While it?s easy to dismiss wireless charging for smartphones or tablets as mere gimmickry in its present state, the technology shows serious promise out in your driveway?where it could play an important role not just in how you charge your vehicle but in how quickly electric cars catch on.
Wireless charging (also called inductive charging) systems use electricity from the grid to generate an electromagnetic field that can recharge batteries across a gap, such as between a charging pad on your garage floor and a car parked above it. Although the technology has been teased for decades, the latest iterations of wireless charging get over two engineering hurdles: the lack of physical flexibility between the charging pad and the vehicle?s receiver, and the energy lost by such systems. Wireless charging used to be less efficient than a physical charging port, but the latest systems from WiTricity, Qualcomm (Halo), and Samsung are doing better. WiTricity?s new original-equipment system achieves excellent overall efficiency numbers of 91 to 93 percent, measured from the power grid to the car battery, while a typical plug-in Level 2 charger is considered efficient at 88 percent or so, and Level 1 (110-volt AC socket) systems are considerably less efficient.
That WiTricity system, General Motors advanced technology spokesman Kevin Kelly confirmed, is in a ?prototype testing? phase with the Chevrolet Bolt EV and Volt?although any future availability for these models isn?t yet a given....