Arup, leader of the UK's CABLED (Coventry and Birmingham Low Emission Vehicle Demonstrators) project that is trialing at least 110 plug-in vehicles, has added two Citroen C1 electric vehicles into the mix, each fitted with the HaloIPT's wireless charging technology.
Neil Butcher, Arup's project leader of CABLED, had this to say regarding the importance of trialing wireless charge-capable vehicles:
We feel that having HaloIPT in the trial represents a significant step forward on the road to making electric vehicles more convenient for use by the general public.
HaloIPT's induction technology uses strongly coupled magnetic resonance to transfer energy from a power supply to a pick-up pad mounted on the vehicle. To initiate charging, a plug-in vehicle simply parks above or drives over a pad on the ground. To support charging of the pair of electric Citroens, the HaloIPT system will be installed at either the driver's home or place of work, and this will mark the first-ever public deployment of HaloIPT's system.HaloIPT is potentially a game-changing technology for electric vehicles. Users can simply park their vehicle in a bay with this technology, and forget any worries of finding a 3-pin socket and connecting cables. There are a number of perceived barriers to plugging in an electric vehicle in the mind of the potential consumer and this project intends to demonstrate that inductive charging is a practical alternative.
[Source: Green Car Congress]