Wireless Charging Roads w/ Doug Wilson: March 22, 2023

In the pursuit of meeting emissions reduction targets, the transition to electric vehicles is seeming like a bit of a necessity. 

With battery range and charging stations a worry for EV owners, the government and research organisations from around the world are banding together to come up with new solutions to instil confidence in EV fleets.

Andre Fa’aoso spoke to Doug Wilson, Director of the Transportation Research Centre at the University of Auckland. 

The research facility based in the Faculty of Engineering is designing and testing the possibilities of wireless charging roads in Aotearoa to remedy range anxiety for EV owners. 

The partnership between Downer and the University of Auckland has been tasked with testing the resilience and application of this technology on our roads.

Andre started off by asking Doug about what this technology is and how it works.

In a follow up statement, Doug shared the idea of ‘power snacking’. 

Doug says that power snacking “is very different to the current need to carry around a tank full of gas or a very large and heavy battery that takes longer to charge. For example, if you can charge your ‘EV on the go’ (at your origin, destination and on the way dynamically) then you can reduce the size of your battery as range anxiety is removed. This also has the significant environmental benefit of requiring less rare earth minerals (eg. cobalt, nickel and lithium) as the batteries are smaller in size and are also reduced weight.  This can only be done with wireless charging but the wireless EV infrastructure will need to be in place for this to affect potential users purchasing behaviours.”