idleprocess
Flashaholic
Remote RF charging has been promised for at least a decade and consistently fails to appear. I am highly skeptical that such technology will be practical in the consumer space, to say nothing of being reasonably efficient. All the prototype units I've seen last time this was in the news used massive arrays of antennas and not a peep about efficiency - suspect it might be as high as single digits.
EDIT: However the technology has indeed progressed as per more recent articles I've found.
Solar roadways aren't working because ground level is about the worst possible place to put solar panels; the fact that they're an expensive poorer-performing substitute for pavement is another strike. They were a dumb idea whose time was never.
Indeed it works well indeed and has been around for decades. I've got an induction charger for my work phone; despite the coils being a mere ~centimeter apart it's only about 65% efficient at 5W per some back-of-the-napkin math; notably less so at 10W. This is fine for something as low-energy as delivering ~10 watt-hours to a phone over the course of an hour or two. But for larger loads that's a lot of added cost and loss of energy just so you can say look ma, no wires.
Ossia was one startup in the area. As of ~2.5 years ago their efficiency was still atrocious.
<33% efficient at a meter, <15% at 2 meters, ~5% beyond 2 meters; this is likely the reality of practical beamforming and antenna design in something relatively small. I guess those are going to be chalked up as acceptable losses for the convenience of charging small loads since Americans refuse to use cheaper more efficient more reliable wires. I blame a generation of TV showing consumers deliriously shopping for insurance on a laptop in their living rooms. It will of course need to be relatively cheap and compact - the transmitter can be large-ish but that receiver will need to be quite small to integrate into the kinds of devices their PR is going on about like hearing aids.
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