High Range On-line Electric Vehicles Powered by Inductive Power Transfer

An in-road distributed Inductive Power Transfer system can be coupled to an EV to increase range, while a minimized battery capacity is used. The system dynamically charges the On-line EV. The vehicle mass will be reduced due to the smaller battery, resulting in lower energy consumption and improved driving dynamics. In this paper the IPT power and 'coverage' parameters are evaluated for their impact on system efficiency, charging performance and range, taking into account current and future vehicle designs. Both highway and urban driving situations are simulated. The results show that the battery capacity can be decreased by 45% with sufficiently large-scale implementation, reducing vehicle mass by 27%. A driving range of 500+ km is achieved in simulation, using technically feasible power ratings between 15 and 50 kW per vehicle. The total Grid-to-Wheel system efficiency is 56% on the highway and 46% in urban environment, compared to 67% and 57% for a conventional EV with large battery capacity. However, the energy consumption per kilometre is slightly lower than an EV. The advantages of the reduced vehicle mass roughly compensate for the added inefficiencies of IPT power transfer. A distributed IPT system can efficiently increase range, while reducing battery capacity on the vehicle. The technology is ideally applied to make a lightweight, low range vehicle travel long distances.