In reply to Michael Foster's message of Wed, 5 Aug 2020 18:13:13 +0000 (UTC): Hi, [snip] >I read this article. Don't you find it more than a little annoying that Mr. >Tesla is nowhere mentioned?
There's a good reason for that. The two technologies have nothing in common. Tesla used the Earth as a capacitor so that everyone was "in" the capacitor, and attached to one of the plates. This company is using conventional wireless, but in a tight beam. > >This is important. No doubt everyone other than auto mechanics and people who >like the hear the vroom-vroom would like to switch to electric cars. The >problem is there doesn't seem to be enough copper wire to carry all the >current required to charge all the batteries in all the electric cars. Last >time I did some rough figuring, it seemed as if the maximum number of electric >cars would be about 10% of all vehicles before the power grid was over taxed. >Look at what happens when there are brown-outs on hot days. Those air >conditioners don't draw anywhere near the current required to charge a 100% >electric car fleet. I doubt mobile applications of this technology would be possible, if there were that many targets that had to be followed with a tight beam. Besides, the beam is dangerous. Worse than sitting in a microwave oven. That's why they talk about remote areas, and a laser curtain to detect intrusion into the beam. It wouldn't be suitable for use within an urban environment. It could however be used to transport power from a remote power plant to the top of a tall construction on the outskirts of a city, although it would be difficult to keep light aircraft from crossing the beam I should imagine. [snip]