Electric vehicle wireless charging station looks like sewer covers

A major obstacle to the popularity of electric vehicles charging problem, unlike the gas stations are everywhere, the current charging station is still relatively small. Hevo's solution is fantastic. It will deploy a series of wireless charging stations in New York City. These charging stations will be fully integrated into the market without a closer look as they all disguise as sewer covers.

"When I was walking down the street, I thought about how wireless charging should be deployed," Jeremy McCool, CEO and founder of Hevo, said in an interview. "I was standing on Broadway and suddenly saw the manhole cover in the street, so I thought it would be nice to make that change without causing much damage and everything would fit under the manhole cover."

As a result, Hevo plans to deploy a new wireless charging station system at Washington Square Park in New York in early 2014.

McCool and his team will use a resonant charging system instead of the traditional inductive charging system. Traditionally, inductive charging systems have been used mainly by modified electric vehicles such as smartphones, tablets and the Nissan Leaf. This charging method through a coil to generate electromagnetic fields, and then installed in another electric car on the coil from the electromagnetic field into electricity to charge the battery. But its charging efficiency is very low, the coil will cause a lot of energy loss. For a resonant charging system, the two coils are connected capacitors, the two capacitors resonant at the same specific frequency. Energy loss is reduced, charging speed becomes faster.

Hevo's charging system consists of three sections: a station that is fixed on the street or in a sidewalk; a receiver that connects to a car battery (see below); and a smartphone app that allows the driver to align the car with the charging station.

Currently, the Hevo system is rated as a second-tier charging station at 220 volts and delivers up to 10 KW of energy delivered to the car, McCool said the system can deliver more than 10 KW of power depending on the application. But for now, Hevo is targeting city commuter electric cars - small footprint, low speed and low battery capacity.

In addition to working with the New York City project, Hevo is talking to several EV manufacturers to extend the system to more EVs.

"This is an iterative rollout strategy that, from a small part, is based on technology that matches the policy," McCool said. "This is the ecosystem that EVs need."