Hasta La Ideas

A gasoline-powered car that never has to stop for gas is impossible to create. However, a team of Japanese university researchers are hoping to create an electric-powered car that never has to stop for recharging. The solution isn’t easy, requiring massive infrastructure changes, but they’re proving it’s at least possible with their EVER (Electric Vehicle, Electric Road) concept, which sends electricity from the roadway into a moving car through the tires.

At a demonstration last week in Japan, a team led by Takashi Ohira, Toyohashi University of Technology professor of Electrical and Electronic Information Engineering, used a mock-up to demonstrate that the conductive properties of concrete could be exploited to send power into a vehicle through the tires. There are still plenty of hurdles to clear—the relatively paltry amount of electricity used to fire up the lightbulb in the demo would need to be increased a hundredfold to get through the 20 centimeters of concrete in your average Japanese roadway—but we find the concept fascinating and with far-reaching potential.

Ah Tyco, if only you guys had lasted long enough to see the day…

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