Novel Cruise Speed Highway Charging of Electric Vehicles in India

Abstract

The utility of all-electric automobiles is limited by various factors. The most important one is the 'range anxiety'; this is a severe limitation on the adoption rates of battery electric vehicles (BEV). There is a periodic need to stop and re-charge or replace the batteries after traveling a relatively short distance. The long time needed to recharge the depleted battery usually necessitates exchanging the battery for a different one at each charging stop, similar to changing horses on a 19th century Stage Coach.
Today three levels of recharging are available. Level 1 is using a home electrical system, taking roughly 8 hours to recharge the batteries after depletion at maximum range. Level 2 is charging from a commercial station, taking about 2 hours. Level 3 is high-current charging, which can complete the charging process in 30 minutes. Even Level 3 compares quite unfavorably to the 5 to 10 minutes needed to refill an automobile gasoline tank. Moreover, charging stations are not widely available outside major urban areas.
for a few hours at highway speeds, are quite prohibitive. Obviously, these are major obstacles in increasing the market viability of electric automobiles. The issue addressed in this paper is an approach using emerging technologies to overcome the limitations of a BEV. With the current battery technology, the mass and volume needed to carry enough charge to travel.
We address these issues by looking at the feasibility of charging automobiles while they are traveling at highway speeds. If this system is implemented, a BEV's effective range could be increased to match the range of an internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle. This would imply that BEVs would be suitable for intercity highway travel, with the assurance of power being available on the go. We developed a model to optimize the number of wireless charging stations required depending on various factors. This model is discussed in detail later in the paper. As seen below, the requirement boils down to delivering roughly 1 kWh per charging station, while the automobile is moving at highway cruise speeds.