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The Future of Electric Vehicles (EVs)
Seven days ago, a Silicon Valley energy startup CEO contacted me to help write a $1,000,000 grant proposal. I worked over the weekend researching the funding opportunities at the Department of Energy and writing a first draft of the proposal. (The world of startups requires 24/7 availability and everything is due now.) We reviewed that draft together yesterday, first to align on content and second to confirm he likes my work. (I don’t come cheap. He likes it.) Since I had yet to sign an NDA, I queried whether anything we had spoken about so far was under wraps, and he said no.
So I thought I would outline for you what he aims to demonstrate through a working prototype by the end of 2022.
Imagine a world where EVs can be HyperfastCharged™ 1,000 times faster than current technology. Instead of charging your Tesla or other EV for an hour every 200 miles or so, you can simply drive over a “charging zone” and get a full charge in seconds. In small towns, charging zones could be located at stop signs or service stations. This would relieve range anxiety for many potential EV customers.
As you may know, within the next couple of years, autonomous, self-driving long-haul freight trucks will be a reality. Imagine autonomous driverless trucks driving freeways in an EV lane with a HyperfastCharged™ zone every 100 miles. Long-haul trucks could be driving 24 hours per day, minus loading and unloading stops. (I know, this sucks for truck drivers. Another example of AI replacing workers.)
Here’s what the working prototype (non-solar) would look like:
The key material component is the gyrotron (1), a powerful beam-based technology that can transmit incredible bursts of energy. For the working prototype, a $500,000+ gyrotron will be purchased.
A custom transmitter plate and a receiver plate/rectenna will be created (2) (3).
The gyrotron and transmitter plate will be placed below the road surface, creating the HyperfastCharged™ charging zone, and the receiver plate installed on a modified EV, connected to special capacitors (4) that would charge any standard EV battery (5).
Lamborghini and MIT have partnered to produce supercapacitors, which may be used if available in time.
In production, HyperfastCharged™ zones would be located near smart energy storing systems that receive their energy from solar farms. (Note: There is also a custom software component where the HyperfastCharged™ zone recognizes an appropriate EV, evaluates its need, and delivers the charge.)
The crazy California goal to have all-electric vehicles by 2035 is impossible to achieve at present, since the current electrical grid cannot sustain such a need. The only proposal that makes sense is installing a set of new smaller nuclear reactors, but does anyone believe nuclear would be approved in time?
This technology offers another approach that, when demonstrated, can be a game-changer.
For those of you interested in the research related to the viability of using a gyrotron in this way, see the research review on “Wireless power transfer via Subterahertz-wave” written in 2018 by Sei Mizojiri and Kohei Shimamura.
[Did I use too many TMs? Hey, TMs are fun!]
Published in Science & Technology
No battery can take that rate of inrush current – they would blow. There is a reason batteries like to be trickle charged most of all. If this approach was valid, then you could charge a Tesla in the very same time – excepting the hookup time.
I am not even sure how to answer this…. an electrical current converted to essentially radio waves is not outside of Thermodynamics. Just converting electrical power from one voltage level to another (ie a transformer) is not a lossless process (just grab the coils of the iron core it you don’t believe me).
Heat just happens to be one of the lowest energies available in any conversion process. Yet we can take that heat (say from the breaking of chemical molecular bonds), boil a fluid, (one loss step) run it thru a turbine (another loss step), spin it thru a set of copper coils in a magnetic field (third loss step, plus the losses for creating that magnetic field). Generate a movement of electrons to be forward to some application (more losses as it flows thru those wires even when stepped up to 200K volt). Then those wall plug applications are reconverting those moving electrons into uses in our homes and industries (more losses from the wall plugs to the various energy uses).
All Thermodynamics is the accounting for any energy, in any form, that is loss from its conversion to another form of energy. As with any economic exchange nothing is truly free, one just need to determine the appropriate boundary for the system being analyzed, get that wrong and the illusion of a free lunches abound.
There are numbers of submissions every year to the US government looking for funding for the newest twist on getting money for the Perpetual Motion Machine.
Goodness know I have seen enough of these proposals cross my desk when evaluating SBIR’s for NASA
You would be surprised what’s happening these days.
Even the item you describe suggests capacitors to help limit the battery inrush.
Think of it this way: fast charging is desirable for all battery-powered items. Some of the very best engineering is on the most important products: cell phones. What is the fastest you can charge a brand new iphone or Galaxy? This is not a past-tense question: brand new designed consumer electronics do not charge from zero to full in “seconds.”
Now, you CAN make it faster if you provide active cooling systems. But that makes the car even more complex and heavy than before…
This does not improve the system’s thermodynamic efficiency, especial when you include the energy required for the “active” cooling system. It just becomes the typical tradeoff between our convenience and the universe’s taxing claim to your energy conversion.
Mark – I didn’t know you were on the cutting edge of a Jetsons world – wow! This is wild! As Astro would say ” Rrot Rwow!! Would this be affordable for the average person, and since you mention driverless ‘trucks’, isn’t that the goal of “those that shall remain un-named – no more drivers?” Do you hear that we will order up a ride or will people still enjoy autonomous driving into the future? Fascinating! Thanks for posting it.
Thanks! I suspect there will be dramatic changes in the next ten years, not all to our liking, but if this tech proves viable, the applications could be wide-ranging.
I believe it should be affordable, since widespread implementation normally drops costs dramatically, but government involvement is less predictable. If we can sustain a govt that is still reliably called “American,” then I remain optimistic. All the above, I would say. Imagine electric small-aircraft taxi services with these chargers on the tops of buildings…
There are those supercapacitors MIT and Lamborghini are working on.
https://robbreport.com/motors/cars/lamborghini-and-mit-automotive-supercapacitor-2879061/
From my “High Performance Thinking and Innovation” workshop.
Huge, driver-less trucks hurtling down the highway sounds even more horrifying than the current system with human drivers.
Although I don’t think Judge Mental would pay one red cent.
Unfortunately, in Calif anyway, having stuff start a fire seems to be a feature, not a glitch.
The countryside was dry as a bone by late April, yet “burn permits” were allowed until May 1st.
This has been the driest year in a series of dry years. So the official response? “Let’s extend the burn permit situation by an additional 5 weeks!”
Oh and they also assigned people a code sequence by which to look up information as to whether an individual’s community was being impacted by a fire or not.
(Plus Newsom, in a bid to save money so he can convince voters he is running a surplus, released 20,000 prisoners. Prison labor is often the difference in a fire getting put out or not.)
Microwave radiation intense enough to quickly charge an EV blasting out of the ground? What could go wrong?
A microwave oven is about 1500 Watts. This would be ~100 megawatts if it only takes “seconds” to do the charging.
When Mark said “I’d pay to see that!” I thought he was referring to “Huge, driver-less trucks hurtling down the highway”.
P.S.: I propose the removable Z cell battery. It would look like a D cell, but 3 feet across.
I recall the horror and shrieking from the environmentalists when there was serious consideration of solar stations (SSPS’s) that would broadcast the power back to earth with a very low flux microwave beam.
Nah, I’m pretty sure he wants to see me fried to a crackly crunch.
lets eliminate all subsidies, then leave it all alone. That will maximize effort and development. If we get more efficient competitive electric, price of oil will fall. It’ll be fun to watch.
They should test it on the Fourth of July. The light show should be spectacular!
A Teslabot could play the role of the driver.
Sure. But the odds are on my side, because FAR more technologies actually DO fail.
Remember Coleco’s Bubble Memory?
Self-Driving Cars?
Cost-effective biofuels
Fuel cell powered cars
Stirling engines
Turbine-powered cars
Nuclear-powered aircraft
Highly efficiency solid-state cooling and power generation
The list is very, very long.
You know, you’re right. I’ll go back to the CEO and explain how the odds are against us so, despite his past successes, there’s no point in trying.
Suits me. I wouldn’t mind if electric vehicles never become ubiquitous.
Explain to the CEO that potential investors will ask even tougher questions, and he should be glad of the opportunity to work on answers in advance.
Investors come in after the working prototype is demonstrated.
The odds are strongly against it, but maybe this is the one in a thousand that wins.
And the people working on it and the suppliers that supply materials etc, appreciate the jobs and the business. Even if it craps out.
So, do you have any statistics about the odds of a “magic battery” system succeeding?
A simple Internet search will produce hundreds of hits of “battery breakthroughs” in research labs. How many of them go into production? (Announcer: “Almost none.”)
But maybe this one will. Good luck.
Are there any devices that use this type of charging now?
Good question.
It sounds like the technology is sufficiently massive that we’d probably know about if it there were.
Most likely the guy has the potential problems figured out. I’d be hesitant to invest, though, considering the many greenie electric projects that have failed. Consider the expense of installing thousands of underground gyrotrons hither and yon…?
I certainly hope he has a way of avoiding the problem of cooking people who happen to be nearby when cars are charged by his gadget. Surely he does.
What big green industries are unqualified successes? Tesla? Any other EV? CFL and LED lights? Wind and solar energy in general? Ethanol? Every one of these involves significant government intrusion in the market. Success in green industry involves attracting heavy government backing.
Some perspective: Something as simple as switching from kerosene lanterns to solar powered or hand crank generator-battery powered LEDs for home lighting in the third world has done more to reduce carbon emissions (and save people’s lungs) than all the EVs in the USA. More kerosene is used for lighting and cooking in the third world than is used by all the aircraft in the world, so you can seen the potential here.