Opinion: Picture the scene: you’re driving your electric vehicle to the shops and notice the battery is running low.
Not to worry. You park in an available bay, and while you shop for groceries and have a cappuccino, your car is charging. No cable, no worries. The entire process is automated.
Thanks to recent advancements in wireless power transfer research, it has become feasible to charge EVs without the need for a cable, just like the wireless chargers already in use for smartphones.
This is the future of EVs. And it’s not far away.
Far from former Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s fear that EVs could “end the weekend“, Christmas holidays at the beach in the near future could benefit from built-in wireless charging infrastructure on the highways you take to get there.
This will allow you to charge your EV while travelling on the road, known as dynamic wireless charging.
Most EVs today can travel more than 300km on a single charge – further than most people will need for day-to-day use, but not far enough for a longer journey.
But with dynamic wireless charging technology integrated into highway infrastructure, range anxiety will no longer be something you’ll have to think about.
You also won’t have to buy a more expensive EV with a bigger battery capable of covering hundreds of kilometres – batteries being the most expensive part of an EV – when your average daily travel distance is just a few tens of kilometres.
The extensive list of EV benefits is quite appealing – not least how they can help reduce the world’s transport-related greenhouse gas emissions.
However, there is still a long way to go before we reach that utopia.
Despite their environmentally appealing façade, EVs produce more carbon emissions during the manufacturing phase than their internal combustion engine counterparts.
This is primarily attributed to the environmentally unfriendly processes of producing the bulky batteries used in EVs.
Before a mid-size EV even hits the road, an analysis estimated it would have produced 8,100kg of CO2. However this will be offset over the life of the EV, thanks to its carbon-free propellant.
Whether charged via a cable or wirelessly, the environmental impact of EVs also depends on the carbon footprint of their energy source.
If the electricity used to recharge it is sourced only from coal-fired power plants, a mid-size EV such as the Tesla 3 would have to be driven 125,000km to surpass the environmental performance of a petrol-fuelled Toyota Corolla.
However, if the grid recharging it is fully powered by renewable sources, this break-even point falls to below 14,000km.
The electricity grid must be capable of accommodating such a tremendous influx of EVs and renewable resources.
EVs are not just like other items you have at home. The charging process of an electric car might take up to 22kW of power – or 10 times the power consumed when ironing or using your hairdryer at maximum capacity.
Handling such an enormous amount of power at a national grid level, coupled with the unpredictable nature of renewable resources requires a grid that is not only more intelligent but also more sustainable and decentralised than current infrastructure.
The grid first needs to be digitalised to keep up with the complex demands of the growing number of EVs using it and the increasing prevalence of renewable energy resources feeding into it.
What this means is that a future grid is a data-driven, AI-integrated network which enables all the energy entities – from consumers to distributed generators and renewable resources – to interact digitally with each other as well as with the overall main network.
The rise of artificial intelligence, and its related applications, present promising opportunities to manage these highly sophisticated energy grids efficiently.
Another challenge to overcome is improving the batteries that power EVs themselves.
As well as current batteries being expensive, bulky and hard to sustainably produce, they can also be easily damaged.
For example, fast chargers for EVs allow you to recharge quickly but they also inject a massive amount of energy into the battery in a very short time, causing greater depreciation and degradation of the battery.
There is also the problem of what to do when the battery reaches the end of its usefulness in an EV, with work underway to see if they can be repurposed for stationary use at solar or wind farms.
Researchers are developing a process for recycling EV batteries at the end of their life and breaking them down into their component parts, which only produces low emissions.
But EV batteries have their upsides too, such as their ability to feed energy back into the grid through bidirectional chargers and vehicle-to-grid technology.
Such a future is already here for some EV drivers in South Australia.
Picture another scene: you’re driving your EV to the shops and the money you’ll make feeding energy back into the grid while you’re shopping will cover the cost of your coffee and a spot of lunch.
Associate Professor Mehdi Seyedmahmoudian is the Director of the Siemens Swinburne Energy Transition Hub and Discipline Coordinator of Electrical and Electronics Engineering in the School of Science, Computing and Engineering Technologies at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne.
Professor Saad Mekhilef is a distinguished professor in the School of Science, Computing and Engineering Technologies at Swinburne University of Technology and an honorary professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Malaya.
Saeid Ghazizadeh is a PhD student in the School of Science, Computing and Engineering Technologies at Swinburne University of Technology.
Professor Alex Stojcevski is Dean of the School of Science, Computing and Engineering Technologies at Swinburne University of Technology.
Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.
Let’s do away with the idea that everyone should own a car. In a dense city that is well connected by public transport, car shares provide a better model. You pay casual rates for an electric car when you need it, but the majority of the time you get around on foot, on a bike, or in public transport. You can still go on big road trips when you want, but you’re not burdened with the day-to-day maintenance of an expensive asset. It’s been years since I owned a car, and I haven’t looked back.
While this is a useful article in discussing the benefits of wireless charging, the rest of it is pretty inaccurate for Aotearoa New Zealand.
For starters, our grid is very renewable, so the carbon payback period for EVs is really short – typically less than 20,000 kms, or less distance than many people drive in a year. And used EV batteries aren’t even a thing yet – for instance, the liquid-cooled batteries in most EVs are rated for 1,500 charge/discharge cycles before needing replacement, and a bit of maths shows the lifespan is likely to be 400,000 – 600,000 kms. So the EVs are likely to long outlast their fossil fuelled competitors.
And the whole drama about needing massive grid upgrades is exactly that – a drama. For most people in most situations, plugging your EV into a regular old three pin plug overnight will give you more than enough range for daily commuting and driving. Nearly no-one in this country needs a 22kw EV charger at home, so we should stop pretending we all do.
Yes, we do need more electricity generation – but when the power draw from charging an EV is about the same as the power draw from a heat pump, I think the issue is being overstated.
I’m an EV owner – and a can’t see how this wireless charging could be justified let alone necessary and if wirelessly charging my phone is any indication of efficacy it seems to be a very slow way of getting a charge on board and also energy inefficient as it seems to induce discernible heating of the phone. Having EV charging stations at less than 70km apart outside of cities would be a better idea, another would be being able to book time slots (which are paid for whether used or not – to discourage idiots from overbooking) on chargers as the biggest issue with long journeys is turning up a rural charging station and finding three cars waiting to charge (ie a 90 minute wait) also only having one charger at the rural locations is an issue as chargers faulting out isn’t uncommon and that can be a real problem for long distance travel – Ive been nearly caught once by turning up at one charger with 25% charge left only to find its red light on – luckily just enough to get home on reduced battery power and a few km charge left. The best idea would be to have a trailable battery buggy = small hirable towable 50KW batteries that could be exchanged on the journey – again a booking system would be required but the fixation with range and the installation of ever bigger batteries in cars is just a waste of resources – in the longer term having cars that have 250-300km built in range (ie 95%ile of daily use) with exchangeable auxiliary batteries would be great. My car comfortably does 250+km on a charge and I regularly do 250km daily journeys and if I need to do a 350km journey just means stopping on the way for a coffee near a charger = no problem it only becomes a challenge if you want to drive for 6-700km in one day – and again a charger booking service would solve that problem in most instances. A more dense network of back up lower output chargers mightn’t be a bad idea either – ive got a domestic 7kW charger working from my household supply takes the car from flat to fully charged in eight hours but will put in a third of a charge in 2-3 hours – having some of those publicly available as back up in rural areas my be a good idea too – could put one or two at most cafes and motels around the country for about $5000 per two unit installation – beauty of 7kW charger is you can run the car up to 100% charge where 50Kw charger only charges to 80% – and it is noticeable the impact that has on range – and having a lot of accessible 7kW chargers means it is easy to stay topped up and also no special infrastructure required that is required if putting multiple 50kW chargers in remote locations
Maybe 7kW chargers with solar panels and back up batteries would be a flier in some remote locations as well. Electric cars are great! My household power bill including charging the car for 2-3000km travel each month is less than the price of two tanks of diesel (that would have got me half the distance! And still a bargain even with road user charges added!