ELECTRIC SUPERHIGHWAY ON HORIZON

RECHARGING your electric vehicle while you drive could be just ‘two to three years away’. Production cars could have the capability to recharge on the move by 2020.

That’s the view of Michael Kissin, director of engineering at Qualcomm New Zealand, who has just overseen the first successful run of the technology company’s new ‘dynamic’ wireless charging system.

“A question I get asked a lot is when can I buy a vehicle with WEVC [Wireless Electric Vehicle Charging Technology] installed and ready to use,” he said.

“The number of development contracts and requests for quotation from automotive manufacturers is on the increase. We expect that production orders will be placed soon, and we will start to see [wireless recharging] systems on production vehicles in the next two to three years.”

A 100-metre stretch of road near Paris has been converted to run Qualcomm’s ‘Fabric’ technology, which uses 25-metre charging blocks placed together. Each block has its own power pack and generates a wireless signal, which is transmitted to a pad on the bottom of the car.

It’s an advancement of the static wireless charging technology the company has already developed, which allows batteries to be filled simply by stopping in a designated parking space. It is used by the safety car in the electric Formula E motorsport championship to keep its batteries topped up in case it is needed on track.

Qualcomm says its technology has been built to work across different energy suppliers and car Manufacturers so there’s no barrier to EV owners recharging. The developments have come as part of a £7.7 million project, which received funding from the European Commission.

This 100-metre stretch of road near Paris powers vehicles via a wireless signal