Rocket Scientists Are Developing Roads That Can Charge Electric Cars

If only there was a way to charge your electric car on the go. Perhaps high-frequency electrical fields embedded into the road’s surface might help? Well, that’s exactly what one rocket scientist at the Cornell University is developing.

Picture this: you’re driving on the highway and you’re running out of charge, but there are no charging stations nearby. What do you do? Cornell’s associate professor Khurram Afridi suggests a new way to charge, by pulling into a particular lane that features charging functions that will charge your car as you drive, which then allows you to pull back out into the regular lanes and continue on with your journey.

This method would be ideal for long journeys, but what about last-minute emergencies? Afridi also thinks his development could be installed at traffic lights or in high-traffic areas where drivers are more commonly stopped for a longer period of time to further charge the EVs.

Afridi and his team have made a system that embeds the high-frequency electrical fields into the road that are spaced at around ten feet apart from each other, and will work as long as the car has a ground clearance of no higher than seven inches.

However, in order for this to work, the roads aren’t the only things to be updated. Manufacturers will also need to comply by adding new capabilities and functions to accept this power source, but if they did get on board, then it might mean that batteries could be smaller, thus resulting in lighter and more eco-friendly cars.

For now, this is just a development being tested by Afridi and his team. However, scientists think this kind of tech could be implemented on roads within the next ten years.

In other news, Mercedes-Benz thinks the future of electric transportation could look like this: the Concept EQT.