Charging an electric car should be as easy and automatic as an E-ZPass | Opinion

At $6.5 million a pop just for the airtime alone, automakers invested a small fortune in Super Bowl ads to promote their new lines of electric cars. Nissan, GM, and BMW all featured their latest electric vehicle models in an effort to build brand awareness. But unless there is a paradigm shift in technology, American consumers are unlikely to purchase these new EVs as quickly as the auto industry — and people fighting for clean air — would like.

More Americans are buying EVs than ever before — last summer, electric cars represented more than 20% of U.S. sales of all passenger vehicles. But if American drivers and fleet operators are not confident they can get from point A to point B without fear of running out of battery power, the momentum behind the transition away from toxic fossil fuels will stall. It’s called “range anxiety,” and it is an undeniable concern for drivers who are accustomed to the easy gasoline fill-up.

That’s why decisions being made right now in Washington to create a nationwide charging network for electric vehicles are absolutely critical and will impact whether you feel comfortable purchasing an EV for your family (or your company’s fleet). So much depends on getting this right.

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If we really want to end our addiction to gas-powered vehicles, the solution to range anxiety isn’t putting bigger batteries into cars that can hold more charge. It’s letting the charging infrastructure itself contribute to extending the driving range of vehicles through more frequent automatic charging events. This means we must rethink our approach to how we charge EVs to an approach that is fully automated, and therefore, even simpler than gasoline fueling.

I like to think of it as “organic charging” — EV charging in the course of the natural rhythm of your life, based on the automated delivery of electricity to your vehicle. In other words, more frequent charging, which takes place entirely in the background of your busy daily routine. Consider how we now pay for tolls on many of our highways: An E-ZPass transponder automatically bills an account for tolls without the driver slowing down or giving it a second thought. Why can’t we apply that same idea to fueling our cars with electricity?

“I like to think of it as ‘organic charging’ — EV charging in the course of the natural rhythm of your life, based on the automated delivery of electricity to your vehicle.”

The reality is, we can. Hands-free, automatic charging systems have been installed around the U.S. and in Europe for more than four years, and work for electric taxis, trucks, and buses. This is not a future vision, it is today’s reality.

Wireless chargers can be conveniently placed in parking spaces at your local grocery store or shopping center. You simply drive over the charging pad, and while you’re inside shopping for 30 or 45 minutes, your EV is charged with the energy it needs without the driver thinking twice about it. No login, no plug, no hassle. It just happens, including automated billing for energy consumed.

If the Electric Vehicle Charging Action Plan now being developed in Washington includes a combination of traditional plug-in chargers with automatic, wireless chargers, we can begin to build a system that makes charging elegant and hassle-free. The consequence will be to dramatically increase the adoption rate of EVs while also reducing the operating costs of electric fleet vehicles like electric buses, trucks, and taxis.

Until we significantly change our approach to charging — and give American consumers the confidence they need to make the switch to EVs — those Super Bowl ads won’t amount to much more than pricey 30-second snippets of entertainment.

Andy Daga is a former NASA engineer and the CEO of Momentum Dynamics in Malvern, which manufactures wireless chargers for electric cars.