Couldn’t you theoretically charge an electric vehicle by driving through magnetic fields?

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As far as my understanding goes it’s possible to create power with a magnet moving around a wire coil.

Couldn’t we use this effects and charge electrical vehicles by driving over magnets (most basic idea)?

In: Physics

9 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

It helps with the intuitive answer to this question if you experience what it’s like to move a magnet into a coil with a current running through it.

A magnet moving through/around a wire coil generates an electric field by “pushing” the insides, but the opposite is also true, an electric field from a current will also generate a magnetic field, *so it exerts a force on a magnet trying to move through*. In effect, if you try to push a magnet through by hand, you’ll feel a force pushing it back and given a strong enough current, you simply won’t have the strength to push through.

I hope you see where I’m going. No matter how much energy spend on speeding up a car, you pay it back when you try to gain back that energy in the form of electricity. Energy transformation is never 100% efficient, some is always lost to friction/heat, so you’re better off simply not spending that energy on speeding up the car in the first place.

There is one exception where you actually *want* the car to lose momentum, namely braking. Electric cars already do this, when you want to brake all you need is a magnet, it slows down the car and generates electricity, win-win.

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