TedPage: Inductive Driving

Hybrid cars are an interesting addition to the choices for individual transportation for people. They still have the problem of generating their electricity with a small gas engine on board, which still pollutes and uses oil. But, they're better and a step in the right direction. The question becomes: How can we limit the amount of power the gas motor has to create?

The most obvious solution is to have larger batteries and plug the car in at home. This seems to be something that consumers are uncomfortable with. When I was looking at hybrids the sales person kept saying to me "you don't have to plug it in." When I explained that I wanted to plug it in, it was reiterated to me that I don't have to. People seem to see this as hassle, even though it would allow most short trips to be electric only. How do we solve this problem?

Inductive coupling, while not as efficient, would allow power to be transmitted to the vehicle, without plugging it in. You would simply have a mat on the floor of your garage and when you drive it it starts to charge your car using the power available to the house. If you can't park in the garage for a night, that's fine, you'll just get worse gas millage the next day. You have flexibility, with a simple method for reducing your gas costs. If popularized, you can imagine that garages would come with the feature built into the floor.

I think it is also possible to take this a step further, to metropolitan inductive coupling. So, when you're stopped at a traffic light your car is recharging. In a parking garage, your car is recharging. Perhaps even a system could be developed so that while your driving down the street, you could be running off of grid power. This would reduce emissions where we need the reductions the most, in cities where the number of cars is the worst. But, if you want to travel cross-country, or to a city without the system, your hybrid gas engine will kick in and supply you power. RFID could be used for billing, so that each owner would pay for the power they consume from the grid. But, I imagine that some downtowns would provide free power as a pull to bring consumers from the suburbs to downtown shopping.

While this is just a framework for an idea, I think that it provides for the growing needs of a more populous world while still allowing for the individualism that we've come to expect. You still choose where you go and when, but you get to use the power grid for most trips. Of course, with automakers, this really needed to be a standard 5 years ago, but it still may have some life with increasingly environmentally conscious consumers.