Watertown Firm With New Way To Transmit Electricity Signs Big Deal With Toyota
BOSTON (CBS) - A Watertown company that has developed a way to transmit electricity without wires has just signed a licensing agreement with Toyota.
Witricity was founded by an MIT physicist three years ago. CEO Eric Giler tells me the professor kept getting woken up by his wife's cell phone as it ran out of battery power.
"He thought to himself, 'With all this electricity running around in the walls, why couldn't some come out and take care of the phone charging?' He figured out how to do it, and Witricity is the commercial result of that invention," Giler said.
WBZ NewsRadio 1030's Anthony Silva reports
Witricity And Toyota
Giler says the process utilizes Highly Resonant Wireless Power Transfer.
"Imagine you're a child on a swing, and you make that swing go by moving your feet just right. The first time any of us did that, we remember that magical sensation," Giler says. "You move your feet too fast or too slow, and the swing doesn't go anywhere, and that's mechanical resonance. What we're doing is putting a magnetic field - a safe magnetic field - into the air, and coupling energy magnetically between the two. As long as they're at the same frequency, the energy can couple over remarkable distances."
Giler says that makes charging anything from an implanted heart monitor to an electric car possible.
Witricity has already more than $30 million in private investment.
Toyota wants to use the technology to charge future electric vehicles wirelessly.
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