Wireless charging is an idea that would be a perfect fit for cars – after all, it was electricity pioneer Nikola Tesla, namesake of the famous electric car manufacturer, who demonstrated magnetic resonant coupling by creating a magnetic field between two circuits, a transmitter and receiver – technology that is utilized in all wireless chargers today. It seems like a no-brainer that this technology could be applied to EV charging to prevent wear and tear on charging points, and make the experience easier for drivers.

The Wireless Charging of Electric Taxis initiative ran for four months, ending last January, and saw five 11kW charging pads installed in the road surface in the taxi rank outside Nottingham’s central railway station. Nine vehicles were modified so that they could charge when the driver aligned their vehicle over a ground pad. The system was even enable to distinguish between the different cars, even those that were the same model, so that the drivers could be billed via a mobile app, meaning they never even had to leave their vehicles while charging! The system utilized a light curtain technology, which detects when a car stops over the pad and then initiates charging, but this would be unlikely to be used in a potential commercial rollout of the charging pads.

The technology boasts 90% efficiency in its energy transfer, comparable to the average cable charger.

Due to the 11kW charging speed, the ground pads tested in the initiative were much slower than charging an EV using a rapid or ultra-rapid cable (these are usually 50kW+), and was envisaged by its developers a way to continuously top off your car battery, rather than allow it to deplete and then fully recharge, as you would with a cable charger. This very early test showed several issues that will be resolved when wireless car chargers become commercially available, such as the communication ‘handshake’ sequence between the vehicle and the ground system being too slow, as well as reliability problems such as Wi-Fi dropouts affecting the connection.

However, there are also major advantages when compared with cable chargers – one is that cable chargers are very prone to wear and tear (with as many as 30% being out of order in August 2023)  which would be significantly reduced as the ground pads have far less moving parts, and so will need far less maintenance once installed. This solves one of the main complaints that EV drivers themselves have, and also will alleviate the worries of those who are skeptical about making the switch to EVs in the first place. As this technology develops, the convenience of owning an EV will grow significantly – people will be able to park in bays while they shop, and have their car charged up automatically when they get back, with the worries of broken charging cables nothing but a distant memory.

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Source - Fleet News: https://www.fleetnews.co.uk/features/wireless-charging-electric-taxi-trial-provides-key-learnings-for-fleets