i3 - March/April 2016 - 15

CCourtesy AUDI: top right: Schenectady Museum/CORBIS

Now, innovations in both
vehicles and chargers are affecting change. An emergent class
of affordably priced long-range
BEVs promises to greatly reduce
range anxiety, while advances in
charging technology are making
home chargers better than ever
and may even spur new publicly available options.
But as usual, some hurdles remain.
"What we're seeing now is the potential for battery vehicles that [yield a] 200 mile range and that
are affordable to a large segment of the population,
so I think we're going to be seeing a shift in what
the market demands for charging, and what consumers are really going to want," says Lisa Jerram,
principal research analyst at Navigant Research
in Washington, D.C. With a 200-mile-capable
BEV, there will be less call for unplanned charging at public stations and "most people will charge
at home most of the time," she says. Yet, these
longer-range EVs will mean a greater demand for
faster charging technologies at public facilities
along highway routes-the kinds of technologies
and facilities that automakers are now working to
promote, Jerram adds.
According to projections released by Navigant in
January, some 65,000 commercial chargers were
in place in the U.S. at the end of last year. By 2020,
Navigant forecasts growth to more than 300,000
commercial chargers nationwide. The figure comprises all types of commercial chargers, including
those at workplaces, public charging stations, fleet
vehicle depots, and locations such as hotels or
airports.
U.S. Department of Energy statistics peg the
number of electric fueling stations nationwide
at 30,945 last year, up from 25,602 in 2014 and
19,410 in 2013.
The most staggering increase in U.S. electric fueling stations was in 2011, when there were 3,394,
up from just 541 nationwide in 2010, the DoE data
shows. It was in late 2010 that General Motors
introduced the model-year 2011 Chevrolet Volt, the
first mass-market plug-in hybrid electric vehicle,
jolting the market for modern EVs.
FROM RAILS TO PADS
"Going back to the 1910s when briefly there were
more electrics in this country than petrol engines,
the original plans called for rails and perhaps
overhead wire" to recharge cars while they were
parked, notes Richard Doherty, research director at The Envisioneering Group in Seaford, NY.
C TA . t e c h / i 3

Then, after World War One, gasoline-powered cars
supplanted electrics until the 1950s when EVs such
as the Renault Dauphine-based Henney Kilowatt
debuted in the U.S. However, "there were hundreds
of electric cars for sale in the 1950s, compared to
thousands and thousands before World War One,"
Doherty says.
But the true impetus for today's EVs was in the
mid-1990s, he recalls, when the inventor of the
nickel metal hydride (NiMH) battery, Stanford
Ovshinsky, created a prototype electric car of his

"I remember
getting into
a lower-end
Toyota
converted to
electric and
this thing
took off like
ludicrous
mode in a Tesla."
-Richard Doherty, The
Envisioneering Group

WORKING OUT
T H E D E TA I L S
Work on a technical standard
for inductive (wireless) EV and
PHEV charging (named J2954) was
begun in 2010 by a task force at SAE
International, global association of
automotive, commercial vehicle and
aerospace engineers and related
technical experts-to complement
the organization's existing standard
for conductive (wired) EV and PHEV
charging (named J1772).
The goal, says task force chairman Jesse Schneider, is to "establish performance and safety limits
for wireless power transfer (WPT)
for automotive applications while
establishing a minimum interoperability requirement." And contributors
include automakers, EV infrastructure companies, local and national
governments, laboratories, universities, and wireless power and suppliers
worldwide.
A minimum 85 percent efficiency
for the power transfer, and four
maximum input power levels-ranging from 3.7kW to 22kW-have been

specified already.
It's expected that an initial outline
for the standard, known inside SAE as
a technical information report, will be
issued this year, and that the standard
will be completed in 2018, Schneider
says. Besides electric cars, it will
also address the wireless charging
of buses (through a corollary named
J2954-2), he adds.
When all is said and done, Schneider anticipates that the wireless
charging technology will be tightly
tied to a vehicle's automatic self-parking technology. In this way, the vehicle will position itself over a wireless
charging pad on the ground, always
perfectly for best power transfer.
And in a new twist, the SAE J2954
task force is working to coordinate
this standard with ISO and UL wireless power transfer standards.
"This will be the first real MOU
(memorandum of understanding)
between these three organizations
with the goal making a world standard for WPT," Schneider says.

MARCH/APRIL 2016

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henney_Kilowatt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_R._Ovshinsky https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_R._Ovshinsky http://www.afdc.energy.gov/data/10332 http://www.CTA.tech/i3
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