Generalizing wireless charging is complex.
Among the various workhorses that the electric car has to deal with, recharging is one of the most important. It is a factor that “pulls back” many drivers, both due to time and infrastructure. Although the latter is in its infancy in certain places, the industry is already thinking about the next step: wireless chargers.
It seems like a natural evolution, going from fixed stations to which the car has to be connected via a cable, to induction charging, which seems more practical and is already used even inside the cars themselves to charge mobile devices.
However, although there are already many companies working in this direction, everything seems to indicate that we have time to see it as something widespread on the street.
At least that's what Bloomberg reports, which has consulted with experts in the field, who explain that there are still many gaps to cut, to be optimistic, until induction charging is imposed and becomes common.
The first negative factor is the reload speed. For starters, even wired charging is slower than any driver would like compared to refilling the tank. Even vehicles that support higher charging powers have to spend a good 10 or 15 minutes to have energy to travel many kilometers.
Furthermore, the charging infrastructure shows that in countries like Spain the majority of available points are not even fast charging.
Well, current wireless charging handles even lower rates, since on average they are comparable to a level 2 charger, that is, equivalent to charging a car from a domestic outlet, which translates into enormous charging times if we talk about electric current ones with increasingly larger batteries.
This makes the situation complex, since drivers do not buy electric cars due to the inconvenience of recharging and companies do not invest more in the development of charging stations (with or without cable) because there is not enough demand. It's the whiting that bites its tail.
Added to this is the fact that, given this situation, what motivation will a car manufacturer find to develop its zero-emission models with wireless charging systems?
These are components that make their production more expensive and that for practical purposes are not very useful because there is no wireless charging infrastructure with which to take advantage of them.
Michael Weismiller, director of the electrification R&D program at the US Department of Energy's Vehicle Technologies Office, explains: “If I were an automaker, I would probably be reluctant to install it.” [un sistema de recarga inalámbrica] in a vehicle today simply because wireless chargers do not exist”
“The infrastructure and the vehicles really have to be deployed at the same time for it to finally make sense,” he says.
That is why currently attempts are only in pilot projects or for vehicles that travel fixed routes, such as buses, which have wireless charging stations along them.