Although electric cars are firmly on the road to wide public acceptance and use, many hurdles remain, both large and small. Aside from the infrastructure needed to recharge electric cars away from their normal garages, there is also the hassle of feeding a cord from the car to the outlet, or vice versa. Now, Daimler has announced that it is going to test inductive charging on an electric car that is used on a daily basis.
The principle of inductive charging has long been understood, where a charge is conducted without any physical connection between the power source and the component being charged. In this case, a modified A-Class E-Cell will be used. The experiment will place a charging coil in the E-Cell which will interface with a charging coil in the floor. The E-Cell will merely have to park over the coil for it to be charged. The experiment will be held over the course of three months together with a mix of other electric vehicles equipped with more conventional conductive charging circuits.
