A new power-charging system for electric cars has been developed by a European
Commission funded research project. The idea is to set up land-based recharging
terminals that can combine with apparatus attached to cars, leading them to be
automatically recharged with electricity when they are parked.
Project co-ordinator Gaston Maggetto, from the Free University of Brussels,
said that the system had an advantage over existing American rechargers in that
they were “fully automatic inductive charging systems, requiring no driver
intervention,” such as plugging in cables to power points.
He told the EU’s DG research bulletin Cordis News that US systems “are
still connected with the wire to the feed, while in this case, the charging
system is half on the ground and half on board the vehicle, and when parking
the vehicle, you are putting the two parts in front of each other and then charging
starts automatically. The big advantage is the total absence of connection.”
