Lately, you can’t do anything now without being told to “Go Green.” Electric cars seem to be the best way to get around while still helping the environment. But what happens if you are driving an electric car on the highway and your battery runs out? You are in the middle of nowhere and while a gas powered car take a spare gas can and walk down the road to fill up at the next station, you can’t really charge your car while you’re on the highway. It’s a problem that all electric car owners dreaded… until now. Engineers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory are working on a way of powering electric cars on the highway while they are in use.
Electric cars can be recharged on the highway using resonant magnetic coupling. The power is generated by a transmitting coil which will be placed in the ground of the highway. The transmitting coil interacts with the receiving coil on the bottom of the car when it drives over. It will only work when driven over at a high speed, which is why this plan would need to be implemented on highways, rather than in cities. This transmits energy into the electric cars battery, allowing the car to drive on electricity supplied by the road.
This revolutionary concept will allow for smaller batteries to be placed in electric cars. The cars will be able to drive on these electronic highways and when they get of the electronic highway they will still have a fully charged battery and be able to drive around town using the stored power. After running around the city and running down their batteries, the driver can just get back on the electronic highway and re-charge.
These plans are entirely safe in that the coils are only active when they are with in reach of each other. So unlike the third rail of subway systems, this will be entirely safe to walk over for pedestrians.
While this plan would end up costing roughly $800,000 a mile, investing in a way to free us from the strangle hold foreign oil has on us is necessary in this economy. Also it would lead to an increase in electric car use, which will help the environment.
Due to their limited battery life, electric cars haven’t been the best for long road trips. However, if the engineers are successful with their plans, electric cars can become a more viable form of transportation.