When I was a kid, we would routinely make the trip from our home in New York to visit family in Philadelphia. The drive would take us past the belchin

It’s time to cut the cord on electric vehicles | Opinion

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2021-06-12 13:00:05

When I was a kid, we would routinely make the trip from our home in New York to visit family in Philadelphia. The drive would take us past the belching refineries along I-95 in New Jersey where I held my breath and imagined drivers in other cars would also be holding their breath for as long as they could to avoid the sickening stench. I love the outdoors and beautiful architecture, so those offensive fossil fuel refineries were the antithesis of everything I wanted the world to be. Even as a young boy I wondered how I might change it.

It was a few decades later, when I was privileged to work with NASA as part of the design team for the International Space Station and future lunar and Mars missions that I began to realize a different vision for our future. Our team was working on ways to save electrical conductor weight on the space station and future Mars missions when the concept of inductive energy transfer began to resonate with the introduction of electric vehicles. Why use cables or wires at all when electrons can be transmitted wirelessly and more efficiently using a magnetic field? It’s a question Tesla, Ford, and General Motors drivers ought to be asking. Does it really make sense to plug a 4,000-pound car (or 40,000-pound truck!) into an outlet in the same way we plug in toasters and TVs?

President Joe Biden, during a recent visit to Michigan, detailed his plan to invest billions into electric vehicle production and rebates for car and truck buyers. That’s good news. The administration’s proposal for $15 billion to build 500,000 EV charging stations by 2030 is part of a worldwide movement, and it’s a movement that will culminate in cleaner air. But doing so depends on a cost-effective energy delivery system.

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