One oft-cited obstacle to the wide adoption of electric vehicles is that there aren’t many places to plug them in and recharge the batteries.
But a Chester County company, Momentum Dynamics, has figured out a way to charge electric vehicles’ batteries without wires. Next year, plans call for the technology to be beta-tested on buses serving the Reading area.
Momentum Dynamics CEO Andy Daga explains that his Malvern-based business will use $587,000 in state grant money to buy two wheelchair-accessible buses for the Berks Area Regional Transportation Authority. The buses will be equipped with receivers that communicate with transmitters installed in the pavement at strategic locations, like bus stops and parking spaces. The batteries powering the buses will recharge when the receivers are near the transmitters.
Daga compares the setup to the E-ZPass transponders that collect highway tolls wirelessly. “The key is that no one has to plug the vehicle in,” he says. “You keep the vehicle recharging while the vehicle is moving.” At this point a fully charged battery gives a bus a range of between 80 and 100 miles.
The Berks bus system plans to start running the buses by next summer as a test run for Momentum
Dynamics. The company is also testing its technology on a courtesy vehicle at the Los Angeles International Airport, Daga says, and hopes to test it in a variety of climates and cities to see how the technology works in the real world.
Source: Andy Daga, Momentum Dynamics
Writer: Rebecca VanderMeulen