Online Electric Vehicles

Frequent commenter Tim Kingston just sent me this piece on “Online Electric Vehicles,” i.e., EVs that use inductive charging built into the roads.  He notes: “Here is an interesting idea.  Good for city and school bus routes.  I wonder if it would work on freeways for long haul trucks.”

My take on this is that inductive charging of EVs is a terrific idea in certain extremely specific circumstances, e.g., buses that take regular routes and stop for a few minutes at a few well-defined places.  The best examples in our present-day culture are airport shuttles to rental car locations and hotels.  Taxis that are based at airports and sit in a queue there are also a possibility, though they travel longer distances and take unpredictable routes.  In any case, there are numerous solutions under development and test.  If I weren’t under NDA, I’d tell you about my very favorite of these.

As to building this into the roadways, there is no reason that this can’t be done – other than that it will be extremely expensive — and thus I doubt it will happen.  I believe that the cost of batteries and fast-charging stations will make our current approach to electric transportation feasible, and that this approach will remain far too costly to be practical.

Of course, the real question in all this is where the electricity comes from.  As long as EVs are charged with coal, we really have a non-starter environmentally. I see a day when our grid incorporates energy storage (including EV batteries) that facilitate the integration of variable renewable resources (solar and wind), though some say it’s a pipe dream.