It's good to be experimenting with it, but the vehicle needs an induction coil for it to work. So if your vehicle wasn't pre-built with it installed, then you're not going to be able to use it. Plugs and wires aren't really too much of a problem to be seriously pushing for wireless charging.
this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2025
82 points (95.6% liked)
Europe
7709 readers
870 users here now
News and information from Europe πͺπΊ
(Current banner: La Mancha, Spain. Feel free to post submissions for banner images.)
Rules (2024-08-30)
- This is an English-language community. Comments should be in English. Posts can link to non-English news sources when providing a full-text translation in the post description. Automated translations are fine, as long as they don't overly distort the content.
- No links to misinformation or commercial advertising. When you post outdated/historic articles, add the year of publication to the post title. Infographics must include a source and a year of creation; if possible, also provide a link to the source.
- Be kind to each other, and argue in good faith. Don't post direct insults nor disrespectful and condescending comments. Don't troll nor incite hatred. Don't look for novel argumentation strategies at Wikipedia's List of fallacies.
- No bigotry, sexism, racism, antisemitism, islamophobia, dehumanization of minorities, or glorification of National Socialism. We follow German law; don't question the statehood of Israel.
- Be the signal, not the noise: Strive to post insightful comments. Add "/s" when you're being sarcastic (and don't use it to break rule no. 3).
- If you link to paywalled information, please provide also a link to a freely available archived version. Alternatively, try to find a different source.
- Light-hearted content, memes, and posts about your European everyday belong in other communities.
- Don't evade bans. If we notice ban evasion, that will result in a permanent ban for all the accounts we can associate with you.
- No posts linking to speculative reporting about ongoing events with unclear backgrounds. Please wait at least 12 hours. (E.g., do not post breathless reporting on an ongoing terror attack.)
- Always provide context with posts: Don't post uncontextualized images or videos, and don't start discussions without giving some context first.
(This list may get expanded as necessary.)
Posts that link to the following sources will be removed
- on any topic: Al Mayadeen, brusselssignal:eu, citjourno:com, europesays:com, Breitbart, Daily Caller, Fox, GB News, geo-trends:eu, news-pravda:com, OAN, RT, sociable:co, any AI slop sites (when in doubt please look for a credible imprint/about page), change:org (for privacy reasons)
- on Middle-East topics: Al Jazeera
- on Hungary: Euronews
Unless they're the only sources, please also avoid The Sun, Daily Mail, any "thinktank" type organization, and non-Lemmy social media (incl. Substack). Don't link to Twitter directly, instead use xcancel.com. For Reddit, use old:reddit:com
(Lists may get expanded as necessary.)
Ban lengths, etc.
We will use some leeway to decide whether to remove a comment.
If need be, there are also bans: 3 days for lighter offenses, 7 or 14 days for bigger offenses, and permanent bans for people who don't show any willingness to participate productively. If we think the ban reason is obvious, we may not specifically write to you.
If you want to protest a removal or ban, feel free to write privately to the primary mod account @EuroMod@feddit.org
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Wireless charging wastes a ton of power. Roads also get beat to hell.
I really donβt see this being practical.
So an overhead wire would be better right? Then we could attach multiple trailers together, that would be neat !
Letβs replace the road with something more durable! Iron should do the trick. Also if everything is attached, only 1 person really needs to drive! That would free up a lot of peopleβs time.
That'd be so neat!
busses are just mobile train cars change my mind
Well, Germany was already testing this. And having it seen live personally on a vacation (we happened to take that road where this was tested by chance) - it just looked like a shitty version of a train...
Somewhere like North America I could see how it makes sense. There's a lot more road infrastructure than rail, and this can be built over it fairly cheaply and easily.
These strike me as a much better plan than in-road wireless.
Though, I wonder what the durability of these are compared to the same you see in cities for trams. Big difference for those is the speed. Would they get worn away too fast? Can they economically make the cables extra thick/hard to compensate?
I mean regular trains do use them all the time and those can go like 80-320 km/h (or even faster in other countries) where as truck only go like 80-100 km/h in Germany.
I'm more concerned how much the amount of trucks wears them down compared to trains. You need many more trucks than trains for the same amount of goods and also trucks have a much higher frequency.
could even make the electric truck road separate from the normal road, for safety.
Less batteries, lighter vehicles. Makes a lot of sense. And while roads get beat to hell, I assume it doesn't affect it that much.
Now make it charge all the time, but remove the battery to make it lighter and not need to charge but drive directly from network energy. Then put it on rails so it doesn't crash and is more efficient. Then make it longer. Like hundreds of meters long.
Damn a personal train that goes to wherever I want, whenever i want. That's awesome.
The rail and energy infrastructure must cost a fortune though
You'll want small capacity batteries for in town and integrate this into major highways and some city roads in larger towns, but yes you could greatly reduce battery sizes
I think you missed the train on that one
Ironically I was reading this while transferring trains and missed it lol
No problem, the next one is in a few minutes
Oh no I caught the train, just missed the train posting
EU driving time regulation requires a 45min break every 4.5h of driving. Maximum permitted road speed is 100km/h. So what you really need is 450km of realistic range so probably more like 500-600km range as stated by the manufacturer and fast chargers on all highway stops, which are able to charge up the trucks. Those kinds of trucks and at least some chargers are around in Europe already. Just a matter of deploying them.
Those trucks are also a very good choice, if you want to drive to and from a large freight rail yard or port.
Making charging stations for trucks is not feasible as of today, I think. Judging by how they park in Autobahn pockets, they would need a designated parking lot just for these trucks where each spot has a charger. These parking spots would be huge. As huge as some major on-road gas stations. We maybe could add infrastructure to these existing gas stations. All the small ones needs to be extended. And the ones that are just for parking - have do be rebuilt entirely.
It seems that this is a whole a lot of work. But is it as much as building wireless charging road? I feel that trucks will never go electric in near future.
Those massive parking lots are all around the large highways already. Again the truckers have to take those breaks due to labor law. Also electric trucking even long distance is a thing already. The main issue is that the trucks are too expensive, but prices are falling.
Obviously trains are the real solution for long distance. However those also need more tracks to be laid to have the capacity necessary to replace some trucking.
I'd like to know how long the lifecycles of those charging stations are. Because you are right that Maximum speed and break times put a hard cap on distance needed, but at least some form of self driving will eventually come and i'd imagine long distance highway trucking would be the prime target for deployment.
200kW of average power delivered under optimal βsteady-stateβ conditions.
No further explanation was given, so I can only assume this means the tester was sitting still, carefully aligned over the charger on this βroadβ
~~Solar~~ Wireless
Freaking
Roadways
Another comically pathetic attempt to compensate for cars' ridiculous inefficiencies.
Germany has project like this but with overhang wires. It works but costs of electricity there suck donkey balls
sweden also ran one of those between 2013 and 2020. they found that it wasn't cost-effective either, and at the time they discontinued the experiment i was paying β¬0.02/kWh. so i guess there are other problems than the electricity cost.
This isn't comparable to that in any way IMHO.
Crazy idea, but what if we were to use a wire? Like such that it doesn't have any sort of contact with anything else. Then how about we, like, couple more of them together, meaning less congestion and less traffic jamming? Okay, and this is the least feasible part of my proposal, I know, but then What if we make it go on steel? So the wheel is steel and the floor, the wheel rests on, is steel as well. But because of the optimised friction, we can now make the contact surface super small. I think these improvements could really bring a massive benefit to the transportation industry.
No sarcasm though: Why do goods get delivered over long distances by a lorry? It doesn't make sense financially and from an economy of scale perspective. It asks for trouble. The infrastructure gets used up super quickly, thanks to them being absurdly heavy, compared to the surface and what it can withstand. Plus, because it may seem like all of these lorries are going the same way, no they absolutely aren't, they come from a thousand different directions and go through a thousand different directions. They only go through the same bottleneck, aka the pinnacle of inefficiency. It is way easier to transfer it from goods terminal A in city A to goods terminal B in city B and everyone just goes to the goods terminal and picks it up from there. It's faster, more reliable and does not clog up the infrastructure. It's good for the businesses providing the service because easier service means more money, customers benefit from it as well naturally because they get the goods faster and more reliably, and the taxpayer benefits most of all. Since they do not need to subsidise a motorway that breaks within 10 years anyway. On the other hand, we have a few megacorporations that make good money selling cars, so I can answer myself, why trains are a thorn in the eye of some infrastructure ministries around the world.
I can answer on why they don't use trains if you like. I know a professor in logistics. It's because it's cheaper to use lorries. Moving goods from the factory to the train, move it onto the train, transport it, then move it from the train to a lorry again and take it to the destination isn't as efficient as we'd like
They used to have car trains though, and that I would love to have back. Imagine just driving onto a train car, leave it there and go into the normal train where you could eat, drink and sleep, and after a day or so wake up at your destination. I would stop flying, given that the price was competitive. Which it wouldn't be sadly, but one can dream.
That's interesting, but do you think, is it because lorries are so heavily subsidised compared to trains? Because think of, for example, the Brenner-based tunnel in the EU. When that thing is finished, it's going to be one of the longest tunnels in the world. That thing would bring unprecedented transport capacity through the Alps. And while 8 billion β¬ may sound much for a single building, said building is going to be used for 200 years.
I'm curious, do you still think that if lorries had to reimburse the actual cost of transport that it would still be competitive under these conditions?
That's not for me to answer. I honestly don't know. But from what I recall about our lorry/train discussion it's the labour cost of switching transportation combined with the time it takes both to switch, but also trains rarely go directly to the destination you want. They tend to do stops, or detours. So there are conditions where trains absolutely would be the better/cheaper option, but they're pretty rare, so setting up one transport process instead of two is usually better, even if a few transports could be done cheaper/better.
But also yes, we spend a lot more money on improving our roads than we do on improving our railway networks.
Also this should help: https://transport.ec.europa.eu/news-events/news/rail-transport-new-harmonised-eu-standards-support-cross-border-rail-2023-09-08_en
I mean, how dumb is this? "Too often, national rules still force trains to stop at borders, when driving from one EU country to another. [...]stopping trains at internal EU borders, and having to change crews and locomotives that are not certified for the next networkβs national requirements[...]"
Yeah, this is still a problem. It's being fixed however. It's going to take until 2040, plus minus. Thanks to the EU standardising the gauge, the platform height, the electrification system, and most importantly, the protection system, it's all really coming together. But rolling all of this infrastructure out takes time. Europe always was a fractured continent. Then the EU came and made life better. Problem is, due to the car mania in the 70s and the privatisation mania in the 90s, railway was neglected. In Austria, there were even discussions of privatising the national railway operator. And look at what good that has done Britain. Luckily it didn't go through and the public perception really has changed about that. On the side of technological innovations, there are now many locomotives which are certified for multiple countries, which have all the necessary bits and bops for their protection system to drive in other countries. And when 2040 rolls around, all of that additional baggage is going to be obsolete anyway, thanks to everything being harmonised to ETCS and (mostly) 25kV 50Hz. Then most of the problems will disappear. And that may sound expensive and cumbersome, but all of that infrastructure has a finite usage duration anyway. So 2040 because everyone is essentially replacing the old stuff on the fly with the new harmonised stuff. And from there on out, it's really going to be smooth sailing, technology-wise anyway.
Let's hope you're right.
Here in the US, we're rolling back EV incentives, and slapping tariffs on everything to hamper production and innovation. It must be wonderful to live in the modern world.
wonderful to live in the modern world.
It's pretty great.
I'm really surprised to learn more as an adult how everything is so shitty in America. Like everything between public transportation, trains, mobile call voice quality, difficulty getting around anywhere without a car, (lack of) public healthcare, lower power from the electrical outlets, awful availability of quality foods, lower construction standards, expensive education, corruption built into the political system by design, the list just goes on.
My ex wife wanted me to move to America (she kinda grew up there). I was like nah bruh. Not gonna happen. And that was during the Obama administration, even. Things were even kinda looking up, from our perspective. π
I see this take a lot and I think by now most people should realize that this isn't really an issue of which president is in power. US has enough territory to basically fit some countries people compare it to into a single abandoned farm. Also individual states not only have economies that are bigger than most countries, but are also so wildly different from each other that pretty much the only thing they share is the USD. US does have trolleybuses, electric delivery cars and a fuckload of solar installations and charging stations in places where it makes sense. At the same time, running fiber in a place with population density of <1/km^2 or in a city where digging up the street costs millions in disruptions every hour is prohibitive.
π€·ββοΈ My country also has some places with population density of about 1/kmΒ², and they have fiber. The cost might be prohibitive because of how much they charge/are allowed to charge? I dunno.
Maybe fiber runs through that location? Digging is expensive no matter where you live. Adding a km of underground fiber seems very unlikely to hook up one person, but I'll take your word for it.
It didn't run through prior, they dug it a few years ago. And it's not just one person, it's lots of people, but they live out in the woods where the neighbors are far between. Everyone should have fiber. That's the motto/goal, since decades back. It shouldn't be a matter of cost, having access to a stable internet connection is basically a human right at this point, like running water or electricity. At least considered to be where I live.
I take it this isn't the case in America.
Sure, except if you choose to live in the middle of nowhere it's hardly fair for everyone else (government) to pay for your decision. It's not like they owe you other utilities. A house you build off grid will stay that way unless someone pays to change that. Just like you can get well water and solar electricity, you can also get satellite internet. I suspect you're still comparing one of the Nordic countries or GB to US without realizing just how vastly different population density is here.
Not everyone "chooses" to be born into an already built house they grew up in, lol. You're making a lot of assumptions here.
And having people living out in the country and tending to the forest and/or farming is essential for any country. It is fair because we depend on them. I'll stop paying taxes when I can finally eat money. I'll also gladly pay taxes to allow grampa to have Internet access so he can video chat with his grandkids. Anything else is selfish. Either way, they paid some of it out of their own pocket, I believe. So not everything was paid by the community. So there's a bit of nuisance for you.
We have the same thing here, dense cities and thin inland landscapes. Same thing as any country, really? π€·ββοΈ
The French future EV wireless transport system I'm more interested: https://www.lohr.fr/catalogue/draisy/