A pilot project scheduled for 2014 will enable electric vehicles to wirelessly top up their battery packs every time they pass over a manhole cover.
From the outside, at least, they will resemble manhole covers, but in actual fact they will be resonance wireless charging plates in disguise, able to transmit 220 volts and up to 10 kilowatts of energy to a vehicle, as long as it has a charge receiver and the driver's smartphone is running the right app.
The brainchild of Hevo Power, the project will see its first charging points deployed in New York's Washington Square Park, to be used exclusively for charging the batteries of two Smart Cars belonging to New York University.
However, according to Wired, which first reported on the project, Hevo Power has also been approached by Pepsi and Walgreens, among others, with a view to building larger charging networks for delivery vehicles.
Allowing electric cars to charge wirelessly as they drive along inner city roads will not only drastically reduce pollution and the emission of greenhouse gases, it will also address battery-powered vehicles' biggest drawback -- range. Even the Tesla Model S, the poster child for green motoring, is only capable of traveling 500km on a single charge and it is a special case. Most pure electric cars are only capable of one-fifth that range before everything comes to a standstill.
New York is by no means the first city to invest in or examine the benefit of wireless charging. In Italy on the streets of Turin and Genoa, wirelessly charged electric buses have long been a common sight. Charging coils are located at road junctions, bus stops and the bus terminal, all of which is enough to keep bus batteries topped up throughout their 125-mile (200 km) daily routes.
The city of Gumi in South Korea recently went one better. In August it opened a 12km stretch of road capable of recharging any compatible electric vehicle that drives along it.
