Strike of inspiration here, a column about technology, cars, electricity, and politics. Enjoy.


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I've recently bought a new mobile phone, due to the warranty on my previous one expiring just 22 days before the phone itself expired. The new one is very good, as an internet addict, whose world is largely online, I'm just the sort of person who can feel disconnected and detached even in the centre of a busy city, if my phone isn't on me. I admit this to be a character flaw, to have a certain amount of dependence on a device. But I have it, and I don't mind it. Until these conveniences cease to be convenient. That is, when they run out of battery power, and have to be revived. This happens a lot with my new phone, and I'm not the only one. A friend has also recently bought a modern smartphone, and it's very nice, the one I would have bought had there been any available when I was ready to buy, and with my previous one breaking, I didn't have the time to wait for new stock. Either way, both his and mine both suffer with diabolical battery life, we joke about it but it's really not that funny, and would be considerably less so in an emergency. It's pretty bad, this problem. Last Friday morning I fully charged my phone in the car, and returned home to get a few hours of sleep through the afternoon, to be woken by the cry of the phone, wailing for its charger like a hungry infant. The charger was still in the car, of course.

I'm sure that power cell technology will improve to some degree in devices of this kind. But never by enough. Laptops have been around for a very long time now, and they've never really got to an acceptable battery life duration. The better power cell technology gets, the more power-hungry processors become. Clearly then, the way to solve the problem is with smarter charging solutions. One such solution is the Powermat, made by Powermat USA, which is a wireless mat, not unlike a mouse mat, that charges such electronic devices as MP3 players and mobile phones that are placed on top of it, and fitted with a special receiver. This ability to transmit electricity wirelessly to a receiver unit might not help replenish your battery when you're outdoors or isolated, but it does open up possibilities for other uses.

Electric cars are great. They're smooth, quiet, efficient, and they accelerate pretty well too. Their only downside is their small power capacity, even the best electric cars are no match for the range of an internal combustion engine, and unless you own something that uses a stupid amount of traditional fuel, like I do, the range of electric is unacceptable by comparison. They have the same problem as my mobile phone, and while the item to which I will now refer to as a "power-mat" for trademark reasons might not have been a solution for my phone, it could be for an electric car.

Cars run on roads, usually, and these roads are pretty low-tech things, made of stuff dug out of the ground, that wouldn't even be considered modern even in the Stone Age. They do nothing other than provide a surface upon which cars can run. But I think they can do more. The power-mat idea is compact and flat, which is why it's a mat. It's flat surfaced, like a road. Which means that if a section of road were to be replaced with a section of something which works like a power-mat, it could still be driven on; and that section of road could also transmit power to a car fitted with a receiver. This means that electric cars could be charged as they go, by the roads they're driving on, thus increasing the range of the vehicle. Assuming lots of electric cars are on the roads, and that there would be thousands of miles of major roads, this idea as a real-world thing would need a great deal of electricity to run. Power from where? Well, also from the roads, actually. Much like power-mats, solar cells are also flat by design, and could also be used as a road surface. They'd be mostly exposed to the skies and sunshine all day long, and a solar cell that runs for mile after mile is going to produce a fair amount of power. Two-lane roads could have a power-mat surfaced lane, and a solar-cell surfaced lane, with one lane providing power for the other. If you need to charge your battery, go to the power-mat lane, or if you need to charge ahead with your journey, speed down the solar cell lane.

Peter Mandelson has dogged my existence for as long as he's been around. I've hated everything he's done, pretty much. But for this idea, I hate to admit it, but I'd like to see him back in The Cabinet, as opposed to just locked in a cabinet. Because his stupid ideas to get internal combustion off the roads are expensive, and this particular idea to get internal combustion off the road will be monstrously expensive, I believe he would be the only one that could implement it. As well as this, cars would still need power storage of their own, as I don't think power-matting could be applied to all roads, particularly small country lanes, for reasons of both viability and technology. Auxiliary electricity would likely need to be fed into the system, as it's unlikely that it'd be totally self-sufficient. But even so, the road and transport system would be powered mostly by itself. Parking spaces could be charging stations, without the need to run a heavy cable to a mains power outlet socket. Best of all though, there would be no more huge reliance on hydrocarbon fuels, and no emissions either. Maybe I could even use the roads to charge my stupid phone.


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