehicles can charge. If a vehicle can charge at N times the rate they use that energy at highway speeds, then it needs to have at least 1/N of the road populated with charging rails.

If this becomes a widely adopted standard, maybe car manufacturers will look into using a low-capacity battery that can accept high current as a buffer. (Maybe a supercapacitor?)

[Nition]

Although if you had this everywhere, you could probably do away with most of the batteries on electric cars, making them a lot cheaper and lighter.

[justherefortart]

This is what the article states. They think the 20K km of highways would be more than enough and based on distance from smaller populated areas as little as 5K km.

[jacquesm]

Slotcar track that has been scaled up, so: arcing, dangerous, will wear, finicky as hell and impossible to change lanes without losing contact. Probably not the best idea but props for trying.

[rb808]

I'd like to see how it works with a salted wet road too - do they turn it off?

[erl]

It is used for charging batteries, not providing constant power. It disengages on lane change according to the article, but that should not be a problem if there are batteries.

[JKCalhoun]

Now with Magna-Traction Cars, Headlights for Night Racing!

[thedirt0115]

Why is this considered "the world's first electrified road for charging vehicles"? Compared to https://www.wired.com/2013/08/induction-charged-buses/ for example. Does induction based charging not count as electrified? Is it that the Korean one was for their buses only, not general passenger cars?

[rightbyte]

"The world’s first electrified road that recharges the batteries of cars and trucks driving on it".

Well, that's a buss.

Jokes aside, the concept is quite old.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleybus#History

Not easy to disengage though.

[TheForumTroll]

The difference is that the one you link has a few induction plates along the route while the other has rails from one end to the other. It's like saying "why do we need electric cars? We already have hybrids!" There are also buses around here that charge at special points along the route. That doesn't make the roads electrified though. Great job from Sweden, no matter if it is world first or not.

[rb808]

Wow I always assumed plugin batteries would be the only way to run electric cars, this is great.

Also searching I saw these trucks using overhead electric lines, also in Sweden

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27100u7IcII

[azernik]

A lot of electric busses in San Francisco also use pantographs, though usually without a substantial battery, meaning they can't disconnect and reconnect like these cars could.

[TazeTSchnitzel]

It seems they're trying a few approaches out to see what works best.

[rhodrid]

When I saw the title I thought it was going to be the first deployment of the Qualcomm system featured on fullycharged[1] back in November. What they've actually done looks... kinda flakey.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2t0E4AcVu6o

[markgavalda]

Yeah I hoped for something like that too :(

[ubittibu]

And wet become fantastic skating slopes for motorcycles.

[timonoko]

Why cant they just supply kinetic energy? Cars have electric generators themselves. It would be cheaper and safer, just basic cable-car technology. The end-product is kinetic energy, anyway, so basically lossless.

We could have cable-slots at every uphill, and if there is too much traffic, all energy goes just to moving cars. But they have now acquired kinetic energy and can harness it at next downhill section with breaking generators.

[dx034]

I guess this would be very costly and have too many risks of damaged cars and/or injuries by a broken cable.

[John_KZ]

This is probably the worst idea I've seen materialize in a long time.

[dest]

What is the voltage of the track?

If filled with salt water, 1 volt at the surface, but beneath?

[blackrock]

Cool, now I can play F-Zero in real life.

[animal531]

I am somehow reminded of when I was a kid playing with my Scalextric and I'd get some no-name brand of car that would be used on a different circuit and voltage, then suddenly having it run 5x as fast as normal on the Sca. track.

[hndamien]

Is fast charging and short periods of stopping really that much of an issue?

[pankajdoharey]

What happens when the tracks are flooded by rain water. Would it not shortcircuit the tracks? How does one get rid of rain water filled in the tracks to make them operational again?

[newman8r]

Sounds like it's a low voltage system with recessed terminals. The article claims that if the road is flooded with saltwater, it's only ~1 volt at the surface.

[wolfpwner]

Next step: wireless induction charging in parking spaces

[hvidgaard]

Unless a revolution comes along in the field, it's too inefficient. Best condition inductive chargers can yield 90% efficiency, and that is not too bad. But that require perfect alignment, and no distance between the coils. Neither is realistic in a "park and charge without doing anything" scenario.

[vesinisa]

I wonder what is the charging power with this? Can the car sustain its battery infinitely if you drive over electrified highways only?

[rcthompson]

Yes, but it's still not enough to power your smartphone while it's doing turn-by-turn navigation.

[hyuibg]

This isn’t all that new - in fact London’s tram system was using it c100 years ago:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UIyXE_Fv3vA/TkLYU8vbHRI/AAAAAAAALb...

[TheForumTroll]

Try taking that off the rails and go shopping and see how it works. No comparable at all.

[kwhitefoot]

It would be cheaper and more easily scalable to fit more charging points in parking spaces at shopping centres, motorway service stations and so on.

Why do we keep on inventing new complicated ways of doing things instead of standardising and exploiting the things that we already know work?

[rsynnott]

If electric vehicles only had to have a range of a few tens of km (similar to many existing plugin hybrids) they could be built dramatically cheaper. This would also be ideal for buses, lorries and similar.

[bluGill]

Because I want to stop for at most 10 minutes every 2 hours. (better yet I want a self driving car where 8 hours latter I wake up where I'm going, and the farther I get in that 8 hours the better) With gas cars we can do this, with batteries that requires a lot of expensive, heavy batteries (the heavy is important because energy is expended just hauling them around).

I don't know if this is a good/useful solution to the problem, but it is an obvious idea to consider.

[rb808]

Electrified rails on trains have been around much longer than parking stations. Plus batteries are the biggest problem (and most expensive) part of ecars, so this is a good idea to try out.

[IanDrake]

Batteries are expensive and heavy. Plus range anxiety.

If this allows for cars to have a 50 mile battery range while still being able to travel unlimited miles on highways, it would be a huge win.

[JustSomeNobody]

Good for them for actually trying something.

You actually have to try and make something. Sometimes you get it wrong. That's ok, sometimes you'll get it right. As long as the general trend line is going up, you're doing good.

[hyuuu]

is this the actual real world implementation of SOLAR FREAKIN ROADWAYS?