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No chance this will be for car charging. Heavier cars, less efficiency. According to Wiferon's page, 7% additional efficiency loss. Multiply with Tesla's loss that they worked excruciatingly hard to reduce. Would be ludicrous to throw that work out the window by adding wireless charing.
I can see them buying this for onboard phone chargers, for factory equipment and for Optimus. Also, could be a cheaper way to hire all these engineers that Tesla needs anyway, instead of going through the HR process.
Onboard phone charging is a solved problem with readily available chips from major semiconductor companies.
Besides phone charging is low power. This startup specializes in high power wireless charging.
It is possible to significantly reduce the charging loss by greater integration with the receiving vehicle. The charging plate could extend upwards and reduce the air gap for instance. Tesla excels at that kind of engineering that takes an emerging technology and brings it to its fullest potential.
Wiferion’s page does not say 7% additional loss; it says 93% efficiency. The additional loss is 7% - some assumed loss for a charging cable.
Also, who says 7% is the efficiency limit? For example, what if the coil is lifted up against the car - soft touching it. Plus, what's the losses from the existing systems considering the cooling requirements for a charging handle and cable + cable resistance. And further, does this offer any other advantages if we keep doubling the charging speeds? Like the car itself is part of the heat sync or something else new.
It could also be a legal move. Keep the tech away from other companies to maintain the lead... or simply prevent competition from locking up the patents and throwing away the keys. I don't know their IP portfolio, but I'm confident that it's significant enough to want to own the company and get going more quickly.
Wrt the Wiferion deal, we can (and I suspect we will) speculate for pages worth of posts.
I'll just trust that Tesla knows what they're doing and it will turn out to be a great move.
I don’t think there are any technical advantages to wireless charging. There are likely some logistical advantages. It reduces the visual impact of blanketing major urban centers with road side chargers for instance. More chargers can be moved out of garages and onto the roadside in Manhattan for example. The chargers would be less susceptible to vandalization in areas where it is a problem
Momentum Dynamics does inductive charging with the same or less loss (grid to battery) than conductive charging, project with some taxis in Oslo. Upto 70kW over an airgap of like 18-20 centimeters (lookup magnetic resonance)
The biggest problem of inductive charging is not (anymore) the efficiency or the costs.
The biggest hurdle is the chicken-and-egg situation: no car makers will build it into the cars if there are no chargers, nobody will put the infrastructure in place if there are no cars.
Now if only there would be a company that makes the cars and also installs charging infrastructure…
I agree with both of you, it’s not impossible. Wireless charging just seem like a loss for cars though, with not much gain. Cars need ground clearance. If you have a moving plate to close the gap you lost the solid state advantage. might for same complexity and less cost get an inverted catenary or plug. Which Tesla patented for that purpose.
Potentially interesting thought: S, X, and Cybertruck are all standard with air suspension. If the 3 Highland and a future version fo the Model Y get an air suspension added, that's a built-in height adjustment on all the cars, and perhaps a hint of inductive charging intentions.
From what others have posted, it sounds like an inductive charging system can be optimized to work across an air gap of at least 8 inches, which I think would cover the Cybertruck at its lowest setting (from the reveal, air suspension was at 12" ground clearance, and could move 4" up or down). All the other Tesla cars are already closer than that.
I still feel like there's limited advantages for wireless charging for typical car uses...but if it was fully automated (car parks itself in just the right spot, and lowers/raises as needed), it would cut out that 10 seconds it takes to plug in the car at home, and eliminates the need for human interaction in a robotaxi scenario.
*Edited for clarity.
Will be very useful for Robotaxis. Also, even if the losses are 5%, that's still within spitting distance of the 2.5% that gets paid to the credit card company. Add in far less maintenance costs and vandalism costs and it could easily break even or do better if you can get losses down lower.
Optimus doesn't actually need it as it can plug itself in. And presumably Optimus would charge via DC-DC charging to negate the weight of an on-board AC-DC charger.
That's my take also. They say it's for robots, technically the car is a robot, but I think they are referring to robots like these:
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These will frequently pause in specific places while they wait for humans/robots to do something with the thing they are moving around. That would be a good place to add some charging to extend battery life before they have to return home and charge.
When you have optimus doing a task in one area it can place its feet on the charger and as its energy consumption is rather low when it's only moving its smaller motors not a lot of power is needed:
View attachment 949663
I think Tesla are thinking long term. Humanoid form factor is useful for many reasons, but long term specialized form factors such as quadcopter, wheeled, quadrupedal, hexapod etc will be added to their lineup. And Elon probably though that long term wireless charging will be useful for many applications so they decided to add it to their competency.
Think of your own use of QI-chargers for your iPhone. It's flimsy, slow and not super practical. But robots can solve the flimsiness problem themselves and this company is doing 6kW which is plenty for many applications.
Tesla acquires German wireless charger firm Wiferion. - Interesting ReadsFrom the 10Q, we can see that Tesla paid about $76m for Wiferion. Doesn't seem like much money.
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I agree with this, because there is no need to plug in a Robotaxi.Tesla should add this sort of capability to Robotaxi. $2k additional cost is worth it.
Doesn’t really look like inductive charger of any type…are these the ports to connect the inductive charger, or do they simply mean it’s some form of not truly wireless semi automated connector?
It is just the connector to hook the wireless charger to. It currently just has a plug to fill the hole and prevent dirt from getting in. So, there will likely be a wireless charger assembly that can be installed under the rear aero shield, i.e. "the diaper", sometime in the future.Doesn’t really look like inductive charger of any type…are these the ports to connect the inductive charger, or do they simply mean it’s some form of not truly wireless semi automated connector?
It would be great to hear some EE speculation.Big question here. Is this AC level 2 or DC? What amperage or Kw? Or more simply put, if Cybertruck, how many miles per hour possible.
Can we tell from the type of connector?
Is this strictly home and destination charging?