Friday, January 22, 2016

Is it possible to charge a car wirelessly?

It is possible. Electrical vehicles require battery charging. One of the main problems faced by the vehicle industry is that there are not enough battery charging stations. Batteries can be charged hooked up to power sources that convert alternating current to direct current, or they can be wirelessly charged.

You might have heard of Faraday's laws of induction and this is the principle used in quite a few of the recent things you have seen:

Wireless chargers for cell phones
Induction cooktops

RF Tags

In fact Induction heating has been in use for a long time in metallurgical industries and in Induction Motors for rotating machines and a linear type called Linear Induction Motor.

You may even be owning a smart phone battery charger that uses the induction principle. In order to adopt all formats of devices from different vendors you need a standard and standard exists for wire-less charging. There are two standards so far, the Qi Wireless Charging Standard and the A4WP standard. Do the standards cover all shapes and sizes? perhaps not. These standards not only cover the core functionality of transferring power by induction but also digital intelligence to some extent.

What about charging a car wirelessly? Well it appears to have been worked out as well. Will it be available for all electric cars? That needs to be seen.

Read these articles as well:
http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/big-town/cutting-cord-hevo-power-takes-wireless-vehicle-chargers-spin-article-1.1726734

http://www.cnet.com/paid-content/news/cutting-the-cord-on-electric-vehicles/.