Someday soon, your parking space could charge your car
By Lucas Mearian
Computerworld - It feels a bit like being at a magic show, watching David Schatz hold a light or smartphone feet above a power pad to demonstrate how magnetic resonance wireless technology can charge any device over distance.
Schatz, director of business development at WiTricity in Watertown, Mass., can even show off the wireless "room of the future," where lamps, cell phones - you name it - can all be powered through the air, no matter where they are in the room.
WiTricity, however, won't be selling any of the wireless products it demonstrates. Instead, the company's future is in selling licenses for others to use its patented designs to build products. WiTricity has few, if any competitors, for its flavor of wireless charging, which it calls highly resonant wireless power transfer.
"They were one of the first to showcase this resonance wireless power transfer, which offers greater distances between coils versus inductive charging, which requires tight coupling between transmitter and receiver," said Jason dePreaux, a principal analyst for the Power & Energy Group at IHS Research. "My impression of WiTricity is that they're keeping it very open [for the market]."
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