EV ranges continue to grow longer, but when they’re out of juice, you still have to plug them in. Tesla could be hoping to change all that, however, if newly published patents are anything to go by.
The news comes to us from EV commentator Sawyer Merritt, who posted on Twitter regarding the recent development. The company filed four patents earlier this year regarding wireless EV charging technology, with the patents published on September 7.
What does this mean? Soon enough, you might be able to forget about plugging in your NACS charger at home. If this technology comes to market, you could simply pull your Tesla into the garage and let it suck up the juice wirelessly. Let’s examine the detail.
NEWS: Tesla has filed four patents related to a wireless charging mat for vehicles. This mat is something the car will drive over and it will automatically start charging. While it's not clear what Teslas will use this, presumably Tesla's upcoming Robotaxi will utilize this… https://t.co/jyr5RX0EmI pic.twitter.com/MSdqc9jCoT
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) September 7, 2024
The four patents, filed with the World Intellectual Property Organization, concern different aspects of wireless charging for electric vehicles. The first is entitled Parameter Estimation for Wireless Charging, and concerns the basic technological outline of the wireless charging system. The others concern the use of temperature sensors in the wireless charging system, a shorting switch for control of leakage currents for efficiency’s sake, and an outline of the wireless charging circuit topology and manufacturing methods.
The basic idea, as with most wireless charging solutions, is that the vehicle will be charged via inductive energy transfer. In this case, that is achieved by running a great deal of electrical energy through a coil embedded in a wireless charging mat on the ground. The vehicle in turn will have its own coil, which is able to receive energy from the magnetic field generated by the coil, in turn using it to charge the battery.
The key, of course, is in the details. Tesla has likely figured out a way to achieve this wireless energy transfer at a decent power level for charging in an acceptable time frame. Efficiency is also key, as the inductive energy transfer is less efficient than simply pumping electricity into the car via a direct wired connection (conduction vs induction). At this stage, the finer engineering details—voltages, frequencies—of how Tesla is pursuing wireless charging are not apparent.
This isn’t the first we’ve heard of this, of course. Tesla teased a wireless charging solution for its vehicles at its Investor Day event back in 2023. The image released appeared to show a Tesla vehicle parking over a small dark-colored mat that could apparently charge the vehicle, suggesting a wireless induction charging method. Notably, the mat in the image appears very similar to the one drawn in the patents—note the chamfered edges that are common to both.
Oh, and remember when Munro & Associates talked about extra unused high voltage ports on Tesla batteries? It turns out there was a hint in Tesla service manuals available as early at March this year—they were designated as “inductive charger” headers. So this has been in the works for some time.
Inductive charging
From service manual: pic.twitter.com/qKjuqDvVBC— FH -Y Booster (@minusYCore) March 21, 2024
Interestingly, we’ve seen others making moves in this space, too. Two months ago, The Autopian reported on efforts by Oak Ridge National Laboratory to wirelessly charge a Porsche Taycan at rates of up to 270 kW.
While successful, the Oak Ridge project remains at the laboratory stage, and has not been rolled out into any sort of commercial product. However, it’s an excellent demonstration of just how fast wireless EV charging could be in the near future.
Right now, there’s no word as to Tesla’s future moves in the wireless charging space. This could be something that hits the market in the next year or two. Indeed, the fact that some vehicles already feature connector provisions for inductive charging is a positive sign. However, nothing can be said to be confirmed until product hits the market. In any case, it’s a clear sign that Tesla is serious about wireless charging going forward—and that’s an exciting prospect.
The question is: How valuable would you, as a consumer, find this technology?
Image credits: WIPO, Tesla
you lose a shit ton of efficiency with wireless charging. this is super dumb!
Looks like the best efficiency achieved so far with such wireless charging technology is around 96% which, while impressive when everything is taken into consideration, isn’t all that great. Years ago, during the GeoCities era, there was a forum for EVs where there was a comment about wireless charging, which was around 90% efficient, at best, at the time, where they said, as a crude analogy, it was like getting ten gallons of gasoline for an ICE car and putting nine gallons into the gas tank and pouring one gallon of gas onto the ground. To this day I find myself reluctant to use wireless charging for my phone thanks to that memorable image, ha.
came here to say the exact same thing. It’s like you are paying your electric company a “convenience fee” for using wireless charging. But the environment also gets polluted more as a neat side effect!
Plus, we don’t have enough capacity now to have a lot more TVs; making them even less efficient at charging to save plugging in a cable – especially at home – seems like a bad idea.
Meh… even if BEVs come with wireless charging, you’ll still likely want to plug it in as conductive charging will always be more efficient than inductive/wireless charging.
The real benefit inductive charging provides is in places where there is a high level of vandalism.
It’s gonna be hard for a vandal to damage a charger embedded into the pavement.
The efficiency is dependent on proximity though. Can’t bury it very deep.
Vandal, oh look, let’s steal this… go get the pickaxe Ralph.
It’s not like thieves steal copper or anything. They’ll find a way to pop them out fairly easily I bet. I suspect these will most often get used in garages and more secure lots.
No. We have to compromise the efficiency and the environmental argument for EVs by going with a notoriously inefficient charging method because people are too worthless and lazy to plug in a damn cable now?
The killer application for this IMHO is actually PHEVs. One of the big drawbacks to them is that because they can function as regular hybrids, people don’t bother to plug them in and they degrade into much less efficient hybrids. If you could install these to automatically charge a PHEV every time it was parked that problem goes away. The smaller battery makes the potential inefficiency less severe too.
Unfortunately, someone too lazy to plug their PHEV in is probably not going to bother installing a wireless charging pad either. Maybe you could incentivize these enough to make it worth their while.
That still raises the question of what the real world efficiency is going to be. I guarantee my wireless phone chargers don’t get 100% of their theoretical efficiency because generally speaking my phone isn’t perfectly aligned with them, and I can tell you there is an unhappy medium where the phone will charge, but so slowly and inefficiently that it won’t fully recharge overnight but will get quite warm. I want to see power draw numbers from someone’s garage, not from a lab.
Is this works as good as wireless chargers on most vehicles… no thank you.
My only concern is efficiency. Not how long it would take, if it’s in my garage all night all I would care about is if it’s charged by morning whether that’s 4h or 6h or whatever. But how much more electricity does it use? I have to assume it’s burning more electrons than plug-in charger would just to throw that big EM field. Is that difference big enough to notice on an electric bill?
Wireless EV chargers are one of those things that makes sense until you think about it for a second. The main issue people have with EV charging isn’t having to plug in, and wireless chargers will be less efficient and thus charge slower than just using a plug. EV charging is all about speed, and I don’t think the tiniest extra bit of convenience of not having to plug in is worth sacrificing charging speed.
IDK, I could see this being tempting because you can still also have a wired charger for when you want to be quicker for some reason.
Like I’m not sure what the charge rate will be for this thing, but it seems like a decent option. Like most days when you’re only using ~20% of your battery it can probably recover to 100% overnight. And on the less frequent days when you drove more you can just use the plug instead. So basically most days you don’t have to think about it or touch a charger
one of the big motives for EVs is the fuel savings. Tesla even tries to advertise their purchase price by frontloading their fuel savings using whatever version of math they use. by using the wireless charger you would be using 10-20 percent more electricity. Also think about how many times people won’t park centered over the pad and will either get 0 charge or charge way less than they should have.
At least with tesla they have the app to send you notifications that your car stopped charging or is charging really slowly … but why even go through all that when the cable works 100 percent of the time.
Until they can use this technology to charge the battery while the car is being driven down the road, I’m not really interested. Plugging in isn’t that big of a deal. It’s the waiting that’s the problem. If this could be incorporated into the surface of the road, and charge batteries while the car is being driven? Sign me up. The day that happens will officially mark the death of the ICE.
Even if it’s kind of slow, it’s still kind of a cool concept for convenience. Like lets say an overnight charge can only replenish 15-20% of the battery, it’s still basically the equivalent of if your ICE car spawned an extra 2-3 gallons in the tank every night automatically.
no, your garage spawned a ton of heat and your electric bill spawned hundreds of kwh of energy to charge you for!
I wouldn’t mind this at home. Even if it’s a slow charge, akin to my phone on my bedside wireless charger. Saves me taking the time to plug/unplug when I’m going to/from my car with armloads of stuff and/or kiddo.
wireless charging is like 85 percent efficient at best. so you would be paying for electricity to just turn into heat. i guess in the winter months that could be seen as a bonus maybe but it would be like being charged for 12 gallons of gasoline every time you fill up when your car only has a 10 gallon tank.
I mean, at current electricity rates it costs like $7 to charge a car where I live, so this is kind of a nothingburger.
Okay now imagine everyone doing this. Now imagine electric rates going up because supply and demand because everyone does this…
You can beat hypotheticals to death all you want.
Now imagine you have solar, now imagine you have wind turbines, now imagine your home runs on a Mr. Fusion and your Tesla is actually a Delorean that flies.
I guess this will replace the robot snake charging cable Tesla came out with a decade ago. Oh wait, that was vaporware too.
This will be ready to be deployed at the same time FSD goes from beta test to working code.
I doubt this is going to go anywhere due to being on Tesla Time and for a model vehicle with almost no use case. Any driven vehicle will have a human who can plug it in and Robotaxis are going to be Next Year for another decade.
What efficiency losses are we looking at here between the inverse square law and needing to shed heat?
Nio’s battery swap stations in Norway and China are a better approach for taxi charging than this and actually exist and work.
Until something more concrete appears I’m going to file it under the usual Tesla “next year for sure!” vaporware category.
I have a friend who works for a wireless EV charging startup. From what he told me, the number one issue besides efficiency is heat. Their prototypes all have heat management systems that are impractical for a consumer product, so they are focused on commercial and industrial applications right now with the hopes that in a few years there is a breakthrough that allows for a consumer-ready product. I didn’t get many details, but from the sounds of it, it is similar to the heat-shedding needs of DC fast chargers. That means it isn’t as easy dropping a pad on the floor and plugging it in, but more akin to installing a mini-split heat pump A/C system – you need a transport mechanism to carry the heat somewhere else and then get rid of it. I feel like a few seconds to plug in a charging cable is going to be more cost-effective for at least a few more years, maybe longer.
I wonder if that heat can be converted into something useful? I genuinely don’t know…
radiant garage floor heating would be cool!
That was my first thought! That or something like radiant walkways to the front/side door. Maybe it’s possible to harness the power of heat’s natural state to rise, fomenting some sort of windmill effect to power…something?
Just what we need in 100+ Degree Fahrenheit days here in Arizona.
Fine then, wire it to the LED lights on your property, or plumb it to your pool heater.
I recall reading a year two back that the DOE has a few national labs looking into that for managing heat from extreme fast-charging chargers. I guess the challenge is that EV charging isn’t always in sync with heat needs – like EVs could be charging at night when the waste heat could be used to warm a house/building (like charging at home). However, that’s less of an option if charging occurs in the day when the building/house may need cooling (like folks charging at work). So figuring out a way to store the heat for use later is the big focus of the lab’s work.
Yeah, I dunno. My farts seem to last forever under my blanket.
you could just install vapor chamber rods in the ground and the heat will flow into the earth.. but that is a lot of effort to just be lazy.
Well, I don’t live in St. Kitt’s. (They are actually doing this)
I’m just spit balling, so not lazy. It takes a lot of effort to roll up a piece of paper into a flying…eh, nevermind.
the excess heat is coming from the lack of efficiency. all of the electrons not going into the battery get wasted as heat. if you increase the efficiency you lower the heat. If you then increase the HVAC load to deal with the heat you are using then using more electricity. The only upside to wireless charging is laziness and maybe you could argue for discrete aesthetic appearance but then that is just vanity..
Or not be “lazy” and figure out a way to capture the waste. Win. win.
What do you mean “capture” it?? That makes no sense.
I can wirelessly charge my phone but I don’t. So, I’m guessing this sort of thing would be equally as uninteresting.
Maybe if it was cheap, worked flawlessly, and were as fast as pluggin in. Otherwise, the 10seconds to plug-in is really not something that makes the top 50 list of inconvenient things in my life.
If they can find a way to fold laundry, I would gladly throw stacks of money at that.
You still plug in your phone? Really?
Wow.
It sits on my bedstand overnight once every other day. Plugging in takes maybe 5 seconds even in the dark. Just no motivation to even worry about it.
Plus, it’s faster, more efficient and I don’t have extra e-waste to deal with.
But really, just not worth even $1 or 5 minutes of my time.
Gotcha. I have a wireless pad on my nightstand. Here are my questions though…
It’s not really a big deal, just odd to me. You do you and all that, but there isn’t really a benefit in this scenario to stay “old school”. You are still using the same brick to the plug, except you don’t have the advantage of charge flow management that is built into wireless pads. So, in a way, mainlining electricity to your phone is MORE wasteful.
Again, not a big deal. I was just curious. 😉
I don’t know what “charge flow management is”. I plug in a phone, it charges to 80% then it stops charging. End of story. There is no “maintaining electricity”.
The loss of efficiency is in regards to inability of the wireless charging to convert all energy used to energy in the phone. Wireless charging is less efficient as more energy is needed to get the same charge in a phone. It’s small/negligible, but exists and combined with a complete disinterest and a negligible benefit to it at all, it’s not really compelling to spend money on another piece of hardware to sit on my nightstand.
I get what you are saying. If it’s not your jam, it’s not your jam.
I don’t understand the position, but I respect it.
Have a great day 🙂
You’re forgetting a very real benefit to the charging cable. I sometimes knock my phone off of a bedside table (maybe while trying to turn off an alarm). I know where the charger cord is plugged in and use that to find and retrieve the phone.
If you knock it off the charging mat all (or even just off of center enough) you wake up with an uncharged phone. It’s an alignment issue. There is also a need for it to be close enough to the mat (so not with a case that is too thick).
I would be interested to see how they manage those issues with a car charging mat. Since, it seems harder (or at least could take some additional effort) to get a car perfectly aligned every single time. Is that effort worth not having to plug in? I guess it depends on how well they can solve for it.
I’ve never met a wireless charger in a car that I actually liked. I tend to use somewhat bulky cases on my phones, which means they’re already at a disadvantage for wireless chargers. Then, I run into one or more of these problems:
You can buy cases with wireless charging coils on them, but that still doesn’t solve the fact that automakers install these charging pads that are either too big or too small for certain phones. And I’m not taking off my case to appease a charging pad.
But here’s the thing. I already use a cable to transfer data to my computer, for charging on airplanes, for charging on my motorcycle, and for charging in public. It’s super easy, barely an inconvenience to also use a cable in a car and at my bedside. Why would I want to buy another gadget when the cable I already have is fine?
Because it’s a one-time cost v. millions of pounds of wasted wiring when it inevitably gets lost or shoved into a shoebox next to the 11 USB-B cords?
My truck is the same way. I can’t use it because the space it is in is too small for my tiny old galaxy. So, it’s now a place to put my cheeseburger when I’m road tripping. Too bad I can’t use it as a food warmer, is there a hack for that?
Isn’t the McLaren Artura already doing this, or was that just a pre-prod concept?
Edit: Maybe it wasn’t the Artura, but I swear I watched a video on a vehicle that wasn’t just a concept car utilizing a setup like this that the car drove over…..
SPEEDTAIL! It was the Speedtail….
Was it the Taycan that was written up here a while back?
One of the biggest drawbacks to EVs is still going to be recharging times for the foreseeable future. Wireless charging is always going to be slower than using the plug.
If the robotaxi thing somehow takes off this is a great solution although it seems to me that just having an attendant at the recharge station to plug the robots into the charger is better if you recharge faster and get the money-making robot back on the road faster. Maybe recharge times will be super fast by the time robotaxis are a thing in any shape or form and this will be a great thing to have.
Do people really dislike plugging their car in that much? How lazy a species are we becoming anyway? Wall-e is becoming more prescient every day…
It’s not disliking plugging in, it’s more that it is an unnecessary step. Electricity can fly, so why not hitch a ride, so to speak.
Animals (which we are) hate being on a leash. Why would we want to keep doing that to ourselves if we don’t need to?
For the speed. Also safety maybe? That’s a lot of juice just flying around the air like that. Remember all the hype about bluetooth signals and Wifi (or the crazy 5G signal conspiracies)? Man this would be so much more likely to have energy leaks.
I’m being facetious, but I do wonder if this much energy is wise to let loose without the leash honestly.
I get ya. Buuuutttt…technically, Ethernet connection is faster than Wi-Fi. In my home, they are virtually on par, with maybe a 10 Mbps difference. It’s the same principle.
I’m not trying to trip over some dumb wire all day long, or run over it with my desk chair just to see Paul Skeenes pitch count a nanosecond quicker.
If it takes 28 minutes v. 22 minutes to charge up, let’s say, 50%, does it even matter? That’s basically the amount of time it takes to let a Hot Pocket finish cooking properly and cool down before shoving it down your gullet.
As always, the answer is, “it depends.”
In your Wifi scenario there is a huge difference in the benefits outweighing the drawbacks that I just don’t see with EV charging. Wifi provides so much more freedom to move around, work where you want and all that. Charging your car is different. There just isn’t much of a benefit. It’s not like you can charge anywhere, the equipment still holds you in the same spot.
I think your time comparison is likely pretty accurate, if on the optimistic side of the chart. 6 minutes may not mean much on my way home from work but would mean a lot more if I’m on my way to work though.
I don’t mean to imply I think this won’t happen or that it doesn’t have some merit. But it’s just not something I see a lot of value in for most people. I certainly wouldn’t pay extra for it. Slower charge time, still “tethered” to a charge point, seems less safe. But hey, I guess if you live somewhere cold you might not have to get out of the car to plug in. That’s not nothin’
Good points!
Let’s take this a bit more granular, though.
Eliminating the hardware that is needed for ports, and the inherent design needs to accommodate them, could (could) be a game changer. Not only for design, but for a more cost-effective build process. In theory, this would result in you paying less for the hardware.
Imagine that whole rear quarter panel free of encumbrance. It would change so many things for the better.
Since this site was “born”, there have been multiple takes/stances on car charging positions in regard to fair use of a station. Who gets what cord and whatnot. Putting in wireless spots essentially makes every spot a charging point. Yes, you are “tethered” to an extent, but not leashed until unleashed. Make sense?
I just see how much the benefits outweigh the concerns.
Does anyone make a phone without a charging port? Wireless charging has been a phone thing for how long, and yet I’m not aware of anyone who has removed the port. I don’t see cars gaining the benefit you mention anytime in the foreseeable future.
Those ports are primarily used as a data port, just like any other USB port. Sure, they can handle charging, but it’s not the primary function.
Cars are already using wireless to move data, the car “port” is charge specific, therefore a one-purpose function. It’s wasteful and inefficient.
It’s all akin to the loss of the headphone jack on a phone. No one (other that VERY specific phones for the disabled) has them, because they are about as useful as 1-ply toilet paper, when 3-ply bluetooth is right there.
You and I have VERY different perspectives on the world. The dropping of the AUX jack pisses me off to no end. I despise wireless headphones as yet ANOTHER freaking thing I have to charge, and carrying an adaptor is just another unnecessary hassle to save a manufacturer 8 cents on the phone production.
Ha! I dunno. I do miss my wired AKGs to an extent (I might pull them out and plug into my laptop occasionally), but at the end of the day they aren’t any better, and more of a hassle, than my Marshall wireless ones. The mic quality is way better on the wireless ones as it’s closer to the bone, rather than the lungs, and it allows for a crisper woofer.
I don’t understand the adapter point. You still need a case for the wired ones, and the battery tech is good enough now where I might charge my Marshalls once every two weeks? It’s the same USB wither way, so unplug one thing for a hot minute, and go back.
I’ll take that over having a cord dangling around my torso, all day.
Motorola G phones have a headphone jack. Motorola is 10% of the US phone market these days.
Well, that’s better than e-cars! lol
Until the charge mat is in the rear, and mine is in the front or center of the car. Same issue, different way. Unless you’re talking about mats the size of a parking space. At which point I say why don’t they just make charge cords longer. Because it’s expensive.
All of this is hypotheticals, anyway.
But, to entertain the thought, my phone doesn’t need to be exactly in the “right spot” to catch the rays.
It’s not like we are talking roller coasters here, where a derailment negates the whole thing.
because you go from 95-98 percent efficient with a wire to 80-85 percent efficient wireless. you are just paying for extra energy to be lazy and polluting the earth to be lazy.
Oh, really? Now we are shifting to resource hogging? haha.
Hasn’t there been a gazillion articles about efficiency of scale?
I can get onboard with arguments about waste and all that, but, a 10% supposed drop-off in charging? Come on now. You must know that is a silly hill…
I think it will be a popular feature. I would like it. Not having to plug in would be great. Just park in my garage stall (I’m assuming the screen helps you line up properly with the pad) and the car takes care of filling up with power. Yes please. If they roll it out in a big way it would sorta make their opening up of NACS more logical, like a headfake. We’ll see!
There’s also a safety aspect to work out:
Sure the car and the mat can handshake to start the charge, but what detects if there’s something on the mat that can be heated by the inductor? Think of a shovel that fell or a wrench that may not be spotted by the driver.
My cats would love a nice cozy warm pad on the garage floor.
Also, most areas up north during the winter the car will have snow/slush/ice and especially salt in the rust belt; also all areas when it rains…I’m sure these pads have some kind of protection but not sure how effective it would be against all this
Take this to the next illogical conclusion and embed it in the roadway. Infinite range.
Tesla has a lot more patents than completed products.
If we believed their claims, we’d be riding in the rear of our self-driving machines on our way back to our solar-roofed homes where our robot butler has the perfect Martini waiting.
I’m no Tesla stan, but lets be fair. That statement is true of most companies. If you come up with an idea, you patent it immediately to protect your IP, whether it actually makes it to market or not.
Maytag may have dozens of patents on wireless dishwashers.
Until they hire Musk to talk about them endlessly, they probably won’t annoy me.
I say this in a kind way…what do you do for a living?
I remove wires from things.
Do those wires ever annoy you?
Share your assumption about my job, I’ll tell you if your accurate. I’d genuinely like to hear it.
I have no idea, or no reason to make a logical leap about it. I was just curious as to why you are negative about new electric technology.
Particularly since it appears you work (in some capacity) in the industry.
I’m not necessarily opposed. I think it introduces some inefficiency to the connection without (IMHO) a real benefit. It’s also going to introduce a decent amount of cost and will require an expensive bit of equipment to be installed within inches of the road surface.
I personally wouldn’t be interested in putting one of these in my garage. I live in New England. In the winter, my garage floor is often a salt / snow / sand slurry as the crap in my wheel wells melts and drops to the floor. I just wouldn’t bee comfortable laying a high-current mat on the floor in those conditions. There’s also the very real possibility of me dropping something heavy on it or tearing it up with the edge of a snowblower.
I am also, in general, a fan of the simplest solution. I consider proximity keys to be pointless added complexity and see wireless charging much the same way. Now I pull the car into the garage, plug it in. The car says ‘Charging Started’ and I walk away. I do this once or maybe twice a week. Even if I did it daily, I don’t think the mat and its many new possible failure points are worth the slight convenience.
Fair and somewhat in alignment with my take. I’ll always be one to throw it against the wall and see, because you only live once. However, I understand the reticence.
On to the other part, why are you always shit talking Elon/space/cars/brain/satellite tech? It comes off a bit unhinged, to be honest. Like, it’s just shit talking for the sake of it. It doesn’t change anything.
I think you’re giving me credit for some others’ criticisms. I don’t really care enough about the space or brain stuff. I’m not likely to use either.
I get frustrated with the inability to deliver promised tech and the refusal to admit they’re working on it and they keep finding new unanticipated problems and delivery will be delayed. That’s honest and understandable.
What’s less honest is selling self-driving vehicles knowing they are not self driving vehicles. In general, though, I will always take pleasure in any billionaire’s misfortune.
The “Eat The Rich” stance? Ok.
It’s unfathomable that all people on Earth can have the same amount of wealth/power/influence, so I don’t understand why you would decry those that have more in those said categories.
We all have personal battles not tied to wealth or power, and basing an ideology on that might be a fool’s errand.
There is so much more to care about. Like, for instance, I have to buy new shoelaces. There is a knot in one on my left shoe. It sucks and I bitch about it to myself. All the time.
I should buy new shoelaces. I haven’t because it’s more “fun” to give myself another thing to gripe about in an endless circle of not being perfect.
.
Well. Billionaires at least. There is no way to that level without f*cking a lot of people over. I don’t seek out Musk news. I wish he had the sense to maintain a low profile.
“wireless dishwashers”
My wife is already wireless
I prefer George Costanza’s robot:
GEORGE: Wilkinson’s got a bite on a new one.. Petramco Corp. Out of, uh, Springfield. I think. They’re about to introduce some sort of robot butcher.
JERRY: A robot butcher?
GEORGE: Shhhhh. If you want to get in – there’s very little time.
Also: “Cause he’s my butler!”
-Jerry Seinfeld
Actually plugging the car in was not any of the issues putting me off buying an EV.
This seems like a pointless waste of resources, I’m sure it’ll be wildly popular.
This seems kind of pointless for home, but potentially awesome for charging on the road, especially in tight spaces or with larger EVs.
I gotta disagree here. Coming from someone old enough to remember buying an extended telephone cord to have a “private” conversation in the mud room, it would be a fantastic accomplishment to have in a garage.
Sure, vinyl records may be more authentic to the recording, but they are a pain in the ass. Also, pretty tough to access on the road. The future always comes with embedded drawbacks, but mostly those “drawbacks” are just adjusting to change.
Humans hate change.
This long range cord argument is inapt to the situation. You are still tethered to an exact location, wherever the mat is. The wireless charging presented here is going to allow you to park in the next garage over and still use it, anymore than a wireless charger lets your phone charge in your pocket when you walk by 10 ft away from it.
I’m curious, but I see how this could actually tie you down MORE than a cord. Because the cord, like you state, can be made longer, so I can back in to the garage sometimes and still connect. But if I am facing the wrong direction over the pad, will it still work?
Two things:
I just don’t understand why so many on here are hung up on first gen tech.
And we don’t understand why so many are hung up on the bleeding edge.
What’s the point of not trying new things? Are we supposed to sit around getting splinters, rubbing sticks together, so we can have a smores with Bear Grills?
That’s not on my vision board, lol
I’ll poin to my iPhone 7. I am not interested in spending a huge amount of money for the incremental additional features of a new phone whether Apple or Android. I am far from a luddite working in tech for my entire career. I buy technology, cars or whatever to fulfill a need or use case. Buying something because everyone else is lemming for it is just something I do not do. I have looked into EV’S and while intellectually interesting are IMO far to early on the maturity curve to be a useful investment. As far as this wireless charging solution goes, I am positing that it will not see the light of day for at least a decade if ever. I do see this as a viable solution in dense city environments and a potential money maker for the city/municipality. Infrastructure cost might be high, but it nicely sidesteps the extension cord and plug in charger mess. The inherent power losses may be offset by the convenience in these use cases.
Then why didn’t you give me a smiley like? lol. It’s exactly what I said!
Sure it is.
Cool 🙂
wireless charging is convenient but also less efficient. The efficiency has not just implications on your personal wallet but also the environment. Using more electricity for the sake of “convenience” is how we got climate change in the first place…
Dude, the world isn’t melting because of a cell phone charger.
It would be better if we canned all the recycling truck mafia and lost those emissions, though. Talk about pigs in a trough, those machines park right next to cruise ships.
With a wireless charger for a phone, the charging stops if the phone moves at all and then restarts. I imagine this wouldn’t work at all on a moving car.
Yeah I meant while “on the road” in a general sense of away from home, not literally while driving, although that would be amazing.
Efficiency. What is the actual efficiency? This gets us closer to gas efficiencies. But, as a lazy American, I guess. This is not the same as an inductive cooktop or phone where both are in near intimate contact. Note, my phone case makes the inductive charging on my phone pointless, so I don’t use it.
Not trying to be a hater, and I love the idea, and I love being able to be lazy. But, isn’t the whole point of electric to save energy and thus try to curb environmental changes? I know I’m opening up a can or comment worms with this one. I just wish they could or would post how much energy is lost with this method (right now, it will get better, but where are we at now). Maybe I should dig into the links?
From previous article link:
Not bad, but for some reason, I am not sure I believe it.
If someone invented a new trendy way of filling up with gas that leaked 4% of the fuel every time we’d reject it as needlessly wasteful without a thought.
For comparison, hydrogen supposedly has a leak rate of 0.01%, according to Toyota Mirai owners.
Better yet, what if someone came up with a way to turn 50% of the energy in gasoline into heat rather than kinetic energy? Oh, wait…
We’ve been constantly striving to improve that number for decades. ICE are so inefficient that we only tolerate them at all because the power density is great and the fuel was just laying around underground waiting to be used.
Taking a 4% efficiency hit on anything had better come with a worthwhile advantage. I’m not sure swapping a plug for precision parking is worth it.
My thoughts exactly. Is the laziness worth the 4%?
“If we could reduce your energy bill by 4%, would you do it?”
Ummm, yeah. That’s ~$144 a year.
With all that said… as an engineer, we need to start somewhere. 4% isn’t a bad start. The downside is that you will never reach 0% with this technique, and I wonder if there are any losses with using a wire. There must be to heat. But, it ain’t 4%.
also legacy technology tends to stick around seemingly forever. so whatever is “first” will be widely adopted for years and years. sometimes better tech comes quickly but if its more expensive people will just use the older tech.
True. It just seems kinda silly to criticize a 4% loss when we waste way more than that every time we fire up an ICE.
using more energy for the sake of convenience is how we got here in the first place. 4 percent is huge if everyone does it.
yeah you alleviate the “stress” of plugging in a cord and get a new headache having to park your car like you are landing Chinook Helicopter on top of Pan am NYC every day.
Wish it was that good!
Picked a lower number intentionally.
An awesome idea, but I wish Tesla wasn’t the one making it.
Next thing we know we’ll get headlines like:
“Tesla wireless charger overcharging causes house fire”
Let it go, my man, lol. The world will be just fine if Elon makes cool shit happen.
His Cool Shit to Hot Air ratio is what turns people off.
Sure, for some people, I guess. I’ll take cool shit from a blow hard, over a self-righteous do nothing, seven days a week. 😉
That made a truck that “supposedly” took around 5 years to engineer, that is built worse than a 5-year-old Lego car. Among other things.
You are hung up on the truck? Oh man, there is a whole forest out there!
This forest includes Ford and Stellantis, btw. 😉
I would too. It only annoys me because he often announces things that I am excited about – then they never arrive.
I would love to have a car that can legitimately take me door-to-door while I’m rubbing my dog’s belly or sleeping in the back. I like to drive, but get no joy from driving in traffic. I would use this.
I did like the idea of the solar roof also since I don’t like the way panels look on older homes.
It would be easier to accept him as just a blow hard if he wasn’t spewing hate against trans people or Jewish people. It’s a shame because I’m one of the few people who thinks the Cybertruck looks cool. But he’s gotta be one of those weirdos too obsessed with what’s in my pants.
His interview with Jordan P was particularly illuminating. I guess if Elon had any political power I’d be in jail. So, no thanks. 🙂
Oh, I get that aspect, for sure (personally!), He’s…not ideal, to say the least. But, I’m no apologist for respecting for the work his companies have done.
It’s a fine line. In one way, he’s kinda a shitbag and a most likely a bad parent (I don’t know, as I’ve never met him, let alone his kids). In another way, he’s kinda the only advocate right now for a shift to a promising future. It sure as shit ain’t Boeing or Lockheed.
Some of his ideas are half-baked, but then again, we see what is happening in Brazil, and that end of it is wise for everyone on Earth to support. I like freedom and the rejection of censorship. I also agree that we have a Western Culture problem that is seemingly only circumvented by wallets that are self-serving. Elon isn’t afraid of wallets and clumsily wants a better future. As do I.
I don’t pretend to know the answer on his value overall, nor should I, but I think we are better off that he’s been around, because it challenges the factory line mentality. As odd as that may sound.
As far as the Jewish/Peterson thing? I doubt he finds Jewish people bad for the sake of being Jewish. Maybe I’m wrong. I;ve not watched it.
End of the day, it’s a tough call to pontificate on what it’d be like to be the richest person in the world. Shit, I won $500 on a lotto ticket once, and I bought a whole Burger King dining room their dinner.
I just know I want better, and what we have in the US ain’t it as of now.
This exactly!
If Tesla wasn’t doing it, we’d still get negative headlines, they’d just be more like “Seoul Mayor Limits EV Charging Mat Size to 1/4 m2 or Smaller After Recent Garage Fire”
Yeah, I don’t see that coming within a few years