You’re driving nervous, watching the battery charge go down, and worrying about stopping to charge. You round the corner onto 14th Street between Marantette and Dalzelle and breathe a sigh of relief. The meter starts going up. The battery is recharging as you drive.
It’s not science fiction. It’s Detroit’s historic Corktown.
Michigan has installed America’s first wireless electric vehicle (EV) charging roadway. The road uses inductive-charging copper coils embedded in its surface to recharge EVs capable of wireless charging as they drive.
The Detroit Free Press explains, “The Michigan Department of Transportation is working with Israel’s Electreon, one of the member companies at Newlab, and numerous partners to build what will eventually be a mile of inductive-charging roadway.
It won’t work with most current EVs. Most current models aren’t capable of charging wirelessly. Officials tested it with a specially modified Ford E-Transit van equipped with a receiver, Electrek, an EV news website, reports.
Genesis builds wireless charging technology into some GV60 SUVs outside the United States. But the company hasn’t brought the tech to America yet.
Stefan Tongur, Electreon’s vice president of business development, tells the Detroit News that the project will first focus on commercial uses, “highly frequented corridors and places where vehicles might do a lot of idling.”
It’s safe for pedestrians and wildlife because the road only transmits electricity when a receiver is directly over a coil, which is smaller than the footprint of a car.
