The wireless charging revolution is just months away. Here’s how it starts.

The wireless charging revolution is imminentArtur Debat – Getty Images

• The German city of Balingen is hosting the first public test of an electrified road that charges cars while driving with “dynamic induction charging”.

• These roads could help improve the range and cost of electric vehicles while revolutionizing green public transport.

• The cost of these roads and their use in rural areas remain a major challenge.

When you talk to people about buying an electric vehicle, “range anxiety‘ is what is keeping most from joining the EV revolution. Although cars like Tesla’s Model 3 can reach distances of up to 358 miles per charge (for the long-range model), most electric vehicles — especially the affordable ones — still hover around 250 miles if you’re lucky. Combine that fear with declining EV infrastructure and long charging times, and an electric car looks increasingly like a wait-and-see purchase.

Although new Federal investment in EV infrastructure And further advances in battery technology will only help with electric vehicle adoption, clever tech also helps ease fears by building electrified roads that charge your car while you drive. The idea is called “dynamic induction charging” and the first public test of this potentially groundbreaking technology is scheduled to go online later this year financial times reports.

This one-kilometer strip of road in a town called Balingen, about an hour’s drive from Stuttgart in south-west Germany, is being built by electron, an Israel-based company that is conducting similar pilot projects around the world. Just like modern smartphones can be charged wirelessly, so can electric cars. This street works through leverage magnetic resonance inductionwhere copper coils embedded under the roadway transmit energy to a receiver installed in every electric vehicle – whether a Chevy Bolt or a giant electrified bus.

The idea of ​​wireless EV charging isn’t new, and companies like it BMW has developed stationary charging pads that can power cars without bulky cables, but Electreon’s electrified road has incorporated this inductive idea into the transportation network,

If these roads prove effective (and especially if they can be built affordably), electric vehicles could opt for smaller batteries, which could drastically reduce costs. But the near-term benefits of electrified roads would be felt elsewhere first.

“The aim of this project is not only to make wireless charging accessible to the public in Germany,” says Andreas Wendt, CEO of Electreon financial times. “Other important aspects are the development and use of a tool that supports public transport planners to install the inductive infrastructure for a specific city or region.”

Bus lines or autonomous shuttles in city centers and universities are so-called “captive fleets”, ie they have regularly planned routes and roads. This technology could result in these forms of public transport simply being able to run 24/7 without the need for downtime to recharge batteries. The idea is so compelling that the Michigan Department of Transportation signed a five-year deal with Electreon last year to test an in-road charging network along a 1-mile stretch in Detroit.

These projects are still in the learning phase and need to overcome some serious limitations, chief among which is cost. While it might make sense to electrify the streets of the world’s largest cities and busiest highways, embedded wireless charging is a much greater challenge in rural communities.

But so far, the idea has only been embraced by automakers and companies alike Fiat Chrysler And Volvo are already testing the induction technology on their vehicles. If things go well in places like Balingen and Detroit, electrified roads could be the antidote to the ongoing fears of the EV revolution.

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