Electrified roads could power cars from the ground up

摘要

The cars of the future could be powered by electrified roadways. Such technology would allow electric cars to forgo their heavy batteries, which not only add to a vehicle's weight increasing the energy needed to move it, but also force it to sit idle while recharging. The idea has been around for decades. Previous attempts used 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," says Masahiro Hanazawa at Toyota Central R&D Labs in Nagakute, Aichi, Japan.