In the past few years, Electric cars are in a lot of discussions. Well, they deserve the headlines, after all, EVs are the future of mobility. However, if we look at the sales figures, this year electric vehicle sales are expected to be less than 4 per cent of the total sales of cars. The biggest bottleneck in the sales of EVs is the absence of robust and sufficient charging infrastructure. The paucity of adequate charging stations makes electric vehicles an unviable option for a long route journey. Moreover, longer Charging time is also a big challenge to address.
To overcome this problem, work is going on to build such roads that will charge the vehicle while running over it. The principle on which such roads will work is inductive charging. Earlier this year, Indiana’s Department of Transportation and Purdue University announced to launch the world’s first wireless charging concrete highway. An engineering research centre called ASPIRE is working on this project. It is getting funding from the National Science Foundation.
Magnetic concrete technology is used for the construction of such roads in which metal elements such as iron oxide, nickel and zinc are mixed. This concrete has been developed by the German company Magment. Currently, this technology is being tested in several phases.
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How this will work?
In simpler words, this will work as wireless charging of mobile. The road will be magnetized by running an electric current through the concrete mixture. This creates a magnetic field that charges the vehicle by powering it wirelessly.
A 12 feet long by 4 feet wide plate or box made of a patented material will be buried a few inches down the road. These boxes will get electrified after getting connected to a grid. Moreover, vehicles will be fitted with a piece of equipment that will receive the current through magnetic induction.
Once carried on a major scale, these roads will remove all the existing impediments in the path of EV acceptance. The adoption of more and more clean energy vehicles is the need of the hour. Innovations like this will definitely help in achieving the net-zero emissions target and bringing the earth’s temperature below.
Read more: Rolls-Royce teases its first electric luxury car, revealed tomorrow.