Chattanooga's Advanced Vehicle Test Facility Experiments With Wireless Electric Vehicle Charging Station

"We think electricity is the key to future transportation," says Ron Bailey/Guerry Professor of Engineering at UTC. 

At UTC's Advanced Vehicle Test Facility, aka the Test Track, students and faculty work to develop new ways to charge electric vehicles.  Bailey says "our goal is transportation without petroleum, its just that simple. We use too much oil, we waste too much oil. There's a way to use electricity and use it efficiently."

This device, known as an inductive power transfer unit, may one day soon keep Carta's electric buses running.  It would provide a wireless charge, every time the bus pull into a stop.  Student Justin McBath says "instead of taking that bus and having to put bigger, heavier batteries on, we could put lighter batteries on and give it a longer range and also we'd be able to charge it at each station."

UTC showed off this technology and a student project to test a hydrogen powered Saturn VUE to Chattanooga's Engineers club

Since it takes electricity to convert hydrogen to an automotive power... many believe electric vehicles will win out.

Engineers say they can't wait to test Nissan's Leaf, the new electric car coming out next fall.