
Electricity Transmitted to Auto Tire Through 10cm-thick Concrete - iProject
http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20120706/227082/
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jakeonthemove
I just can't help but think that Nikola Tesla was right - he had the same idea
(and possibly the means to do it) a full century ago...

We'd also be driving electric cars today if not for the oil and auto
industries (read up on how they buried the electric transportation in its
infancy)...

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rheide
citation needed

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jakeonthemove
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car%3F>

[http://books.google.be/books?id=MyZo7EhN8-MC&pg=PA58&...](http://books.google.be/books?id=MyZo7EhN8-MC&pg=PA58&dq=Sloan+1922+general+motors+streetcar&hl=en&ei=ZG1DTuvXFMPrmAX0_cmvCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Sloan%201922%20general%20motors%20streetcar&f=false)

<http://earlyelectric.com/carcompanies.html>

[http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/06/henry-ford-thomas-
ediso...](http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/06/henry-ford-thomas-edison-ev/)

Granted, it was cheaper to go with oil-powered cars because of the incentives,
but in the long run, we would've been better off with electric.

Oh well, more opportunities for innovative business today :-)

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slug
I think you missed the part where battery technology one century ago wasn't as
advanced as it is today.

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rhizome
Copper was much cheaper, though!

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BystanderX
Not to mention demand and continued production drives research and
improvement, so it would have been self reinforcing.

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westbywest
"To put the technology into practical use, the electric power needs to be
increased by 100 times. But the group said that the parts needed for it are
relatively cheap and that there is no major problem."

I have to admit some skepticism about this claim. 2-3 orders of magnitude
increase in output power delivered may very well expose non-trivial problems.
I.e. making the effort of scaling this technology up more than just linear.

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ams6110
Not to mention the need to rip up and replace all the road surfaces. At least
partially.

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ChuckMcM
They seem to do that every other year in bad weather areas :-)

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adaml_623
Article says they need 50W * 100 = 5KW. That's reasonable as that's roughly
the amount of energy you need to keep a car moving at road speed.

And with a quoted ffficiency of 80-90% this is equivalent to 10-20% being lost
probably as HEAT into the roadway. So that means we are turning our roads into
long low power electric hotplates.

Okay perhaps it's not that extreme and possibly less waste heat than an IC
engine. Maybe the idea isn't so crazy in a densely populated city.

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Androsynth
But combustion engines operate somewhere around 50% efficiency? (i dont
remember exactly, but I remember it being pretty bad). So the 10-20% lost
through the road and the (presumably) small amount lost through electric,
battery-less cars may actually be less overall than from combustion engines.

I am assuming that electric engines dont generate much heat if they dont have
batteries and assuming that roads dont have the power on unless theres a car
nearby.

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CGamesPlay
Wireless power transmission seems like a great idea, but it can't be billed by
usage, and kills everyone who has a pacemaker.

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pliny
Is there a reason why you can't legislate that every electric car that can use
ubiquitous wireless charging be fitted with a meter that reports usage, just
like house have?

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tcbawo
It seems to me that the obvious application here would be wireless charging
parking spaces, not electric roads.

