Pre-study of Charging Connections - Convenient charging while parked

Rapport, 2013

The electric vehicles of today have limited driving range, but we can expect incremental improvements towards 250-300 km / per charge and even longer if the work on new battery chemistry will succeed. It might be a solution for passenger cars. I.e. the operating range will be long enough for the costumer and the need for opportunity charging will disappear. This will take some years. However a big investment in the infrastructure could kick-start the electric vehicle market. If slow and fast chargers will be available on several locations the drivers will be more confident in the car itself. There are several techniques for charging of electric vehicles, the most promising is conductive charging and inductive wireless charging. These two techniques are already available and there is a common core technology using high frequency switching at high power level. A further development is the ability to deliver energy back to the grid in the future. The report finds that research on inductive charging is the most important. Capacitive, radio frequency or micro wave, conductive power transfer are possible ways to charge the vehicle when it stops at home, for shopping or at work. These technologies are not mature but it is interesting to investigate their potential. Even a hydrogen system may be regarded as charging of a vehicle as long as the hydrogen is produced from electricity. There are two good benefits of this system, the vehicle may be used in the same way as an ordinary car. It is driven until the fuel is almost gone and then you fill it up in a couple of minutes. The other benefit is that the hydrogen system may be used for balancing the electricity production from wind or solar.