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By Douglas Stansfield Aug 15 2015 - 9:19am

Millions of Miles of Range In A Standard Nissan LEAF

What if you could drive from Maine to Florida and not even need to stop for a charge while driving your Nissan Leaf. Forget about all the EVSE (Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment) that has been installed by Tesla for their Model S Electric Car. Technology is scheduled to be tested in England that will enable just that. Long Distance travel with no stops for charging.
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According to an article posted via Sky News, states the English Government has made the commitment to test inductive charge technology and that they want to be on the front line of this evolving technology.

As someone that has actually looked into this, my fear isn’t if this would work but the actual costs of installing it. There is a company in Idaho called Solar Roadways that would actually build roads out of solar panels so I know this will work but testing is for its economical impact is key. Solar Roadways are still in research and development and raising additional funds via Indiegogo. We should start to see more news from this company in the future as well.

The concept being tested in England is the idea of running electrical cables under the road which the car would then pick up the current while traveling over it to continuously via Induction. There are inherent electrical losses with inductive charging but the technology has proven it can be done. The original charging equipment that came with the GM EV1 was an Inductive Paddle Charger made by GM which is obsolete now. It was known as the J1773 charging protocol. The national standard for charging EVs at Level II (220v -240v) in use today is J1772.

I’m extremely interested in the results of this testing and can see some positive implications from it.

While jumping onto a local highway and getting a charge while traveling at higher speeds is really a dream at the moment. Driving 30 miles of your commute and charging while at the peak consumption level of your journey would also cut down on the need for charging at the other end of your trip.

Even if the Electric car could just be propelled via induction during the highway portion of the journey would save a lot of charging time an increase range significantly.

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Comments

mike w wrote on August 15, 2015 - 5:12pm
Yes Douglas S. My fear is also revolves around the cost to install this technology on a large scale. I have my doubts that we will see this installed. It will take at least 20 more years till there is enough electric cars on the road to justify installing this type of equipment. During that time period I would expect to see a significant improvement in battery technology so as to make this idea obsolete. But hay it sounds good.!
Titan wrote on August 15, 2015 - 11:33pm
I stopped reading as soon as you mentioned solar roadways....that is a total scam.
Mellored wrote on August 18, 2015 - 2:40pm
No, it's not a scam. Rooftop solar won't provide enough energy by itself, and roads are barren wastelands just begging to be used. No issue competing with trees, crops, or grass. No taking land from other people, ect..
Titan wrote on August 18, 2015 - 10:58pm
Yes, solar roads are a complete scam. You don't have to be an engineer to see that...and actual engineers will just ridicule anyone who even thinks it is a good idea. It is horrible. Look up "EEVBlog solar roadways are bullshit." on google.
mellored wrote on August 24, 2015 - 1:11pm
I have. And his math is right, you get about 1/2 the energy on a road as you do on a roof. But the rest of his logic was wrong. If every roof was covered, we'd get about 25% of our current power needs, not our future needs, like electric cars, which will add a huge amount of demand for electricity. Not to mention more advanced manufacturing, like graphene, nanotubes, buckyballs, which which are highly energy intensive, and things we can't dream about. We're going to need a lot more space. And generally, the places with the most people have the highest energy demands, and the highest land prices. Sure, if you live in Las Vegas, or Cairo there's plenty of space in the desert right next door, but that's not going to work in say.. London, Rome, Tokyo, Sao Paul, Lima, Lagos, New York, ect... Solar roadways isn't going to be revolutionary. But even if they only did sidewalks and parking lots, it's going to be part of the solution.
Filip wrote on August 16, 2015 - 8:14am
Induction is the future. Today we don't even have good evs nor good normal charging nor fast charhing. Start by making a decent car with descent fast and destination charging (zoe has an awesome 43kW charging built in witch makes it cheep to put up the ac charging, you don't need expensive chademo.) money is everything!!! Instead of making this expensive induction road you could put up charging all overc the country for the same price. Induction charging makes me freaking angry! It's like talking aboutman going to Pluto before we've gone to Mars.
RonF wrote on August 27, 2015 - 12:16am
Let's be realistic. If we have to raise $59Billion in the state of CA alone to repair the road, do you think we'd agree to adding who knows how much more to imbed each of those miles with a power conductor plus all the other ancillary gear to make it sorta work? Taxpayers would say "NO" in a femtosecond. Forget it. Induction will never work. Economics prevent it. Plain and simple.
Mellored wrote on August 27, 2015 - 12:04pm
You need to look at both sides of the equation. Not just the cost, but the savings. The average US person spends $2000 on gas per year * 38.8 million people in calafornia = $77.6 billion saved. Can you build and power an induction system for less then $77.6 billion? At the very least, it's worth looking at.