London, Sept 14 (ANI): An idea has been put forward to power cars of the future through electrified roadways, which would in turn allow electric cars to forgo their heavy batteries.
The idea has been mulled over for decades, and previous attempts have been made using an electrified coil in the road to create an electromagnetic field that interacts with a coil attached to the car.
"Since the coils must be exactly aligned face-to-face to achieve a high energy efficiency, such schemes may be useful for charging vehicles in a parking lot, but never very effective for cars while running," New Scientist quoted Masahiro Hanazawa at Toyota Central R and D Labs in Nagakute, Aichi, Japan, as saying.
Hanazawa and Takashi Ohira at Toyohashi University of Technology, also in Aichi, are developing a system that transmits electric power through steel belts placed inside two tyres and a metal plate in the road.
"Our approach exploits a pair of tyres, which are always touching a road surface," Hanazawa said.
To test how much energy would be lost as electricity travelled through the tyres' rubber, Hanazawa and Ohira set up a lab experiment in which they put metal plates on the floor and inside a tyre.
"Less than 20 percent of the transmitted power is dissipated in the circuit," Ohira said.
The team presented its work in May at the International Microwave Workshop Series on Innovative Wireless Power Transmission in Kyoto, Japan.
Ohira also said that with enough power the system could run typical passenger cars, and the team are now developing a small-scale prototype to prove it.
He admits, however, that the system's energy loss is "much higher than regular batteries". (ANI)
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