Wireless Charging for Electric Vehicles to Become a Reality in the Near Future

 Electric Vehicles  

Range anxiety, is well a well-known condition for the early adopters of electric vehicles.  So too is charging anxiety; the ability to find a suitable charging station for your electric car. Now, a number of car makers are working to create wireless charging systems that may even be embedded directly into the road that may lead to widespread adoption of electric vehicles.

In order for electric vehicles to become a truly viable alternative to conventional cars, the slow charging issue is one of the challenges that will have to be overcome pretty quickly. The fact that most electric vehicles take more than five hours to be fully recharged, creates a so-called charging anxiety, as yet another hurdle, in addition to range anxiety and high cost, that's preventing them from achieving a mass-market penetration. Several potential solutions to this problem have been suggested in the past few years, including DC fast chargers provided by a few car makers and energy companies, as well as the supercharger stations developed by Tesla.

In addition to fast charging, one of the best electric vehicle charging solutions, is wireless charging. Several automakers, including Toyota, Volvo, and Audi, have been working on a technology that would allow electric vehicles to be recharged without having to be plugged into an outlet. Wireless charging involves a charging pad that is embedded in the road surface, and induction coils installed in a vehicle's undercarriage. The pad is connected to the electric grid, and it creates an
electromagnetic field, transmitting power to the induction coil mounted on the car, which converts the power into electricity and charges the battery.

Will charging stations become obsolete, even before they are widely implemented?

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All it takes to recharge a car through this method is park it over a charging pad, and the battery will start charging on its own. You don't have to get a cable and connect your car's charging port to an outlet. This is a much more convenient way of recharging an electric vehicle, and it's also faster than using the standard method that involves plugging the car into a charging station.

All it takes to recharge a car through this method is park it over a charging pad, and the battery will start charging on its own. You don't have to get a cable and connect your car's charging port to an outlet.

Wireless charging pads can be built into driveways, parking lots and garages, so that owners don't have to look for outlets and bring cables along wherever they go in order to recharge their vehicles. In the future, as automakers develop wireless charging technology further, charging pads could be embedded into highways, creating designated charging lanes with a series of pads under the road surface, allowing owners to recharge their vehicles while driving. This would bring many benefits to both consumers and the auto industry. For one thing, it would help popularize electric vehicles, as it would reduce charging times and make charging more convenient. Being able to recharge a car while on the move would also extend its range, and an increased driving range is something that could encourage more consumers to buy electric vehicles.

Furthermore, building charging pads into roads is cheaper and easier than installing EV charging stations, so they can help improve the EV infrastructure in a more cost-effective manner.

However, while the idea of wireless charging does seem pretty appealing and it looks like it could be realized relatively easily, automakers say that they need a bit more time to test the technology, so the first electric cars equipped with wireless charging systems should be introduced to the market in about 2-3 years. As far as the infrastructure is concerned, it will only cover driveways, garages and parking lots at first, extending to city streets and highways later on.

By Jordan Perch

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Author Bio - Jordan Perch is an automotive fanatic and “safe driving” specialist. He is a writer for DMV.com, which is a collaborative community designed to help ease the stress and annoyance of “dealing with the DMV”