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Hiding in Plain Sight: Hevo Power's EV-charging Manhole Covers
Green Technology Featured Articles
October 17, 2013

Hiding in Plain Sight: Hevo Power's EV-charging Manhole Covers

By Steve Anderson
Contributing TMCnet Writer

New reports have emerged from New York City, pointing out the truth of the phrase “hidden in plain sight.” Also proven here is the phrase “right under your nose the whole time,” which is exactly where New York City's newest line of wireless car charger systems can be found. The new chargers are not only wireless, but said chargers look, at all but the closest ranges, almost indistinguishable from manhole covers.


The chargers in place are made by Hevo Power, and the whole thing started from one simple idea, according to Hevo's founder and CEO Jeremy McCool, who was walking down the street one day when he began to consider how to get wireless charging systems into play on a standard street. McCool then considered the manhole covers on the street and realized, that was it. As McCool puts it, “There are no cords, no hazards. Everything can be underneath the manhole cover.” That provided the necessary design for a series of wireless charging stations, and Hevo Power's stations will be coming to New York's Washington Square Park in the opening days of 2014.

The charging manhole cover analogues in question work via resonance charging rather than an inductive charging system as so many other systems use. As for why Hevo Power took such a deviation from the norm, the issue was one of efficiency. Though inductive charging is a bit simpler to work with—inductive requires a primary coil to generate a field picked up by a second coil under the EV—it also has large amounts of energy that end up dissipating as a result. But with resonance-based systems, both coils charge, and resonate—hence the name—at a certain frequency, allowing more energy to go through the system at a faster rate, more efficient and less wasteful.

The Hevo Power system, in its current form, is a Level 2 station, in that it works in 220 volt and transmits up to 10 kilowatts of energy. That's good for smaller vehicles, but Hevo Power notes that the system can actually put out more than that, making it possibly useful for larger vehicles down the line. Hevo Power is actually talking to several companies that would need charging applications for larger fleet vehicles, including PepsiCo and Walgreens. The system comes in three parts: the power station itself that hooks into the street, the receiver that connects to the vehicles' batteries, and a smartphone app that allows drivers to better line up the vehicle with the charger for optimum effect.

While the electric vehicle isn't ideal everywhere—widely-dispersed rural locations and places that experience cold winters and heavy snows tops among said locations where the electric vehicle just doesn't work so well yet—there are places where the electric vehicle does a terrific job. In these places, getting plenty of recharging opportunities in play is a terrific idea, as it encourages further adoption. If chargers become as ubiquitous as manhole covers and as accessible as parking spaces, then that particular problem of electric vehicles will be well-fixed. It won't fix all the problems of the electric vehicle, of course—it's not just issues of usability, but for many users, issues of cost also come into play—but it will certainly go a long way toward making the electric vehicle as useful as possible in one of the places where it's best suited to work. There are still points to be ironed out, of course, but New York may be well on its way toward being an electric vehicle kind of town.




Edited by Rachel Ramsey


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