It's the stuff of science fiction. Imagine driving down the road, and your electric car automatically charges. You don't have to stop. You don't have

Engineers Are Creating Concrete Pavement That Wirelessly Charges Electric Cars

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2021-07-19 23:00:06

It's the stuff of science fiction. Imagine driving down the road, and your electric car automatically charges. You don't have to stop. You don't have to get out of the car. Nothing.

The Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT), Purdue University, and German startup Magment GmbH have all joined forces to create a system that wireless charges electric vehicles as they drive. Ultimately, the idea is to develop the world's first wireless charging concrete pavement.

The two first phases will involve various forms of pavement testing and analysis and optimization research. This work will ultimately be conducted by the Joint Transportation Research Program (JTRP) at Purdue’s West Lafayette campus. Once these stages are complete, a third phase will see INDOT construct a test site that is at least a quarter-mile-long. Here, the team will test the concrete’s capacity to charge heavy trucks operating at high power (200 kilowatts and above).

Once all these phases have been successfully completed, INDOT will proceed to use the new technology, which was built and refined during the aforementioned trials, to electrify a yet to be determined segment of an interstate highway within Indiana.