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Thursday 13 May 2021

Cornell Researchers Discover Way to Charge Cars on the Road

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Cornell Researchers Discover Way to Charge Cars on the Road

Cornell University researchers may have solved one of the biggest issues with electric vehicle adoption, finding a way to wirelessly charge vehicles while driving.

Virtually every major automaker is planning on transitioning to electric vehicles in the next decade. Unfortunately, one of the biggest challenges to widespread adoption is range and fast charging. In fact, some 20% of California drivers end up trading their electric vehicles in for traditional gasoline models because of the long charge times and limited range.

Researchers at Cornell appear to have solved the issue, developing technology that could pave the way (pun intended) for special ‘charging lanes’ that would wirelessly charge an electric vehicle driving on them.

In an interview with Business Insider, lead researcher and associate professor Khurram Afridi, outlined how the technology could work.

“Highways would have a charging lane, sort of like a high occupancy lane,” Afridi said. “If you were running out of battery you would move into the charging lane. It would be able to identify which car went into the lane and it would later send you a bill.”

While Afridi’s work may sound too good to be true, it’s based on technology many already take for granted.

“Wireless power transfer is based on the same underlying physics used to send messages through radio waves to spacecraft in deep space, things like Voyager,” Afridi said. “Except now we are sending much more energy across much shorter distances, to moving vehicles.”

The technology is still five to 10 years from being deployed, but it promises to solve the biggest issue with electric vehicles and make ‘recharge worry’ a thing of the past.