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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
Indeed. But the left and other environmentalist whackos don’t make that connection, it’s all first-level thinking with them, if even that advanced. “Burning kerosene” is not “using electricity” so they don’t understand that the former is actually worse. It’s the same with burning wood or worse (coal, dung…) for heat/cooking, rather than electric or natural gas or propane or something. Not only is it less environmental, it makes the people ill too.
And, a reminder from page 1 of this thread:
Mark, please do not get the wrong impression.
I am not a reflexive naysayer. I have been there – facing entire rooms of hostile engineers who told me that what I was doing could not be done. My life’s work is doing what others could not do, or could not see the value in doing.
It is not easy or obvious which tech passes the smell test, and which does not. Some of the most common arguments are in fact totally specious: “If it was worth doing, someone would have done it already,” is one. So is, “If it could be done, it would have been done.”
But this is a challenge not because power cannot be transferred over a gap – every motor shows that it can. The problem lies in whether the recipient of that gap can efficiently absorb it. If they can, then the gap-method becomes of secondary importance.
No problem. One of the reasons I posted this is so I could get some ideas of questions to ask.
Thank you.
The question is, can these EV’s outrun those who desire to make us extinct?
I would like to point out a horse is solar powered, if indirectly.
But with an EV you can put the cart before the horse!
So are fossil-fuel vehicles, since sun energy produced the plants etc that turned into oil.
No argument from me.
I read the linked research paper.
The big take-away is that the best RF-DC conversion efficiencies at the gyrotron low end of frequencies, ~20GHz, are in the vicinity of 50%, and get worse with higher gyrotron frequencies. So, half or more of the beam energy does not turn into electricity.
The gyrotron marketing material highlights its use for very rapid heating of target materials, including non-metallic targets. Which means to deliver the megawatts needed to charge a large battery in a few seconds, you will also deliver megawatts of heat to the material in the path of the beam. These are microwave frequencies. Without very heavy shielding between the receiving antenna and the vehicle above it, you will literally cook the vehicle’s biological occupants. (Water-based organics absorb microwaves very well indeed. Which is why microwave ovens are ubiquitous in the modern world.)
Also not discussed, and missing from the marketing material, is the gyrotron’s own power conversion efficiency.
The discussed super-capacitors are vaporware. The proposal weasel-words that part. (“if available”) Many enterprises have worked on them over the past several decades, with very limited success. They all stumble up against dielectric breakdown at the energy densities needed for this kind of application. Not that it won’t ever happen, but it is like fusion power–always a decade or two away.
I’m horrified that this technology may/will get a million bucks in government grant money. Or any subsidies from taxpayers at all.
Interesting. Thank you.
One further note: such a machine placed under the pavement is an extreme hazard for pedestrians if accidentally activated without a properly shielded vehicle above it. Or if a vehicle’s shield redirects any part of the beam towards nearby pedestrians.
Oy!
Don’t forget about bicycles! Given that we’re a persecuted, oppressed minority, maybe they have us in mind.
Maybe. But the proposed ideal installation is right next to . . . wait for it . . . crosswalks.
On the bright side it could end jaywalking. Jaywalk and die.
I thought (or maybe assumed from the description) that it was a tight beam that only turned on when the car was immediately over it.
Yes. That is how it is supposed to work. And the beam shall only go up, not out.
The latter is the real concern. Emag shielding works by two mechanisms: absorption, and deflection. If absorbed, you are heating the shield, which will then have to be dissipated. Think about the special liner on the “down” side of a microwave popcorn bag, and picture your vehicle’s occupants as the popcorn kernels. (Not exactly, but they’ll definitely be on a hot seat.)
If deflected, you will heat anything in the new path of the beam. Like pedestrians nearby, or the occupants of the vehicle beside yours.
We could mold the underside in pattern to make it retroreflective and directs all energy back to the emitter. That would be fair, wouldn’t it?
Just kidding. But could we make underside surface rough so that it breaks up the coherency of the microwaves and scatters them, turning them onto high levels of background radiation? Come to think of it, I think retroreflective works better.
@philturmel, I have created a Risk Assessment section to the grant/investment proposal, based on your points. Here are the questions I have created so far for the principals to answer. How would you modify them, and what other questions based on risk would you add? Again, thanks. I’ve added a response to the first.
_____
3.1 What are the dangers to pedestrians, or to vehicles that do not have the installed receiver equipment?
An RFID is used to identify oncoming registered vehicles. The HyperfastCharge zone is only triggered when a registered vehicle is in the appropriate position.
3.2 What is the danger associated with a battery receiving a HyperfastCharge faster than it or the intermediary devices can handle?
Xxx
3.3 Since the 2018 research paper appears to confirm that up to 50% of the gyrotron’s beam energy will not be converted to electricity, where does that energy go, and how are the vehicle occupants protected from any heat orenergy discharges?
Xxx
My italics. Also, proper positioning of the receiver would probably require more than just RFID technology.
A near-field communication link between gyrotron and vehicle might be required to regulate beam intensity to match the vehicles’s capability and provide feedback on beam alignment.
My italics again. I don’t have an answer to this one. I, personally, would not want to be sitting above one of these transmitters.
Particularly once the AIs take over. We don’t want to give SkyNet another weapon.
Thanks, yes, their is more than an RFID. There would be a whole software interaction to determine several things to ensure all is ready and in the right place.
I will let you know what answers I get. And again, thank you for this engagement. Sorry, I can’t pay a consulting fee. :-)
Actually, the whole risk section was to be written, and one of the reasons I posted this is to get the feedback I needed to know what concerns existed. We will see.
Hmmm… A Skynet question in the Risk Assessment section? I almost want to do it, but I also want to get paid… Perhaps I can send a note to Elon…
Consider adding:
You should include in that the loss from storage of the electricity for nighttime and windless times that I mentioned in an early comment. The ‘smart storage’ doesn’t exist, and other currently available tech all involve substantial additional losses.
My wording implies that fossil fuels are and will continue to be a significant contributor to the current grid. So the incremental energy needed by this gyrotron/beam power method will be supplied by “dirty” generation.
Yeah, kinda rhetorical, because it cuts the legs out from under the primary goal of convenient charging–more electric vehicle adoption.
In production, the plan is charging primarily via solar farms, which may require something else revolutionary.
What ever the energy source, the aim is off grid. But of course we will see… Good questions to add.
The Ivanpah solar farm in California has been beset with problems since it opened. Ironically, it requires natural gas to start up every morning. Like all solar projects, it would not have been done without massive subsidies.
But my main objection is that the structure is a blight on 3500 acres of public land desert, and you know it won’t be removed when it goes out of service. A permanent eyesore.
I agree. Hence “revolutionary.”
Don’t forget to include possible malfunctions. Strictly speaking, it would not be impossible for the charging system to activate even with no vehicle in the proper position.
You mean like walking past it with your credit card?