The easiest way to control who receives the royalties and how to bill for the service of the wireless power, would be to use a GPS system. All new cars have inbuilt GPS units anyway, and britain is already using congestion and distance-based GPS billing systems for taxing vehicles, so it would be no problem to adapt it to a user-pays system for the wireless power.
I somehow doubt that the 'how do we charge users for this service' dilemma would be the biggest of the manufacturer's problems right now. I'd reckon 'how do we make this technology exclusive, popular, and cost-effective, all at the same time?' would be. They'd have to balance out the extra pricetag for the 'exclusivity factor' (ie. "look at me I own a cool wireless car", that people will pay a premium for), the public image of the company as being 'green', and the cost effectiveness versus standard and hybrid vehicles (nobody is going to buy a car that will cost them more per mile than the current options, no matter how cool it looks).
Remember that this vehicle would have to be a viable investment for the shareholders, too. We can't all live in a hippy utopian world where corporations develop technology for the good of mankind.
That's what government is for....
(in my utopia
) /sidetrack
As for the wireless phones, laptops, etc... It would be highly feasible to design the distribution network as a 'fair use licence' system, where you basically pay for a carrier/receiver licence with your device, and you can use it as much as you want, up to a certain limit of fairness. (ie. running the laptop 24/7 would be a drain on the system, and you should be using wired devices instead, as they are more efficient in the longterm) Sort of like how the 802.11 homebrew wireless networks worked out years ago.
[edit on 26/8/2008 by nrky]
