Use of inductive power transfer sharing to increase the driving range of electric vehicles

Electric vehicles have a limited driving range due to current battery capacities. One alternative to larger batteries is sharing charge between vehicles on the road and thereby forming a moving network of vehicles. This is made feasible by the recent advances in inductive power transfer technologies. This paper will demonstrate the feasibility of using this technique through a simulation. We show that with the currently available state of the art technology, our charge sharing method can increase the distance a vehicle travels by more than 50% for a standard driving distribution beyond the standard 100 miles that a vehicle usually travels on one fully charged battery. By adding pricing incentives through game theoretical approaches as well as communication strategies for cars to set rendezvous points, we can ensure participation in our system and symbiotic success for vehicles involved.