- Electreon Wireless is building a mile-long stretch in Detroit that will charge
electric cars as the drive on it. - The company said the roadway will be fully functional by 2023 for EVs that install a special receiver.
A startup is building the first road in the US that will allow modified electric
Electreon Wireless, a company based out of Tel Aviv, Israel, is working with Ford and DTE to bring its
The electrified road will stretch about a mile long and will be located near Detroit's Michigan Central Terminal, an abandoned train station that Ford is converting into its $4 The state of Michigan plans to contribute $1.9 million to the project which Electreon said will be fully functional by 2023.
The roadway will charge electric vehicles whether they're in motion or at a stop through a process called inductive charging, which use a magnetic frequency to transfer power from metal coils that are buried under the road to a special receiver on the underside of the EV. While the road will operate normally for all gas cars and EVs that are not equipped with the receiver, $4 installing the special receiver will cost about $3,000 to $4,000 per car. Though, Electreon told the publication they hope to get the price closer to $1,000 to $1,500.
Ultimately, wireless charging could help ease range anxiety and facilitate mass EV adoption. Charging infrastructure poses a major hurdle for electric-vehicle adoption. $4 that one in five EV owners has switched back to gas cars because charging represented too much of a "hassle." $4 in 2021 found that anxiety related to an electric car's battery range is a primary limiting factor in the commercial viability of the vehicles.
"As we aim to lead the future of mobility and electrification by boosting electric vehicle production and lowering consumer costs, a wireless in-road charging system is the next piece to the puzzle for sustainability," Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer said in a $4
Electreon is one of several companies advertising wireless
The concept of wireless EV charging is far from new. In 1986, $4a wireless charging option with roadway powered cars for its Partners for Advanced Transit and Highways (PATH) program. In recent years, wireless charging for phones has also seen a $4 But, overall, wireless charging $4 as the hardware has proven expensive and often unwieldy.
$4 that researchers at Cornell University have been working on making a wireless charging process for US highways that would use electric fields instead of magnetic ones — a switch that lead researcher Khurram Afridi said would make the process cheaper and provide more energy.