@jtsanders.
I think you are right. Technology has a way of jumping up as a “wave of the future” then sits back and disappears for some time, only to start slowly appearing in the products we buy. There is a long time between a discovery and being available in the marketplace. That’s where the Teslar s comes in and electric cars in general. The technology is there, but it’s too expensive until investments are made and satellite technologies come along to make it available to everyone.
The common watch was like that, only available to the rich, until machines were developed to make the parts and their assembly common place… I think this is the case for transmitting electricity through barriers (like air) that are essentially insulators. But will it happen ? … I used to think in my 30s that by the time I was seventy, electric cars would be quite common place and I would be driving one. That ain’t happening by the time I get there in just a few years. But gee, I have more iPads and iPhones then I know what to do with (4). Crap technology where the highest profits can be made, keep getting in the way of real progress for the masses. So which is more valuable, sending electricity through the air and having a cheap practical electric car or storing 1500 songs on a little flash drive that I can carry anywhere in my pocket ? Guess the answer has been determined.
Thats the beauty of central planning and control of productive resources. You can fire all the engineers working on ipads and iphones and put them to work instead on sending electricity through the air. Who needs music or computers or phones anyway. Its for the public good after all. The masses will be thrilled. Then again maybe some of us masses would rather have an ipad than electricity going through the air and we could just fire the central planners. Gonna be a long committee meeting trying to figure out what to do.
@dagosa, I don’t have a problem with moving electricity short distances through air. The electric field I the wire generates a magnetic field around the conductor. The magnetic field will generate a current in the vehicle to run the electric motors. But it will take a lot of power to move electricity long distances and have enough to power thousands of vehicles. And the cost of the conductors will be astounding. Pavement on highways is routinely scraped up every few years for repavement, and the conductors could be laid then. But the other issues seem uneconomical in the near, and even long term.