Tech & Biz

Electric cars are absolutely gorgeous, want to plug them in?

by The_Cynic | September 10, 2009 at 07:41 am

54 views | 4 Recommendations | 1 comment

We, as humans, are lazy - that, I believe is the father of invention as necessity is its mother. And that isn't misanthropic either!

Men like their remotes - and with more buttons the better! BAM, Ugh!

WiTricity's version of wireless electricity -- which converts power into a magnetic field and sends it sailing through the air at a particular frequency -- still needs to be refined a bit, he said, but should be commercially available soon.

Yet, in all seriousness, one of the problems people would have with having electric cars is that you would have to plug them in, regardless that we stop at gas stations to fill up our cars at the moment - it's all about the 'sell'.

Many, including me, would buy an electric car tomorrow - whether I had to plug them in or not.

But let's think about it for a moment, if you didn't have to - bonus!

So we then go on to all those other gadgets we have from laptop to mobile phone.

"The biggest effect of wireless power is attacking that huge energy wasting that goes on where people buy disposable batteries," he said. Watch Giler demonstrate the idea

It also will make electric cars more attractive to consumers, he said, because they will be able to power up their vehicles simply by driving into a garage that's fitted with a wireless power mat.

Ideas about wireless electricity have been floating around the world of technology for more than a century. Nikola Tesla started toying with the ability to send electricity through the air in the 1890s. Since then, though, making wireless electricity technology safe and cheap enough to put on the market has been an arduous task for researchers.

Engineers have developed several ways to convert electricity into something that's safe to send through the air without a wire. Some of their technologies are available on commercial scales, but they have some limits.