Anyone else feel like they just watched a Bloomberg produced Go Fund me campaign ad? Lots of buzz words, generalities, and fluff. No hard numbers, data, or facts.
the amount of buzzwords really made me critical about that thing. Nothing Disruptiv in this idea but since cathie woods "great success" it's a synonym for a great future. I had the feeling there is something they don't tell me about it - luckily the first comment said it: Wireless charging needs like 50% more power. So this will not be viable for decades.
@@0x0michael What I meant was the copper used to build the coils, which especially for power transmitting should be high grade material(copper itself is very pricy) for efficiency purposes, another factor is the distance made by the wheels of the vehicle in which make the power tranmission very inefficient (think about how we currently use the wireless chargers for the phone. their body will usuallly be in touch with other).
global copper reserves is at least 40x larger than lithium reserves and more than 100x larger than cobalt reserves, not to mention that copper recycling is much more environmentally friendly
@@shanewalker3273 True, but the scale of deployment should be taken into account, (roads, highways, ...), also the process due to the distance of radiation coupling is somewhat inefficient.
There is already an electric road that has been around for decades, its called a trolleybus So, put up electric wires on all the roads and allow any cars to connect and disconnect at will
The comment about a big question about economics is an understatement and underlies everything from expected lifetime, any road construction requirements, maintenance and management systems, more. In particular, I'm trying to imagine embedding in what kinds of roads, here in the USA we have a few roads like our interstate superhighways which are concrete and are resurfaced maybe every 8-15 years depending on use. Asphalt roads need to be resurfaced and repaired nearly annually. Resurfacing often involves adding new layers so might put the electromagnetic emitters and collectors deeper under ground over time unless you go through an additional process of removing layers and risk damaging the system. The basics might be relatively well known but specifics and details could be concerning.
Totally. But then, why not make a dedicated charging spot there? What's cheaper - to make 10-20% more spare robots to charge them in cycles, or cover a huge portion of froor with not so effective transmitters?
The efficiency of wireless charging is horrendous in these kinds of use cases. Not to mention the increase in costs for building and maintaining the infrastructure would be much higher. It surprises me that they could even get any investors for this. I guess VCs will throw money at any new "green" tech.
This seems far more expensive and complex than simply improving battery technology. Especially given that a Tesla can already achieve the driving range of a regular combustion vehicle.
This is cables set along the road,and cheap flat copper coils. This is literally smaller than any battery, and gives you infinite range, while making your car lighter and cheaper. And it doesn't degrade as batteries. Most cost would be from road work and pavement to install it.
I forgot the name but there's another company trying to make the actual batteries smaller but just as efficient as the older ones. I feel like that would be a better solution but then again...materials aren't infinite so that's only a temporary fix, no?
Why not take it a step further and make cars and roads into generators with magnets in road going down steep hills, providing "magnetic brake" and be able to provide a little power to the grid reducing the stress on the grid and making it even more sustainable, don't know if that's possible but it's a concept that could be interesting.
Fortunately for the world, companies such as these don't read RU-vid comments or set their direction on them. I don't know if they're on the right track but the market will be a much better judge than us randos ever will.
Every meter 4 KG Copper? So for a moving bus to get up loaded half or so, it takes him 30km/h. After that hour of diving really slow to shorten the path to go through loading. 30000m*4KG*6000$átoncopper= 720K$ Worth of coppe + the roadwork + the Equipment. What a dumb video To cover just New York City with it (10.200KM road). 244 800 000$ of Copper. Nice.
You don't need this on every road, not even on 50% of the roads, especially not initially; start out with the >5% most used roads and you'll probably cover a large chunk of all vehicles. And only install the system while redoing the pavement/renovating the road anyhow, and the extra cost will be extremely limited.
@@idomaghic How much is the Cost of a charging station? How much is the cost of the Road to load just 1 Car driving with 30km/h? I would not give you one Dollar to make such roads.
@@Marcel-e8o Why would you go 30km/h? And why only one car? Witricity has technology (acquired from Qualcomm) that allows for charging at 70mph. Electreon's test track in Sweden achieved 70kW avg. (for a truck) at 60km/h. It seems like you need to read up a bit before commenting further.
This will never work and is such a waste of R&D. It will just lead to a monopoly on electricity prices for vehicles, Insane CAPEX (digging up roads) and standardisation of technology will mean any upgrades and improvement rollouts will be lethargic.
@@ernestoramos520 exactly. why they just dont invent car tires with coil rims on the surface and just dont transfer energy with conduction. it would be much more effective
We already have cars that sun on electic roads, they are called trains , streetcars etc. Not every solution needs to be a tech solution, behavioral change can have a far greater impact on the planet
It does need to be a tech solution, or a massive overhauling and destruction of American cities. Streetcars have practically been erased from existence, and their infrastructure torn up decades ago. Train lines in the US (for example Chicago’s L) typically run solely from the neighborhoods to downtown, while most people commute to/between the suburbs for work, which leads to time-consuming and slow bus routes being the only public transport option. Most people also live in suburban environments, which are significantly lower-density and hence make public transport more expensive and less efficient. American cities have been completely rebuilt for the car, and you’re committing to a near-impossible task by trying to force everyone to public transport without addressing these issues that prevent it from being viable.
@@Pantsinabucket That sound to me to rather be a US-city miss planing issue. I also learned only recently that they don't really know the concept of district heating... well US always feels like a third world nation over there.
@@Pantsinabucket true. i love the train, but its a big ask for American's to shift a cultural perception of cars. I wonder what the cost difference is between extending rails/lite-rails and retrofitting roads. I imagine it would be cheaper and faster since the retrofit is road work only. Rail and metro are major construction efforts with visible structures surrounding the tracks (if above ground and even bigger below ground) and their stops.
Just what I was thinking. This will probably have the durability of solar roadways and imagine the cost of putting this on every freeway. You also need high voltage transmission lines to power this thing along the entire freeway. Finally what is this thing going to look like in 10 years when a bunch of tanker trucks have been driving over it 24/7
Rain, snow, freezing ground, mud, no chances there for conductivity to be hindered let alone for short circuits. Did I mention? Laying all that cable means ripping up the existing road. Oh, and literally millions of cars driving over it all day every day. Common sense explains why this is nearly as stupid as imagining that roads can be used as solar collectors.
If there only was some way to put these wires above, not under. We could even connect to them directly, not wirelessly. Great idea! I'll gonna patent it asap. How do I call it? Thansitional... no, we need something shorter. Trans... no. Even shorter. I know, I'll call it Tram! Great name, I'm sure it wasn't used before. Or maybe better call it trolley-bus?
digging up the roads of one major city laying copper wiring would use up a year or two of the world's entire production of copper . All for having smaller batteries?
Any future technology of transportation has to be convenient and economically sustainable. I am sorry your idea is going to be a big fail. Better think something else 🙏🙏🙏
I was hoping someone would invent a reason for traffic to concentrate a small number or roads, in a specific lane. This should solve the problem of too little congestion that literally nobody is complaining about.
@@piyushshaw5063 not if electric vehicles are using said lane more then other vehicles. In certain parts of the US we have dedicated lanes for electric vehicles that would be prime real estate for this kind of technology. The phasing out of internal combustion vehicles will take long enough where if all drivers are aware of what lanes have this technology, drivers with internal combustion engines would just avoid that lane. I don’t think that this problem is much of a concern at this stage.
Actually, putting cars in a single lane can increase efficiency. If you hook them together, there is less aerodynamic drag. You can even remove the batteries! Since we have a specific lane, we can have special cars that hook to power lines above the road. Maybe even make the road and wheels out of something that wastes as little energy as possible, maybe steel. Hmmm.... this sounds like an electric train
@@piyushshaw5063 thermal radiation from an electric car battery is not nearly enough to “heat up” a car lane. Combustion engines run much hotter than an electric road or car battery
What about the WASTAGE OF ELECTRICITY ? Whenever we talk about wireless charging there is this massive, massive problem of loss of power while charging. Who'll pay for it?
The receiver. There is also a loss of energy when using any kind of fast charging and people are still fine paying the energy provider for kW dispensed rather than kW "charged".
Batteries are greatly effected by cold weather. The mileage range can go significantly cold weather with an electric car. I know that regular car batteries are effected by cold weather too .
So do they have an estimate on how much copper they will need to power major cities or popular highways? Also what is the power efficiency of their system?
Copper? Probably gonna be cryogenic carbon for zero resistance for most of the transmitting, just copper for the coils... and we're gonna start mining the moon soon also for metals/elements..
No, we don't have wireless power transmission, because it simply doesn't work over a distance. The losses due to heat and the beam spreading out, mean that you can't do wireless power over more than a meter.
That's nothing compared to the price of maintaining such a road. And now any pothole is not just a hole to be patched some day. No-no-no. Now every pothole is a threat to the whose system.
This would be perfect for vehicles that drive on roads but never stop in parking spaces. Like.... well, like just... roving... ah.. cars, you know, that never park. That's a thing, right?
Not many have heard about it I guess, but there's this thing in development, it's called "autonomous driving". So in short, the answer to your question is: it will be.
@@idomaghic they'll be just fine using charging stations and home charging. If people want to pay an automated fee to fund the outlay + twice the electricity cost after half of it doesn't make it to the car then props to them. As long as it's not the public coughing up for drivers yet again.
@UCtAqDhUnjOS5nB2WAwP-Ugg a little bit of downtime on a wageless, energy efficient vehicle is nothing in comparison to losing your energy efficiency and paying for an absurd amount of infrastructure. Even just the copper alone is monumental. It's been hard to even justify for rail operators on high volume routes (maglev has similar needs) with subsidies, and where most of the energy isn't going to waste. Suggesting this in the ground without duping highway administrations for wads of public money is either head in the clouds or vapourware.
@@Freshbott2 right, I'll continue this discussion when you've read up on the current state of dynamic wireless charging, because from your incorrect assumption of transmission inefficiency (where actual fact is that dynamic wireless induction charging can actually outperform plug charging, especially at high loads), it is clear that you simply don't know what the current reality is. Any further discussion would be a bit like arguing about the shortest route with a flat earther.
Sorry my negativity but the amount of emissions produced by the construction and the extraction of raw materials required to build this infrastructure is far way bigger than the benefit it is marketing. There are plenty of ideas out there to improve mobility the real breakthrough is how to make humanity compromise to the changes we need.
Efficiency is what wins the game. If we switch from ICE (3x% efficiency) to EVs (81-93% efficiency), we already won. Improving the charging infrastructure may have another benefit, though - limit speeds on the roads. I'd put it in the stoppage lane or the slowest lne, though - need a charge - drive for 2-5km in the "slow lane", get a boost and drive on. And take a loss of wireless charging - which is huge - 47% as "Nobody" commented.
It is highly inefficient, especially at that scale. When a cellphone is wirelessly charged, the loss is acceptable as the charger's efficiency is approximately 70% for that size of a system. When wireless car charging is implemented on roads, there will be at least 1 to 2 feet distance between the coil on the car to the ones in the road; the thing will probably be 30% efficient with a +/- tolerance of 4-5% due to uneven roads as well. Not really practical.
Our family’s Toyota Camry has a ground clearance of 0.5 feet. Most cars have a similar ground clearance so the efficiency would be way higher than 30%.
We've had this since the 70s to move college students. It still functions perfectly and is self sustaining as far as energy. They could have done this yearsss ago.
I spent 10 weeks of my life doing engineering for a government project like this, then I owned an electrical car. My take: This makes sense if you only have bad electric cars with bad ranges and slow charging and few charging stations. In a world with 300+ mile ranges, superchargers etc this makes no sense. Until then it will just be wasted tax payers money and engineering hours going nowhere.
I see a problem, they are testing at like 2.5in when it'll be like 3.5ft, lower efficiency, and thats a LOT of copper so it will only be available in cities, but everyone would still have to pay for it in taxes. Copper is expensive too, which means people digging up the road to steal it will probably happen, meaning more accidents and a rise in copper price
Oh no, electric vehicles take power from coal and natural gas!? But can your gas guzzler fill its tank with wind power? That’s the difference. EV’s *can* get their power from renewables. One problem at a time though, because doing it all at once would be too much for the boomers.
@Jeremiah Liggins very often? I haven't seen the roads repaved in my city for as long as I can remember, even if it's repaved often, have you taken into account the amount of roads in the world? Even just in developed world? How much money is it gonna take to pave all of them? who's gonna pave for that? you?
This would be so bad for the environment. It's disappointing to hear at 13:13 that it's the company's goal to limit environmental impact of electric mobility. Their goal is obviously about making money. It's also disappointing that Bloomberg would just post something like this without any serious thought as to the hypocrisy of the business model vs its stated goals.
Once (if ever) there is more energy that we need and we maybe can mine asteroids for copper this technology can come in handy. So give it 100 years or so.
Is it worth to loose more than 40% energy while it is transferred and efficiency decreases further by increasing the distance between the two coils.....
The Field Engineer cant even make a clear distinction between kW and kWh. NTM the Capex and Opex of this project is gigantically large, even developed countries will have a hard time implementing this.
I expected this to be a repeat of the solar powered road surface that had programmable led markings to enable reconfiguring travel lanes, automatic heating to clear snow and ice, secure pathways for utilities and an indestructible surface that will last forever even with heavy truck traffic and available with Bose sound cancelling technology to eliminate all noise from the road. All for less than 1/3 the price of an asphalt installation. Nope, this is a startup idea that really shouldn't have gotten past first thoughts of wirelessly charging through the road surface.
Electric roads LOL the future should be maybe more electric stuff but not roads that cost upwards of 100 billion dollars for those "lets solve the climate change" people while people still are dying of hunger in the USA including families in great numbers which can't put food on the table..
Scenario: If All Countries are Successful with the Compliance for Renewable Electric Vehicles from Cars, Public Transport Buses etc. Are Nations have the 💯% Full Capacity to Recharged those EV mobility Transport system in the Long Run? 🤔
..i think the author of this video is not updated.. the need for cobalt & nickel for lithium ion batteries are already being addressed.. using LiFePO4 or Lithium Iron Phosphate chemistries, there is no longer any need for cobalt or nickel.. cobalt is the most notorious of them coz 70% of the cobalt used in batteries in the world comes from the DRC - the Democratic Republic of Congo.. & 50% of them are mined thru artisanal small-scale mining (ASM).. these type of mining is riddled with high levels of corruption, child labor, fatal accidents, and violent clashes between artisanal miners and security personnel of large mining firms are recurrent. ASM cannot simply be shut down, coz It is a lifeline lively hood for millions of Congolese who are forced to live in extreme poverty. and the DRC government does not have any plan in place to address these serious economic issues.. ...if there is way to take them out of the battery equation, the better, but this in turn condemns the poor people of the DRC to more poverty.. companies like TESLA, have already started developing alternatives to this cobalt/nickel issue.. future models coming from the shanghai & germany giga factories, will be using LiFeP04 batteries, that will no longer use nickel & cobalt in their chemistries..
if this solution is more effective than traditional charging tech in terms of saving resources, lowering ownership and purchasing cost of car and batteries, environment friendly, economic growth, easiness in lifestyle of population then we should adopt this tech ASAP all over the world.
Or maybe just introduce hydrogen-derived carbon neutral bio/synthetic fuels? They are a thing you know. Then we dont really need to massively upgrade the millions of roads at the cost of taxpayers. And we dont need to lithium mine so much due to the explosion of EV vehicles.
How about making public transit more accessible and widely available instead? Everytime y'all make a video there's no facts/stats. All this capital and it's just a glorified concept art bonanza. Retrofitting our current roadways to this is f*cking bonkers.
I didn't get the idea, In the early minute of the video, it said that charging battery is not truly sustainable. However at the end, they didn't provide any information regarding the efficacy and efficiency of the system compare to the charge model. In short, they only replace the way of charging the battery which doesn't any significant impact to battery consumption. Indeed, it is true by using this tech, people can save time, but cannot save energy. By expanding the transmission, it means more cable and more loss in the transmission system. If we talk about time, why don't use battery swap instead? Lower capital investment. Here in Taiwan, battery swap already won the public and the case. Also simple payment method.
Such a a waste of energy while no car on top of the copper and a waste of electricity with very low efficiency of energy transfer. The only benefit is that it's convenient but then conveniency is the excuse that get us to the sorry state today.
This could be great tech to implement for Electric racing such as Formula E. That way they can figure out the tech on a small track and then the technology can trickle down especial as Formula E are raced on inner city streets where the tech could be left behind and used by everyone.
How about more public transport with direct electrical connection in order to remove wireless energy waste, like idk - trams, trolleybus, trains, metro!
This is never going to work, a few years ago a company was trying to create solar powered roads, again never going to work. For a start the amount of copper required to be paved into all road networks would be insane, the cost of infrastructure changes, basically meaning ripping up all roads. Maintenance of roads goes thru the roof. Any disasters, such as earthquakes and floods essentially electrifies the whole ground as power cables are sat in water which is obviously very conductive. And lets not forget that wireless charging loses at least 30% of the electricity during transfer.
This is a scam video What about efficiency. You will get 10% power transferred. What about reliability . Such complicated electronics will not survive under road.
there's a HUGE question of earthquake , landslide , overturned heavy machineries that will sever & disrupt those buried coils that are supplying much needed energy .
Wireless charging is now just as efficient and regular public electric station charging or home overnight charging. This is a fact of physics! So energising the roads in specific locations is the ultimate way of the future and using this approach means we would not need so much onboard battery total storage capacity, This will make lighter and cheaper vehicles a thing of the future and solve many existing problems and determinants to the rapid adoption of our clean and so much safer electric future.
So your thesis is only batteries are powered by coal! ridiculous! wireless charging is 20% less efficient in the best scenario. Let's not even get into the costs of thousands of miles of copper coils buried in the road. I guess you found a mountain of copper somewhere.
That is not a bad idea for urban areas, I can definitely see it being a thing in city centers and roads going in and out of them to continuously charge commuter cars, buses, commercial vehicles and the like. As long as it is properly standardized of course. For everywhere else though, this sounds much more complicated and costly than simply building more charge stations. Engineers around the world are working tirelessly on the development of batteries that don't rely on rare resources like lithium or cobalt and have a much smaller carbon footprint in manufacturing.
So everyone here is talking about efficiency and environmental issues. But let me tell you the biggest hurdle this will face: Ain't nobody got the money retrofit millions of miles of road with that stuff.
This is a brilliant idea, but there are a few shortcomings. Firstly, the wireless transfer of electricity is too inefficient. They need to hang electric wires over the road and maybe extend a boom arm from the car to transfer electricity. They should also run the car along a rail to maintain alignment with the overhead wires. Single user cars will still be inefficient. Maybe they should make the cars bigger so that they can fit a couple hundred people. Oh wait, that's a tram. Nevermind
They say we are lacking lithium and all that for the batteries but they are putting massive copper coils under the ground. How is this better, cooper is to usefull to be used in such massive scale.
No it is a terrible idea. It is incredibly costly to put copper coils into all of the roads. Also wireless charging technology wastes a lot of energy. 50% of it gets turned into heat. Imagine throwing away half of the petrol you buy.
