Norway's Wireless Charging Roads

Norway's Wireless Charging Roads

As electric vehicle more and more prominent on or roads and charging capacity more and more of an issue, Norway has come up with a clever broad view solution for its fleet of taxis called electric city. In future it might take in far more vehicles too. The Nordic country has already committed to requiring all new cars sold from 2025 and onwards are electric and intends to build an entirely emission free taxi service to assist in its lofty aims. With charging time and efficiency limiting factor for electric commercial vehicles in particularly they’ll be doing this by charging the cabs wirelessly through the taxi rank they sit on as the taxis wait to be hired. This saves in several ways – no need to hunt out an available charger, no need to wait separately for a charge and to be hired and no need to plug in or unplug when a fare arrives, all in which to save precious time in which to earn. In the industry after all time is money.

How it will charge?

The charging process will take through process called induction, to facilitate the in place charging, charging plates are to be installed under the road where the taxis will park up and a receiver located in each taxi. This will allow charging at up to 75 kW entirely without cables. Induction charging works through the principle of electromagnetic induction whereby an electric charge sent through a thick coil of wire is used to generate an electric current; the force in turn generates an electric current in a second coil some distance away. The process does require that the device to be charged is relatively near to the coil and so the process is sometimes called Near Field Charging. As it is not absolutely precisely like the connection of a cable however this is relatively simple to set up between a taxi and a static location. So long as the positioning of the vehicle is relatively accurately, something that can be easily achieved through normal parking. Naturally such a process would be of limited green benefit unless the electricity being supplied to the taxis was already from a green source. 

 

Electric Vehicle Charging Point
Electric Vehicle Charging Point
 

Electric cars can be much greener than their petroleum equivalent but only where care is taken that the electrical sources are better for the environment than the petrol it’s replacing. Fortunately Norway has that covered too with the country’s ever mixing of hydro and wind energy – one of the greenest energy supplies in any country in the world as well as the world’s highest rate of electric vehicle ownership. At the heart of program is a finish clean energy company “Fortum” their charge and drive program. The company is long time collaborators with Norway’s taxi industry with a particular focus on the ease of infrastructure and will be heavily involved in the setup of the earliest part of this.

Next in the list.

Major car firms like Jaguar and Land Rover are also stepping up to the plate; the very first step is expected to be active in 2023 and will involve the installation of charging stations at the taxi rank outside the main station in capital city Oslo. The process is absolutely slow as the digging up of the road for installation outside the main stations it also requires all taxis are set up for charging. The taxis will be able to drive up to the charger and a wireless charging session will automatically start. According to Annika Hoffner – the head of the project – this allows the taxis to charge in a place where they would anyway be waiting for new customers. The difference is that they won’t be emitting exhaust while waiting instead they will be receiving renewable energy to charge the taxis battery whilst this is a simply an early step Norway is a logical place to take a step towards wider network as well as its broadly green approach to energy the Nordic country has also has one of the strongest markets for electric vehicles in the world. 

 

Many Big Player of Automobile Industries are in line.
 

In the long term though there could be far wider applications to this kind of technology. There’s already research taking place into how to charge cars as they travel while putting a charging coil in a single location or several single locations such as in the taxi rank is an affordable option, doing the same down an entire street for on the move is far more challenging in terms of both cost and expanding the technology beyond a single industry that said Renault began looking at the idea way back in 2012 creating a route on the outskirts of the Paris that enabled the ongoing charging of two of their Kangoo electric vehicle as they drove while the main aim is a kind of grazing charging adding to the battery between larger charges, this could in theory allow indefinite driving especially perhaps in combination with self driving car technology. In practice the bigger benefits are on the green energy side as well as potentially allowing both greater ranges and smaller batteries in future electric cars. 


 

The huge infrastructure challenges do mean its everyday use is not on the immediate horizon, for now Norway and its taxi industries might just be the perfect testing ground. The country already has the highest rate of electric vehicles in the world and its relatively small population allows for changes like this to be made fairly quickly and unobtrusively. Also Norway is not the home of a single automotive company likely to lobby against the changes and so is free to put in place all kinds of benefits for switching to electric without any excessive lobbying or economic pressure benefits for electric car use so far have included free or discounted road tolls parking and charging point and the tax exemptions. The number of purchased cars that are electric is closing on half of all new vehicles in the country so the process is well underway. Would you like invest money in your country like this?   

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