Is wireless EV charging the future?
PLUGGING in an electric car can be a faff – especially if you don’t have off-street parking – and the lack of infrastructure remains the biggest barrier to a lot of potential buyers.
But will it always be this way? Electric cars, taxis and buses charging their batteries without a cable in public came a step closer recently when a trial of wireless-charging technology for taxis was announced in Nottingham. The move came following the announcement of Government plans to invest £40million into dedicated wireless charging research in the UK.
The research and development programme sees £20million dedicated to funding projects that investigate charging solutions for residential streets where electric-vehicle owners have no offstreet parking. Both wired and wireless solutions will be considered. Some companies, including BMW, already offer static wireless charging systems, which use pads that replenish a car’s batteries when parked over them. The main issue with such set-ups is ensuring they are safe and efficient, because there are big losses of energy compared with wired connections.
A further £20 million is being earmarked for static and semi-dynamic wireless charging solutions for commercial vehicles. These would see taxis wirelessly charging their batteries when at ranks, for example, or delivery vehicles topping up their batteries at depots. In Cardiff, electric buses are on trial that feature “pantograph’ charging, where an overhead charger essentially ‘zaps’ the vehicle at each stop. This keeps the battery charged up and saves it from ever needing to be plugged in.
The proposals were contained within the Government’s recently published Road to Zero strategy, which sets out how new cars sold in the UK from 2040 will “effectively” be zero emission. Ultimately, there’s a vision of dynamic wireless charging, where chargers in the road network replenish your car battery as you drive along.
It all sounds a bit sci-fi and highly futuristic – until you look how far we’ve come in the past 20 years.