Canadian Researchers Create Wireless Charger For Electric Cars

An anonymous reader writes "University of British Columbia researchers have developed a wireless charging system for electric cars. It involves a spinning magnet beneath the parked vehicle which turns another magnet in the underside of the car. Charging takes four hours and is about 90% as efficient as plugging in. From the article: '"One of the major challenges of electric vehicles is the need to connect cords and sockets in often cramped conditions and in bad weather," says David Woodson, managing director of UBC Building Operations. "Since we began testing the system, the feedback from drivers has been overwhelmingly positive." Four wireless charging stations have been installed at UBC's building operations parking lot. Tests show the system is more than 90 per cent efficient compared to a cable charge. A full charge takes four hours and enables the vehicle to run throughout an eight-hour shift.'"

90% as efficent as a plug is good enough?

[__aaltlg1547]

Not if I'm paying for the electricity. I don't really feel like paying 10% extra to charge my car for the convenience of not having to plug it in. How much more does this charging system cost and how much does it add to my car's weight? Qualitatively, let's estimate that as "too much."

F-Zero

[Anonymous Coward]

I have visions of the recharge lane.

Lots of Canadian stories this weekend

[mark-t]

Not that I'm complaining... I'm just a bit surprised. News for nerds north of the 49th.... If this was November, I'd suspect some sort of alliteration joke to be forthcoming.

Re:90% as efficent as a plug is good enough?

[CastrTroy]

Especially disappointing coming from Canada where plug our gas powered cars in during the winter anyway. Is it seriously that hard to plug in your car? Why not just build in some sort of robotics and sensing system so that the charging station can maneuver the plug into the car if you are really that lazy.

Re:What, a spinning magnet?

[HornWumpus]

In what world is it a good idea to encourage idiots?

We need to be publicly humiliating these people (public double blind testing) not wasting time and money building nonsensical things to not actually work around the non-issues they have their panties in a bunch over.

Re:Why the second magnet?

[Prune]

You're an idiot. Due to the slow rotation, the slow rate of change of the magnetic field puts the whole system is in a purely magnetic near field [wikipedia.org] regime. While the rotating magnet emitter would, all by itself, produce extremely long wavelength EM radiation starting at a few kilometers distance (any closer, the only electric field that can be induced is in conductors), that does not happen when there is an interacting object in the near field which acts as a sink for most of that energy. Given their efficiency numbers, the leakage is 10%; a kW or even a few of multi-km long wavelength fields are not an issue for biological matter, even less when they don't even exist as EM until km distance over which you've had quadratic falloff! Anywhere within the vicinity of the rotating emitter / car receiver system there is only a relatively slow varying magnetic field and no measurable charge separation can be induced by this in biological matter. Magnetic fields of 16 Tesla were used to levitate a frog around 15 years ago, and the frog had no physiological effects during or after the experiment--and those are magnetic fields orders of magnitude higher than what was ued here!