Wireless Charging for Electric Cars Is Nearly Useful

On the list of first-world problems, not being bothered to plug in your Tesla is very near the top. Luckily for lazy Model S owners, the Department of Energy is on it.


Unfortunately, wireless charging for cars is more difficult than phones, due to the higher wattage necessary. The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory has made a recent breakthrough on that front that shows promise, with a proof-of-concept 20kW charger working at 90 percent efficiency. That’s enough to put 60 miles of charge into a Tesla every hour, right on par with Tesla’s own home chargers.



Without major leaps in battery technology sometime soon, charging a battery is going to remain slower than filling a tank with gas, so anything that can make topping up an EV’s battery easier will be welcome. No-one’s going to bother plugging in a car while they run into a drug store, or wait in line at a drive-through, but wireless charging would do just that, without any effort from the driver.




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20 kW for 60 minutes is 20kWh and 1kWh costs around $0.13, so twenty of them costs around $2.60 to drive around 60 miles. A bit less, actually because of the 90 percent efficiency. So call it 60 miles of driving for about $2.89. What an enormous saving over today’s Prius at 55 mpg and gas at about $2.06 according to the AAA.

I’m sorry. This was a Big Deal because why?