Imagine an electric Pepsi delivery truck in Manhattan. It makes dozens of stops at the same locations, day in and day out. Now what if at each stop -- or every other stop -- it could wirelessly top up its battery pack as the driver drops off another case of sugar water. That's what Hevo Power is aiming to do with a new wireless charging system that blends into its surroundings by aping a manhole.
"I was walking down the street, pondering how wireless charging could be deployed," Hevo's CEO and founder Jeremy McCool told WIRED. "I was standing at 116th and Broadway, and I was looking down and saw a manhole cover. And thought, that's the ticket. There are no cords, no hazards. Everything can be underneath the manhole cover."
The result is a new system of wireless charging stations that Hevo plans to deploy near New York's Washington Square Park in early 2014, beginning with two Smart ForTwo electric vehicles operated by NYU.
McCool and his crew opted for a resonance charging system rather than the traditional inductive charging system used by some smartphones, tablets, and retrofitted EVs like the Nissan Leaf.
Traditionally, inductive charging requires a primary coil to generate an electromagnetic field that is picked up by a second coil mounted underneath the EV to juice up the battery pack. But it's not particularly efficient, with large amounts of energy dissipating through the coil. With a resonance-based system, both coils are connected with capacitors that resonate at a specific frequency. The energy losses are reduced and you can transmit more energy at a faster rate and further apart.
Hevo's system comes in three parts: a power station that can either be bolted to the street or embedded in the pavement, a vehicle receiver that's connected to the battery, and a smartphone app that lets drivers line up their vehicle with the station and keep tabs on charging.
In its current form, Hevo's system is classed as a Level 2 charging station, with 220-volts and up to 10 kilowatts of energy being transmitted from the pad to the vehicle. McCool says the system can put out more than 10 kW, depending on the application. But for now, Hevo is focusing on Neighborhood Electric Vehicles with small footprints, low speeds, and minimal battery capacity -- something that's perfect for inner-city delivery vehicles.
In addition to the NYU program and working with E-Ride, Hevo is in talks with PepsiCo, Walgreens, and City Harvest to discuss the possibility of rolling out the system for a larger fleet of vehicles.
"It's an iterative roll out strategy that starts with a fleet and builds on policy matching technology," McCool says. "This is the kind of ecosystem that needs to exist [for EVs]."
Images: Hevo Power
