WTF Moment: Electric Carmaker Promises Remote Recharge?

The technology is out there, it wouldn't be impossible. Shoot its been around since Tesla, but it has just been a matter of combining now already existing technologies. Lets hope they do.

Huh? i don't get this post. Remote electricity is nothing of the future its already available. I read another post about Japan planing to build a $21 million remote energy station in space,

www.inhabitat.com/2009/09/01/japan-plans-21-billion-solar-space-post-to-power-294000-homes/

And here is a demo of wireless electricity on TED

blog.ted.com/2009/08/wireless_electr.php

I think the way it works is its converted to something else maybe magnetic waves which is then converted back to electricity on target. There is nothing elitist about wireless energy, btw that's how we get it from the sun. I can't wait to see this

My guess is that since you don't want to deep cycle the batteries, when the charge gauge(guess you can't call it a fuel gauge hunh?) says empty there is actually more charge left in the battery. I would bet they use a cell signal to "unlock" the ability to access the rest of the power left in the batteries...Just a guess.

Engineers are working hard to figure out how to make wireless transmission of power work for a household, say 20 feet of transmission to provide enough energy to turn on a light or a stereo or even a TV. A car is a whole different level of power consumption. There is no way they are able to send that kind of power miles. Tesla was no where near that kind of capability. But the capability to turn on a reserve battery to get you to the nearest charging station is simple to do with current tech. The kicker is they are packaging it up into a product and selling it to you instead of just putting a button in the car for emergency backup. Or doing what gas cars do and put the empty mark on the guage a bit above the actual empty leaving some miles in the tank for reserve. I see that as less of a feature and more of a marketing scheme. A scummy one at that.

Interesting assumptions, my guess is that as explain at the bottom of the article it will only tell you where the closes charging station is.

Another thought is that the batteries aren't batteries per say but are new ultra capacitors/ battery hybrid that can be charged in minutes instead of hours.

I haven't seen this much speculation since "IT" the Segway scooter came out and after it came out how disapointing was "it."

Possible clever idea, but most people will want some sense of autonomy from the company they bought the car from. Still it has potential as another option for those who embrace call centers, automated phone systems, or the glitch free reliability of call center computer systems. Other options include internal vehicle windmill type devices, solar arrays and collecting the energy from all four tires rolling on the ground for regenerating power.

Continuous remote charging would be ideal with a remote system, but in that case, you might as well lose most of the weight of the batteries, allowing the vehicle to be more efficient.

Well done gdepratt, you are closest. We wll announce further details next Wednesday 16th. Watch out for the NXG, our two seater.
Best wishes
Keith Johnston
President, European Operations
Reva Electric Car Company

Maybe its some kind of AAA where they come and swap your battery?

Wow.

I don't know what to make of this article, or gdepratt's comment, or the comment left my "Keith Johnston". There really is a Keith Johnston who is now president of Reva's European operations, but gdepratt's hunch doesn't make sense to me, so I'm wondering if the comment from "Keith Johnston" was really spoofed by a prankster.

If there is to be any kind of reserve energy store left in the batteries, it doesn't seem reasonable that you'd have to call Reva to unlock it-- if anything, it should be a matter of accessing it via some sort of emergency switch, but what would make more sense than that is that you have some kind of emergency flasher or whatever to alert you to the dwindling available charge, warning you that you need to get to a charging station ASAP.

Most battery chemistries (lithium ion, lithium iron phosphate, lead acid, etc.) are sensitive to low states of charge, and continue to be damaged when left in a state of discharge. If Reva is concerned with drivers ruining batteries by discharging them too low and too often, they can have a memory module inside the battery to monitor the time, severity, and frequency of excessive discharges, and how long the car sits without charging before it is recharged. Then, if the car owner tries to collect if the battery goes bad prematurely, Reva can deny or reduce warranty coverage due to abuse as the memory chip reveals.

If there really is some kind of "remote power boost", there are several possibilites that come to mind. One would be a narrowly focused energy beam... microwaves, perhaps... directed at the car as determined by some kind of GPS type system that relays the car's coordinates back to Reva or the energy source. It could be beamed from a network of towers... if a charging beam were directed at the car from several towers, none of the beams would have to be very strong individually, but the confluence of several beams could be considerable. Another possibility is that the charge would be directed from overhead-- satellites, perhaps, or airborne craft, but aircraft are not likely since it would be too energy intensive and would defeat the point of saving fuel with electric vehicles. I think this scenario unlikely simply because such a receiver would be expensive, heavy, inefficent and slow.

I also consider that such a network is unlikely simply because it would be nearly impossible to spring such a surprise without any leaks to the media-- besides, they would surely need environmental impact studies to make sure such a thing could be done safely not only for humans and animals, but to be sure there are no disruptions to communication and security systems. Even in India, I don't think such a thing would pass muster.

Trying to make sense of this, maybe something was "lost in translation" as reporter Mike Spinelli suggests: perhaps it's nothing approaching instantaneous, and it's more on the order of a AAA emergency service as scott_t surmises.

I admit, I'm intrigued, and I would love to think that Reva has some kind of gee-whiz tech that will make all EVs practical and immune to stranding, but I'm prepared for disappointment-- and to "Keith Johnston", pardon me if indeed you're really you, and this really is something to brag about! I've noted September 16th on my BlackBerry to see if there are indeed any developments worth emailing to all my EV buddies (yes, I have an EV-- a BMW conversion).

maybe they found the lost inventions of tesla, reversed engineered them and out layed the schematics in to a car.

billdale is right; instant anything of this magnitude would require a power surge that would blow anything in the way to smithereenies.

Mechtech, you're totally out to lunch. "Internal windmills"!! Um, duh, the power to drive them comes from air flow resulting from the power applied to the wheels by the existing battery, with losses all the way. All you will achieve is more drag, and thus less power and range overall. As for regen braking: it's standard, and helps recover some rolling energy for re-use. Period.

TANSTAAFL. YCLIU.

Hi Guys

Check it out Reva Revive (tm) - combating range anxiety
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOIKbTTxiLg

Regards
Steve Hollman

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