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In 10 years time. We don't really have the luxury to waste that much energy right now as most of our grids have to use gas to complement our consumption (in UK).
@@cp37373 Name a company that doesn't have someone out there with a complaint against the company. Now, once you've found this unicorn company, contact their marketing department and ask them to sponsor Matt's channel. Or here's an idea, start your own technology channel on TH-cam. Good luck with any of that.
@@cp37373 what are u smoking? surfshark has always done right by me and Matt sure as hell isnt about to endorse ANYTHING he doesnt USE HIMSELF .... if he cared enough about comments like this im sure he could list 100 different products he wouldnt promote . JUST BECAUSE UR HAVING A BAD DAY DOESNT MEAN U GET TO CALL INTO ACCOUNT ANYONES INTEGRITY. Screaming about integrity with NO name LMAO
Wow electric vehicle charging technology is continue to advance There's only one major problem that you need to talk about. THE GRID AND ENERGY SOURCES. We can all be driving electric cars but as the recent heat wave proved our sources of energy and the means of delivering that energy to people also known as the electrical grid are completely substandard for an electric car future. In Colorado electric companies actually took control of people's thermostats to turn them off and lock people out because there wasn't enough electricity. In California they were actually telling people not to charge their electric vehicles because there was threats of rolling blackouts. In one instance they actually use the emergency broadcast system to tell people to turn off the lights because the grid was about to shut down. How can we have an electric vehicle future if there's not going to be enough energy for everybody to charge their car?
I need to see some independent testing to verify that 99% efficiency figure, because it's really important that is good when it's kW of power rather than single digit W.
When I researched this 3 years ago, the most efficiency wireless charging worked at around 40% efficiency. To jump to 99% is a state change of a massive level. How come this is the first we've heard of it? It's certainly by far the most important part of this video, so why doesn't Matt examine it much deeper?
I've always been against wireless charging because of the efficiency. But the efficiency level being the same as wired charging (if I didn't misunderstand), then I gotta say... I'm actually excited about wireless charging.
You need a bunch of parts though instead of just a cable. I don't get wireless charging for phones, even more so for cars. What's next? Homes and planes?
I’m still skeptical just because of the effort for maintenance. If something goes wrong in your 6KW charger then you probably just need to replace the unit. But if something goes wrong in a wireless charger in your floor then you may need to rip up giant sections of your floor in order to access the troublesome component.
Just to correct some information here, wireless charging on EVs is much more efficient than wired charging, around 15% more efficient. Momentum Dynamics manage to create that wireless charging pad that can deliver 50KW DC with that incredible efficiency and it just takes 5 secs to start charging.
@@SaveMoneySavethePlanet Not really. You can easily build a fairly clean looking setup built into the floor of a garage or a parking lot that is modular and parts could be serviced or replaced as required. It all depends on how it's designed and installed. This is stationary wireless charging, not the type where the vehicle is in motion.
I love how you go through all the angles with benefits and drawbacks on the topics you discuss. That's the only way to make an informed decision and to see things change in the future.
This would be great for emergency vehicles e.g. ambulances. The vehicle can sit in the station on charge and drive away to a call without the delay of having to disconnect the cable.
Solid video, I do think that one of the pathways forward is using vehicles as portable "green" batteries and anything that reduces direct user interface ("set and forget" or in this case "park and forget") will greatly improve this. Wireless vehicle charging has been used by Disney (trackless ride systems wirelessly charge the vehicles during unloading and loading) for several years, great to see if concept make the shift from theme park to car park.
To me the most interesting application of this is autonomous charging: if you live in a place where you cannot have a charging station of your own, you just drive home and tell the car to drive by itself to the closest available wireless charging station, charge itself and then come back home.
The waste in wireless charging just makes it too unattractive. The application of automating charging does not need to be wireless. Sky is the limit when it comes to interfaces that would suit automated charging
@@71Jay17 He literally said it was on par with charging with a cable. Even a cable is not 100% efficient. And I'm sure in a few years they can bring their 92% up to be even closer to a cable efficiency.
@@spro_halver8553 He literally made a claim he cannot backup, he lied. Wireless charging research has not come close to the level of efficiency. I would rank this among the worst of Matt Farrells videos. Undecided my ass.
I am very much hoping Congress can pass a law outright banning self-driving and making it a criminal offense with PRISON time for using it. We have not been able to keep anything secure. Critical infrastructure, banks, credit agencies, weapons systems.. Tesla allows their cars to be updated over the air and now all of them are doing it. I do not want to wake up one Sept 11th morning and find out all the 2026 Honda Civics are deliberately ramming other cars, buildings and people. Either the software is on ROM chips which cannot be upgraded or changed in any way without swapping the chips or we ban any ability for any car to drive itself. All this is assuming it even worked right, which it doesn't.
I don't see why a car needs to be wireless at all.. just automatic. Have the car help alignment, then have a pad of pins on an arm move up to connect the pins to an array of pads at the bottom of the car. Then pin by pin check for connection and shorts, then use the safe/remaining pins to conduct the charging. Obviously don't send a current until safe connection is established. Also helps with the "cat" problem.
I believe that homeowners (and home builders) would definitely be interested in the benefit of simplicity and convenience alone. The additional possibility of bidirectional capability for vehicle to grid or vehicle to load would be a killer feature that many would pay for as well.
Being able to charge your vehicle without needing to think about it is super cool! I am a little bummed that it turns of when it detects foreign object on the pad though, I was looking forward to speed charging my 42 cellphones at once... All jokes aside, this is definitely something I would buy.
Well, I was sceptical of wireless charging until now because I wasn't aware that there's an actually efficient way to do it. So far I only knew of the lossy version that goes to 80% under perfect conditions (which you never end up with outside a lab) so this is something I'm looking forward to become the standard. And on a side note: I'm very glad that the puns were few in this episode. They used to give me a headache in the others were it was up to 2 per minute...
Until we see independent review of one of these units installed on site charging an actual car over top of it, I'm not buying their claims at all. It's the same "In theory" "in the lab" bullshit everyone else does, and then in real-world conditions you'll see 50% efficiency and end up with a 3 kilowatt garage heater.
@@GerryRR Yeah, like early WLAN 54 MBit, which at the time /was/ possible, when you soldered the antenna together. Realistically was more around 80% max.
I would love to be able to have wireless charging as long as the loss is not too large. It has been around for a while in Europe, but has not seemed to take off. And I am concerned about road damage from running over objects on the road, rocks and other things thrown up from other cars, etc. It could cost the owner a lot to replace the charging pad and connected circuity.
one of my worries with wireless charging is the level of noise across the RF spectrum especially on the HF band's and medium wave and longwave, I'm a licenced radio ham and short wave listener having multiple 11kw transmitters close to home around 85KHz worries me that it'll generate a high noise floor that'll make using my radios impossible to listen to.
These systems have to pass the same EMC testing as other automotive components so SAR and EMI etc. are already tested for. Plus they employ ferrite shields to get the system to compliance. I’m an engineer and used to work in this field a few years ago. Wireless charging is a tough thing to get to pass EMC, that’s for sure!
I can see these popping up everywhere. Like privately owned ATM's they'll be anywhere appropriate power can be supplied. Shopping Malls, supermarkets, restaurants, parking garages, bowling alleys, amusement parks, etc... They'll incorporate large display screens on the wall units in front of the parking spot to incorporate advertising. Eventually the systems may be able to access the screens inside the vehicle with selective advertising. It's time to INVEST in this idea.
I want this yesterday! It would make it so easy for places like grocery stores to add to parking spaces. If enough places do this, your car could "sip" power whenever it stops for a while.
It seems like wireless charging adds a lot of issues and is expensive without adding much benefit. Its really not that hard to remeber to plug in your car. Also its supposed to be “convenient” but it seems less convenient. You really cant move the charging pad around quickly so that one spot is the only place you can charge. A cable with a decent cord legnth you can be parked in different spots and still charge.
cost to mount that wireless charger in garage are to big (renovation and mount cables under floor) its like few times more than charger itself. "forget to plug in" .... thats problem of tesla drivers xD
In my town we have a drive-in theater with those window speakers things. Those get run over or ripped off more than you would think. I imagine if your local Amazon warehouse had 100 EV vans they would have a similar issue with all those charging cables. If the pads could be buried in parking spots, wireless charging could fix that problem. You could just park your fleet of delivery vans and they could charge.
Getting this onto fleets (taxis, mail, buses) is key to scale enough to bring costs down. But long term, turning every EV into a massive distributed battery bank for the power grid would be a huge deal (wonder how that would effect the battery life, though).
@@evancombs5159 Because when the tornadoquakeflood hits your house you'll need a power source. Unless you're one of those climate change deniers, in which case just mind your business and pray that your power comes back on in God's Country Texas.
Economically, for the private consumer this doesn't make sense. You are essentially paying 4 digit sums to have this installled (plus inefficiencies from use) to not have to grab the charger and plug that in - V2G isn't in the balance because it works on both. Now, convenience wise - there will be people who will pay a lot of money for a slightly more convenient situation, so it'll play there. Where I do see this having play is the public transport sector. Imagine a smart taxi that charges itself when not in demand. Also, busses - could be charging at major bus stops.
Thanks for this, Matt. I had no idea that magnetic resonance charging could be so efficient. I thought the air-gap would kill the efficiency to the point that you'd be spending too much to charge your EV. As an EE, I wish you'd spent more time explaining why they're so efficient, & maybe providing some curves, but I trust that you've done your homework & aren't trying to lie to us. Which makes it pretty cool!
He’s not going to. You cannot move the volts or amperage needed to recharge. 95% of what this guy yaps about will not get funded. His channel is nothing more hope in a field of wide eye wanderers. I’ve calculated solar five different ways. In the end it’s prepaying for power that in ten years may pay for itself. We already seen power companies lower payments for power back into the grid and the narrative change towards the new reality.
Magnetic resonance and coupling are the same things. Both coils have resistance, that generates heat. A cable has much bigger cross section and has shorter length. The efficiency claimed in that video is even higher than a cable which is the perfect conductor. The truth will be revealed easily by looking at how much goes in the charger and how much gets into the battery. Laws of physics didn’t change overnight.
This is the future and oems need to get on it imo. Build the coils right into the bottom of the pack's and eliminate the charge doors being in different locations. Breaking, freezing shut etc. Plus nobody can unplug your wirelessly charging ev either. 👍🏻😎
I'm somewhat skeptical of that 99% efficiency number. we'll have to see how it pans out. As for V2G, that's a funny story, cause there is a really old EV that did it better then anyone i've heard of today. So in a EV you have a motor controller that takes DC and turns it into 3 phase AC of various frequency to drive the motor. If your EV has regen breaking, that controller also takes 3 phase AC from the motor and turns it back into DC to charge the battery. So, the old EV i'm talking about used the motor controller to drive the car, it also turned wall AC power into DC to charge the car, or it took DC power and turned it into AC to pump it back out. All the bits we need for charging, driving, and powering the grid\house are all already part of a motor controller. There's no need to have a seperate charger, or inverter for V2G, you just need to tweak the controller a little and it can do all 3 jobs (and often much better then independent chargers or inverters since controllers are already designed for very high loads)
My EVSE installer knows very little about the EV industry, however he mentioned the name Matt Ferrell as being one of the channels he watches, so he's on the right track;)
I have to say as a user of an EV it’s not really tough to plug-in once in a while at home to recharge - I wouldn’t pay much for the ‘convenience’ of not plugging in
I think you are in a minority lots of people like extra convenience. Like it not really hard to lock your car door with a key yet we all like to use a key fob. I can see people paying the extra to have this installed especially if it's there first charging station.
I don't think you'd want a system where any kind of basic maintenance requires digging up concerete. My guess is a real-world system would have drivers driving over a metal cover. To service the system, you just remove the cover.
One concern that I have about wireless charging is that of implanted metal medical devices or active devices like pacemakers. The magnetic field required for a phone charger is WAY smaller and weaker than the field required to charge a vehicle, and as such isn't really much of a concern. I worry that the stronger fields may cause interference or injury, even if you just happen to be walking near such a charger instead of standing right on it. That said, I am by no means an expert nor am I making any claims that this will happen. I'm just curious and concerned, as I've never seen this mentioned in any discussions about this technology.
Definitely a valid point, but I believe that is also involved in what was addressed at the end in terms of safety, if it detects you coming near, it turns of, that would be the same for another item that runs interference, but I am also not a expert so… can’t say
I am sure there is a first authentication mechanism like NFC or ble to find the car and not to ping for the car with the actual charging field. Thus, it will be safe.
@@peterzahn5290 I'm aware that it won't be active unless a vehicle is there. The concern I have is about possible interference or injury to people with medical devices due to the fact that RF/magnetic fields act on conductive materials at a distance. Depending on the strength of the field, these effects may occur several feet away from an active charger.
I’ve got a pacemaker that is not compatible with MRIs (some are), and I wonder about this. I’m not supposed to go through metal detectors, my career is in the utility industry and I can no longer visit substations, and I wonder if this will be feasible for me. I’m sure it will have safeguards and shut off, but that doesn’t still. I wouldn’t want to walk by someone else’s vehicle and shut their charger off. I wonder how they will address that.
@@gridjac This is exactly the reason for my concern. I have titanium and steel hardware implanted in my spine, and while I'm also barred from being near MRI machines I'm at far lower risk than someone like yourself. The biggest concern I have with pacemakers is that in order for the charger to shut itself off, the field has to already have induced voltage/heat in an object in order to detect it. With my hardware, that may never be noticeable, but with a pacemaker that small amount may be enough to damage the pacemaker or make it stop working.
One use case for this tech that often goes unnoticed is that it's orders of magnitude easier to operate if you're disabled. Both fuel pumps and cable chargers have stiff and heavy lines. Fuel pumps have settled on a standard where the line is suspended from above to help mitigate their weight to some extent and the pump handle has an oversized trigger that is easy to actuate even with limited grip strength - it's hard to say the same about the competing EV cable designs. Not having to plug anything in at all would obviously flip this situation around and makes EVs the easiest kind of vehicle to operate independently as a disabled person. Anyone who's had to call assistance hotlines for help will know how tedious and unreliable these systems can be and the best solution is to make everything as universally accessible as possible. I really hope this tech becomes mainstream.
I think this is the best way forward and I'm really looking forward to this being widely adopted. To me it's especially compelling for public charging infrastructure. It eliminates all the ugly and potentially dangerous cables lying around where people can trip over them. It greatly reduces the opportunities for vandalism, and it completely eliminates the problem with people prying cords out of cars while they're charging. The biggest downside is cost, but economies of scale and competition will address a lot of that. People will also pay more for convenience and this is way more convenient than wired charging.
Definitely would like to get it but like to see implementation by Tesla (personally for my EV) I think auto manufacturers can do a lot better implementation that fits in to the onboard UI. People will hesitate installing something that could void a 8 year warranty for aftermarket installation. Great idea though.
Going into this video, I was somewhat skeptical about wireless charging. But, if it really is as efficient as wired charging, safe, and can be retrofitted onto existing cars vs. needing to buy new cars to take advantage of it, that would address a lot of my concerns. I can see this being particularly useful anytime you have people waiting in line for something in their cars, inching forward extremely slowly. Fast food drive thrus being an obvious example of this. I also like jack_a's comment about how it avoids problems of cable theft and vandalism, potentially making the EV charging experience somewhat counter-intuitively more reliable than with wired charging, rather than less.
“Most people when the battery is fully charged they don’t plug in” I feel like almost everyone leaves the car plugged in even when it’s fully charged. It’s a habit to plug it in when you get out at home. Mine is plugged in 100% of the time at home
Wireless charging will be game changer for ev's. I think when it becomes as easy as just driving to where your going and parking... We will see that ah ha moment where everyone just gets it.
My first reaction when the video started was “meh, plugging in isn’t that hard”. A retrofit that added V2H on my current vehicle that doesn’t support it would be a game changer. It would also need to support current limiting so that I can only draw on excess solar. That plus the ability to integrate into home assistant and I want it now!
Sure, it’s not that hard if you don’t have any mobility problems. But for older people or anyone with physical disabilities, wanting to remain independent, this tech will enable a huge improvement to their lives.
For delivery vehicles and public transit vehicles, both of which make regular stops, this could be very transformative. Build those vehicles with smaller batteries and then charge them throughout the day. Smaller battery means lower up front cost for the vehicle, and more efficient energy usage when driving due to reduced weight.
They are never still long enough to get any useful charge until they return to the depot, and very often can't park in the same precise spot each time.
@@davidmccarthy6061 I tried posting a link to a story in CleanTechnica about a bus route in Washington state that is doing exactly this, but TH-cam seems to have deleted it. I guess links set off spam alerts. Anyway, the bus was able to travel it's route, and its battery never went below 90% state of charge. Ultimately this is all contextual. For urban transit, how long is the bus route? Does it have any stops that last longer than 5 minutes? (ie, to give the driver a break, to wait for passengers at a station or route hub etc). So there may be situations where wireless charging doesn't fit. But transit agencies have this data. They will know the routes that it can be applied to, and the routes that it won't. For delivery trucks, I wasn't thinking so much about say, amazon or USPS trucks that hit different stops every day, but more like trucks delivering bread to grocery stores, or linens to hotels. Trucks that go the same handful of places every day and back up to a loading dock for 5 to 10 minutes while stuff gets offloaded.
NOA in Australia is designing a mat for the floor of your garage that requires no careful alignment and can wireless charge at a relatively high power. So you just drive into your car space and charging will start automatically.
As cool as this is, I think it will remain a luxury for most people. It’s cheaper and simpler to just use wired. It’s also easier to share a wired charger than a wireless one. You don’t have to move cars when you need to switch which one is charging, just move the plug. Sharing the charging station with my boyfriend was easy and involved no extra costs.
In time this will drop in cost, but you are right ... for at least right now this will be a luxury add-on. This is usually the way new tech starts in the auto industry. Things start out at the high end, but fast forward a number of years and it's common place among all cars.
I've always thought that wireless charging in the case of EVs is inevitable. The primary use cases IMO would be for onstreet parking EV charging. Rather than need to have error prone cables, think plates built into the parking spot run by the local utility. The EV owner has an account with the utility. Park and start charging using a utility app. Fleet charging, and public transport e.g shuttle charging as well. Personal use in a garage doesn't seem that useful to pay a couple thousand bucks for the system instead of the 10sec task of just plugging the car in.
I guess that my top priority question beyond cost and consumer availability timelines (either OEM or aftermarket) would be whether or not the wireless charging hardware would coexist with plug-in chargers on the same vehicle for the sake of redundancy.
One would think that it would easily coexist since high speed DC charging is going to be required for travel and that will be done with the present port. Tesla's charging port is a very clean solution for that. Adding the charging plate in parallel with that (one or the other at a time) would be fairly trivial.
@@markbalentine1962 Wireless requires an under car charging plate connected to the charging circuitry. So it would share all the charging circuitry with the charging port and would be switched depending upon sensing the charging plate or a plug. This is fairly trivial for the manufacturer if they design it in per the new standard.
Highly doubt the effeciency is the same, that being said it would be alot easier to have some kind of robot esque arm that can just find the plug and stick it in.
Agree about the fact that there are potential applications (like bus charging at bus stop for a cheaper price easier engineering than a top level contact). But the case defended being mainly home / personal car charging, I think that there is a MUCH simpler solution like a notification when your car is parked at home or next to a charger without being in charge... A solution more complicated than that just for covering cases like "I forgot to plug" + the 8% efficiency drop compared with a cable sounds like over engineering to me or inventing problem when that actually doesn't really exist (for now).
Wireless sounds like a significant convenience thing. Then again, plugging in at home or VRBO never seemed that stressful, so mostly a nice to have. The vehicle to grid thing sounds like maybe the biggest benefit, or maybe fleets where you want to make charging as easy and low fuss as feasible (though even for fleets, plugging in doesn't sound that bad).
Plugging in for overnight is fine. However we would find it a hassle for 5 or 10mins. That's when inductive makes most sense. Park, walk off, come back, drive away
@@yuidesu5625 with today's batteries this is somewhat true, if I change "fucking up" to premature age. Smart charging males far more sense. 80% of the benefits of V2G, with none of the downsides, or waiting for technology to change
I would mount the fixed coil (not the one on the car, but the one on the charger) on an arm that can take better care of alignment (even if there's no need for perfect alignment, it would still be better to rely on the charging coil to align) and it should be able to rise to the point that almost touches the coil attached to the car, so that stuff won't get between the charging coil and the car coil. For that to work, when at rest, the charging coil should be inside a sort of pouch and it would get out only when needed. It's easier to make the fixed part more complicated than the part you take with you every time you drive. Just my thought (I am not an engineer).
This system specifically does not need very close proximity or alignment, though. It works with different sized pads, ones that are not aligned perfectly, or at all, etc. There's no alignment to need a system for, so no need to add mechanical bits at all. For Qi style charging like you would find on your phone, absolutely - if this system had the same limitations it would be the optimal solution for it.
If there is no need to align, why there is a device showing how to align inside the car? Is that any more reliable? Recently, I notice many more software glitches than mechanical failures. Of course the moving coil could be optional, as not everyone needs it. If no alignment is necessary and pads don't need to overlap, can I recharge my car parking near someone else's pad? I'd save plenty of money. Does the efficiency vary with distance? If not, I'll park my car at home and use someone else's pad from the other side of the world. I could even recharge while moving, so no need for batteries. I'll have my pad powering my car as I drive. I'm not holding my breath, though. The mechanical bit to add could be a few magnets, rubber pads and castors for the coil. It would be attracted to the car and kept at a tiny distance by rubber pads. Using electro-magnets would allow the magnets to work only when charging. It may be more reliable than the system shown in the video, where you have a screen and some sensor and software to draw shapes to show an alignment that you may or may need. I am not saying that everyone must have the alignment device, just that I'd like to have the option to choose one, if I wanted to.
This was a great episode Matt, Thank you for putting this clip together. The big questions still hangs in the air, how do we manage power loss due to the media, will we lose millions if watts per year ? I've been following WITRICY, time will tell, this is impressive. Big markets await for the team for all walk of life, people with mobility issues, lack of knowledge of EVs, removes hurdles on challenges on connectors. Brilliant!
Great video as always, Matt. Could you do a video to expand on the Vehicle to Grid complexities? I struggle to wrap my head around how a purpose built battery backup for my house is the same price and storage capacity as a used EV, plus you get a free car. Granted, that vehicle has been through a few cycles but seems like it should be able to keep my house running for a few days in a grid down scenario, especially if I have solar to replenish during the day. Living in New Orleans, we have fairly frequent outages from storms and old infrastructure so this topic is near and dear.
It's not a show stopper, but there is a huge safety issue with V2G today, in that the power company needs to be able to completely isolate sections of the grid to do work. This is why it's illegal to backfeed power into your house without specific breaker structure put into place. It is also why your solar panels likely won't run your house or charge your car in a grid down situation. It is one of the reasons "House" battery systems are so expensive. There is more safety built into the inverter than what a vehicle can provide. Again, not an insurmountable problem to solve. It's probably $1k-$2k worth of work/equipment for an electrician to structure your house panel properly, but it is a big reason V2G has a long way to go.
The automatic transfer switch technology to isolate a house from the grid has been around for a really long time and available "off the shelf". Having one installed isn't necessarily cheap, but like you said, it doesn't seem like it should be prohibitive to widespread adoption. Solar can definitely work grid down but it needs a battery to balance loads against. Grid-tied solar inverters also use the frequency of the grid to synchronize the conversion of DC coming off the panels to AC so it can be integrated in parallel with the grid. This is more the reason why solar doesn't work when the grid is down, there's nothing to synchronize against so it turns itself off. Hybrid inverters like Sol-Ark can synchronize phase "on the fly" if the grid is up or down. Again, all these things are "off the shelf" now. The only thing that's missing is the ability to use the big ole batteries in my fancy new EV but most EVs don't have bi-directional charging. That's the part I'm interested in hearing more about.
This will be most useful for electric busses. They can have like 2 charging pads in each bus parking in the terminal and the buses can start without having to worry about cables.
It'd be such an awful thing to have to disconnect one or two cables before starting your shift. Do you also need a food holder that extends out just beside your mouth so that you can eat while you drive? lazy bum
@@joebloggs24 I don't think you understand public transport, not at least in the developing countries. Here buses will mostly be over utilized than under utilized. People will come for shifts, but buses might get 20-30 minutes breaks in between. In conventional diesel buses, they go to the pump they refill end of story, but for electric buses the best solution would be a gradual top-up every time they reach the terminal and full battery during off-peak times. If people board and the bus gets full, the driver doesn't need to worry about plugging, and unplugging and start the trip directly. And moreover, drivers would prefer to sit and chat rather than to worry about plugging and unplugging for short charging times of 20 minutes.
Excellent program. Clear & concise. Thank you for the update. I am holding off on an EV car until I can afford one. I am retired and live on a fixed income. That said I am anxious to see the future happening today.
Did you say 99% efficient!? I think that's pretty good. Hopefully the industry will adopt it soon. Also, I wonder if they could make low powered ones to use on small devices like smart phones in the future. Obviously, it wouldn't work with current wireless charging phones, but they could work with a smart phone manufacturer to make a compatible phone.
would not happen ..even samsung with their watches using non-standard qi charging =\. The problem is, that these guys making money on selling accessories, why they should shoot themselves in the foot?
The reason why I believe that wireless charging is going to be a major element going forward is not the convenience of parked charging, but the ability for a vehicle to charge *_while moving!_* Imagine major highways with a dedicated lane for electric vehicles _including trucks._ With wireless charging imbedded in the lane you have long distance electric vehicles. Add self driving and you have long distance overnight travel. With this, people can go Toronto to Miami in 24 hours non stop in anything from a car to an RV.
2:00 you cannot just keep saying "efficient" and "efficiency" without actually telling us the power conversion rate. Nothing tops a cable. We need to reduce our power consumption. Not design extra energy loses into the grid.
@@NickFoster Lets say that is true 1% is already a lot, you can't say there is no difference in the same sentence . You also need to account for the loss on both ends in energy conversion, which would not happen with a cable. The true efficiency is going to be abysmal compared to wired.
Making wireless charging of some sort the universally accepted one would eliminate the "plug wars." If I were Witricity, I would already be lobbying governments to adopt this tech as the DeFacto standard, not just for fleet vehicles and public transportation, but for all vehicles to standardize charging across the board. It would go a long way to making EV adoption simpler for average consumers.
Right! Using your car's battery to help power your home during peak hours.... then charging your car in the early am... during cheap hours is a great benefit.
As a civilization we've evolved to a point where we can't be bothered to plug in our devices. 🤣 If it's anything like phones, where the battery noticeably heats up more during charging, I'll pass. Copper will always be the more efficient conductor.
That's just physics and the battery heats up using a cable too which is why the cars have active thermal cooling/heating, and the faster DC cables are also cooled.
How is it 92% efficient? Could you go into more depth on that? I thought it would be a squared distance fall off, so there's no way it could be 92% efficient.
I feel at times this channel has jumped the shark....it seems to tailor the videos at times to what's trendy in "public policy" rather than focusing on scientific innovation and exploration. I'm debating unsubscribing....but obviously I haven't decided yet. I'm trying understand if the topics picked and discussed are genuinely done on an objective exploration basis or if it's driven by popular opinion and gov't policy decisions.....
Yes, these topics are picked by my curiosity and exploration. This has nothing to do with government policy decisions or popular opinion. I talked to them a while back because they caught my eye and I thought it was a time for a revisit to see how it's progressing. I'm trying to to that with a lot of the topics I cover (revisit a year down the road kind of thing).
The charger is not a radio antenna that is always beaming out. Its a magnetic force. A magnet on your desk doesnt need to be plugged in to be a magnet.
@@Bobucles I'm not sure I understand. The magnetic field still follows the inverse quare law, and the pad must be an electromagnetic field, so I still don't understand how they're achieving those kinds of efficiencies over, say, a foot of distance.
Once things get ramped up I imagine they could put MR coils under the road surface so you’re charging all the time and just bill your debit card while you’re driving.
I think the recent trains in Germany using hydrogen tanks as opposed to electric trains should be another example of why electric roads can't happen (especially in the US). We already have really really poor road designs (cheap, need constant repairs) so embedding coils in the roads would increase cost to an alarming level nobody would be willing to pay, especially many folks driving gas powered cars.
There's a difference between doing something right, and doing the right thing. Roads are already ecologically damaging. Adding more infrastructure that requires a lot more recourses, energy, and pollution to install, maintain and renovate is probably not a sustainable solution.
@@Ben_Gates Roads need to be ripped up and replaced every so many years anyways. I hate to break it to you, but no one is crying tears for the ecological damage roads do. If we can get to a point where all cars are fully autonomous in a decade, the lives it will save alone is totally worth it.
@@scottcarver7393 Look, no need to be hostile. We can think critically about this, or we can choose to be enthralled by new shiny tech and lose all sight of it's ramifications. Good and/or bad. You're argument sounds like a reason to replace roads with a different technology rather than a reasonable defense for them. And Who's lives? I'm assuming you're referring to human lives? Maybe so. But what about the lives of all the species that inhabit the area in/surrounding the mines where the material needs to be extracted from? Let alone the people who live in these communities? Or those species inhabiting areas our roads cut through? Self driving cars might reduce collisions with crossing animals. However, the increase in the amount of people traveling due to the ease of transport that self automated vehicles would allow, would also come with equal if not greater increase in recourse and energy usage from said people. Neither of which is good to the health of any ecological system. What I'm saying, is we need to be really wise in how we choose to build our transportation system. Less is usually more. It would be much less invasive, recourse intensive and more energy efficient to have better public transport instead. Like high speed rail rather than millions of self driving cars.
I'd love this for hotel, grocery store and strip mall parking lots; you don't have to worry about the public destroying the charging cables, and 11kW is a great goal for those locations. There cost of adding it to a car sounds good too
It is not 99% efficient. Maybe what transfers in the air gaps is 99% efficient but the coils generate a lot of losses. It won’t be as good as a cable. This is going 100% against our goals to reduce energy consumption
92% efficiency is what was quoted for the system. 99% efficiency was that quoted purely across the airgap. And before disbelieving rambert it is because of such magnetic efficiency in electric motors that they can outperform petrol cars.
@@johnpublicprofile6261 The difference between electric motors and this is there's a large air gap between the coils, where an efficient motor typically has very close tolerances. You might find they have 99% magnetic coupling, but as others have said, there may be things like hysteresis losses in each core, or if there is no core, the coil is going to be massive and have more resistive losses. However, with most charging systems you're going to have to change the voltage at some point with a transformer or inductor circuit, so this can do that role and therefore take the place of another inefficient component. I would guess that a decently designed boost circuit would be more efficient than this, but they're saying otherwise.
I really can't wait for this stuff to take off and be included as standard in all EVs. Would be really incredible to see; not to mention, would open up possibilities like potentially building charging lanes into highways where EVs charge wirelessly while driving, which I imagine would help a lot with getting electric semi-trucks to be feasible.
They are called trams and trains and we already have those. Powering miles of road just isn't smart. A lot of material expense that we replaced with a battery or gas tank.
Glad they are looking at fleet use first to drive the price point down. If the car makers really adopt this, which is a big IF even as an optional package, then this will be a game changer for parking garages, and all the outdoor parking areas that don't get snowfall. Less damage potential than corded stations and seemingly easier to scale up as demand rises; stick 15 in your parking garage and install more as needed. I'm just thinking of all the rental car stalls at the Atlanta airport for instance.
Electrics cars are going to be the solution we need to level out the power generated by renewables and will serve as a back-up for grid failures. It's actually an amazing solution as people will continue to buy new cars and battery tech improves we will have a battery back-up that sorta upgrades itself.
I just did some quick calculations, because I was unsure how the numbers line up. So: A Tesla model S has a 100kWh battery, the model 3 has 55kWh. Electric power consumption per capita in the US was about 13000 kWh per year in 2014 (last year I my quick source had data from), 13000kWh/365 = 35.6kWh. So with 100% electric adoptions and plugin it would probably about work out. You obviously can't use all the capacity for the grid (as the cars still need to move), but you also won't need to store all 35kWh. So while there won't be a car for every person, I think it about works in principle. In practice there will probably need to be some (perhaps a lot) extra.
While I understand the car seems like a convenient solution for this, it is really less than ideal. For beginners it just isn't reliable. Your car won't always be there or charged up to provide power to your house. This is most often true during peak hours as well. There are several other major potential issues with using a car as your house's backup battery. A better solution would just to have a dedicated battery for each house, which could be much larger than what a car can fit.
V2G is very tempting but at the moment few cars offer it. Perhaps legislation could force manufacturers to include it, however I think we have to wait a while until the car manufacturers catch up with Tesla’s software. As it is most are having problems of one kind or another with their software most noted of all is VW.
Is it just me or did he not say anything about how long the car charges and how that compares to the wire? I'd prefer less videos with higher quality, like Veritasium or Real Engineering channels.
I did cover that in the video. It's no different from plugging in. The model I tried was an 11kw charger, which would charge just as fast as a plug in 11kw charger, but their tech can scale much higher than that.
Whenever I hear about wireless charging for EVs I can't help but think that it's a solution looking for a problem. People are OK with inserting a hose into their combustion-mobiles to fill them up. Any skeptic I've ever talked to complained about having to do the equivalent of that more often and for longer with an EV. Any EV owner I've ever talked to complained about charger availability and difficult/fragmented payment methods. Nobody ever complained about the cable.
After fully watching the video this actually seems worse. The car *will* have to park itself. You only have to give a glancing look at any given parking lot to see that you cannot trust drivers to align their cars with charging pads with any kind of accuracy. Cables are, by contrast, pretty forgiving when it comes to positioning.
@@jfolz You saw in the video this has a good amount of wiggle room, and if the driver wants a charge they will need to stay in the sweet spot. It should improve parking a lot!
@@davidmccarthy6061 even if the margin for error was very generous (it wasn't in the demonstration we saw) you'd still have the issue of placement of the coils. If manufacturers can't even agree on the placement of the charge port, why would anyone expect them come to an agreement where charge coils would go?
It's an exciting technology! It can also be used on shuttle busses, where the charging pads are placed at the bus stops, so the bus gets charged when picking up passengers. Or maybe, you can build long charging "lane" on highways for EV cars to charge, but I don't know, could it works? Just a crazy idea though 😂
Funny enough, some countries have started making highway lanes for electric freight trucks with suspended cables that allow those trucks to keep charging while they are staying on the highway to extend the length those trucks can go without needing to switch back to gas
@@Volvary I know that much. But imagine, using conductive charging, you would see massive conductive receiver on top of a Tesla. And different EV cars have different height and distance to the suspended cable, and it's heavy. Wireless charging seems makes much more sense.
Based on my experience with wireless charging on my phone I'd have to say I'm skeptical of this working like they claim. But I'm willing to be proven wrong.
Oak ridge national laboratory has worked with ups and proved this out a couple years ago now. 92%+efficiency 150kwhs charging over an 18" air gap. They don't mess around either over there.
It's slightly different tech vs standard induction charging, from what Matt was saying. They area actually already using this wireless charging for public busses in Wenatchee, WA. It definitely works as advertised.
@@kj_H65f Do they have any issues in winter with the salt, sand, and ice on the roads causing issues with charging? I suppose one remedy to that could be as simple as an undercarriage wash before charging but just curious if you heard anything about winter charging.
There’s been allot of theft of the charging cables (for the copper) at charging stations. It’s very expensive and slow to fix them, and a huge pain if you show up and the cables are gone. So, this may be necessary for all unattended charging stations regardless of low efficiency.
Did you watch the video? At 8:43 he literally says magnetic resonance maintains a 99% charging efficiency and is indistinguishable from plug-in charging.
@@lockdown66681 Yes, that is what they claim. There is a LOT of wireless charging bs on the internet from companies that claimed to have solved wireless energy transfer. For now I have not seen a system that does not introduce additional losses compared to wired charging. Add to that the different conditions of a lab and real world environment. I believe it when I see independent measurements.
wireless charging needs to be fast tracked before more money is spent on more petrol pump sized chargers. on street charging should be no more visible than painted tarmac. all interactions with the charger should be done through the car display, including payments.
In an era where energy prices are going sky high, wireless charging makes no sense as its well documented that there's always a good amount of energy that gets completely wasted in it.
The video states about 92% efficiency. Depending on the charger I use, I get about 95-97% charging efficiency when I plug in directly to a EVSE. So this wireless solution isn't that far off.
Agree, wireless charging when parking doesn't make much sense to me until we are already 100% renewable with surplus to waste. I feel like it is better just to add a charging port under the car and plug in the charger automatically when parking.
That's why I've always been against it, but if I'm understanding this correctly (8:30-8:55), it's right around the efficiency of wired charging, meaning this no longer is a valid reason to oppose it.
Imagine this coupled with autonomous driving. When parked at the office or the mall, if your car needs a juice-up you can send it over while you are away doing something else. When it’s done it won’t hog the charging space, just move out of the way to free up for the next customer. At a condo, instead of everyone needing their own EVSE you have communal charging and the cars shuffle themselves around during the night to top up based on pre-set parameters. There might even be a bidding system if someone failed to plan ahead and really need priority charging, automatically giving charging credits to those it bumps down in priority. Interesting
All this “progress” is developing in the wrong direction. It all requires dependence on the grid and the grid can’t handle it. And why is air conditioning killing the planet but charging your EV is not?
Gasoline is a very indirect and inefficient way to power cars. It had to be pumped out of the ground, pumped into storage, refined, then transported to the vehicle before getting burned. AC uses a remarkable amount of energy, and running it continuously to cool a large house contributes to lots of extra energy usage. As the power sources change, it'll be less dirty. Grids can be upgraded, power sources are being improved. What are you having difficulty with?
If we even started implementing ANY of this new innovation we see on channels like these, we'd already be a carbon-zero utopia. PEOPLE CAN BARELY AFFORD TO MAINTAIN A GAS GUZZLING CAR LET ALONE BUY AN EV. We need government intervention up the hoohah - giving everyone a electric boiler would be start.
@@talldude1412 charging an EV takes a lot of power too, so much so that California has told people not to charge them. Which makes their 2035 mandate ridiculously unrealistic. And my “difficulty” is that the whole world is trying to reduce grid dependency developing EVs that charge themselves. Everyone except us.
It’ll take longer to follow the screen to line the car up with the charger than the 2 seconds it takes to plug it in. Plus the cost of the charger and the extra electricity cost spent on inefficiency. There’s no way it’s as efficient as plugging in
Ended up watching this as I am increasingly frustrated with charge ports starting to go bad on 2 different evs. One of the 2 120v pins loses their "caps" and the car either slows charges, evse gun gets hot, or stop charging before car is fully charged, etc. This happens as cars get older, more miles, ports wear and tear,and increased charging cycles. Wireless charging ends all that for both car owners and public evse providers.
I thought of this when I saw the I-phone charger. If they put a magnetic strip down the middle of the highway, it could reduce the batteries needed & extend range.
I think there is a lot of room to grow for this technology. In Italy there is a pilot program for a wirless charging system integrated in the roadbed of a highway.
I use my garage floor space for other things when I pull the car out- exercise, wood working, other projects. If the charging plate could be moved aside as needed, I’d be interested. If it was fixed in place, I’d be less excited. A great solution for fleets, particularly if they regularly return to a spot to pick up people or items.
The efficiency is my biggest concern when people talk about wireless charging on mass scale. If they have gotten to a couple of percentages points of wired that makes it actually a good alternative. If the speed of charge is equally as close, it is a no brainer. Just put it in every car. I would be surprised if the manufacturing costs would be substantially more that just a regular plug (when done in mass scale).
Besides autonomous cars with no human to plug things in the main use case has to be buses that stop at each charger for a short period when the driver is busy taking on passengers.
Thanks for the explainer. My first thought was that it's inefficient like wireless for phone but you nailed that one. The other logical progression would be incorporating a charger into the road surface 🙂 .... Thanks Jim Bell (Australia)
I was amazed to here 92% efficiency. I do not understand how that's achieved (and I'd love to better understand the science behind it), but if the numbers are accurate, then yeah I'm all for it.
This could be a game changer for rental properties. Provided that a handshake will be used to enable charging. That in turn can be connected to a customer's electrical account for billing purposes. These could be installed at designated spaces in off-street parking. I'd be curious to know how they function in various weather conditions: rain, snow, ice. This technology is in the early stages, but they have likely investigated some of these real world variables already.
I saw another video (can't remember where if I think of it I'll reply back) where they had a wireless charger covered in 5 or 6 inches of snow and it still worked fine
As we discuss robotaxi more and more, I see the need to build out this infrastructure. I’m sure it’s coming, but never soon enough. The idea occurs to me that,, once robotaxi is a reality and we can put our privately owned vehicles on the network, this is the best solution. Can you imagine programming your Model Y to leave your garage at 2:00 am and drive to one of these charging stations and then return home when finished? I hope this technology happens in my lifetime.
Matt, I know Detroit has the U.S.'s first segment of in-road charging. I think this could bring another real solution for people who live in an apartment or don't have a good solution for home charging. Not to mention taxis, buses, & last mile delivery trucks.
@Matt, at the very end you mentioned that it's being rolled out in select areas. I wish you would have asked about areas where there's snow. Having something outside and above ground isn't going to work when they plow the parking lot. I would have like to see what they have to say about the tech when it's beneath asphalt or concrete. Does it disrupt the magnetic waves and if not, how does it impact the efficiency. As far as having one in my garage, I would as long as there's a way to install it so that it's flush with the floor. All of the smart home products need to be better at concealing the tech....IMO.
That's really exciting! The next step would be embedding the chargers in highways so that EVs would have nearly unlimited! Probably wouldn't make sense in city streets, except for places like bus stops once pubic buses go electric. Also, parking lots. This technology could eliminate range anxiety!
trolleys? but yes overhead lines on highways for trucks would be awesome. Tom Scott has a video on this. Technology that is available now and makes sense!
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In 10 years time. We don't really have the luxury to waste that much energy right now as most of our grids have to use gas to complement our consumption (in UK).
Please start having integrity with your sponsors and not supporting companies like Surfshark that actively work to screw over their customers.
@@cp37373 Name a company that doesn't have someone out there with a complaint against the company. Now, once you've found this unicorn company, contact their marketing department and ask them to sponsor Matt's channel. Or here's an idea, start your own technology channel on TH-cam. Good luck with any of that.
@@cp37373 what are u smoking? surfshark has always done right by me and Matt sure as hell isnt about to endorse ANYTHING he doesnt USE HIMSELF .... if he cared enough about comments like this im sure he could list 100 different products he wouldnt promote .
JUST BECAUSE UR HAVING A BAD DAY DOESNT MEAN U GET TO CALL INTO ACCOUNT ANYONES INTEGRITY.
Screaming about integrity with NO name LMAO
Wow electric vehicle charging technology is continue to advance There's only one major problem that you need to talk about. THE GRID AND ENERGY SOURCES. We can all be driving electric cars but as the recent heat wave proved our sources of energy and the means of delivering that energy to people also known as the electrical grid are completely substandard for an electric car future. In Colorado electric companies actually took control of people's thermostats to turn them off and lock people out because there wasn't enough electricity.
In California they were actually telling people not to charge their electric vehicles because there was threats of rolling blackouts. In one instance they actually use the emergency broadcast system to tell people to turn off the lights because the grid was about to shut down.
How can we have an electric vehicle future if there's not going to be enough energy for everybody to charge their car?
I need to see some independent testing to verify that 99% efficiency figure, because it's really important that is good when it's kW of power rather than single digit W.
wireless charging 99% efficient, who are they shitting?
When I researched this 3 years ago, the most efficiency wireless charging worked at around 40% efficiency. To jump to 99% is a state change of a massive level. How come this is the first we've heard of it? It's certainly by far the most important part of this video, so why doesn't Matt examine it much deeper?
Yeah, I’m unsubscribing. Too much total bs on this channel. I’ll just watch these videos through Thunder foot…
@@float32 thunder foot?
100% bs
I've always been against wireless charging because of the efficiency. But the efficiency level being the same as wired charging (if I didn't misunderstand), then I gotta say... I'm actually excited about wireless charging.
You need a bunch of parts though instead of just a cable. I don't get wireless charging for phones, even more so for cars. What's next? Homes and planes?
You got it. It's not that different from plugging in an EV at home efficiency-wise.
I’m still skeptical just because of the effort for maintenance. If something goes wrong in your 6KW charger then you probably just need to replace the unit.
But if something goes wrong in a wireless charger in your floor then you may need to rip up giant sections of your floor in order to access the troublesome component.
Just to correct some information here, wireless charging on EVs is much more efficient than wired charging, around 15% more efficient. Momentum Dynamics manage to create that wireless charging pad that can deliver 50KW DC with that incredible efficiency and it just takes 5 secs to start charging.
@@SaveMoneySavethePlanet Not really. You can easily build a fairly clean looking setup built into the floor of a garage or a parking lot that is modular and parts could be serviced or replaced as required. It all depends on how it's designed and installed. This is stationary wireless charging, not the type where the vehicle is in motion.
Nice, a technology that will finally make people park within the lines!
if only it could keep people from crashing into the charger.
I love how you go through all the angles with benefits and drawbacks on the topics you discuss. That's the only way to make an informed decision and to see things change in the future.
This would be great for emergency vehicles e.g. ambulances. The vehicle can sit in the station on charge and drive away to a call without the delay of having to disconnect the cable.
Especially in very rural areas where vehicles could sit for months. No need to worry about gas going bad.
@@PuliDevYt That feels like an answer the unemployed would have
lol
THe job market is crazy right now. Layoffs, cit hours, and difficulty landing those new jobs.@@scarab4827
Solid video, I do think that one of the pathways forward is using vehicles as portable "green" batteries and anything that reduces direct user interface ("set and forget" or in this case "park and forget") will greatly improve this. Wireless vehicle charging has been used by Disney (trackless ride systems wirelessly charge the vehicles during unloading and loading) for several years, great to see if concept make the shift from theme park to car park.
Theme parks are not known for being energy efficient. Not surprising at all Disney would be wasting energy like that.
Wireless chargers are implemented and working in Gothenburg Sweden. We charge taxis wirelessly. (I’m the asset owner for those 2 charge sites )
To me the most interesting application of this is autonomous charging: if you live in a place where you cannot have a charging station of your own, you just drive home and tell the car to drive by itself to the closest available wireless charging station, charge itself and then come back home.
Or even at a work parking lot. Just install a couple chargers and let the cars move themselves around through the day to all charge up.
The waste in wireless charging just makes it too unattractive. The application of automating charging does not need to be wireless. Sky is the limit when it comes to interfaces that would suit automated charging
@@71Jay17 He literally said it was on par with charging with a cable. Even a cable is not 100% efficient. And I'm sure in a few years they can bring their 92% up to be even closer to a cable efficiency.
@@spro_halver8553 He literally made a claim he cannot backup, he lied. Wireless charging research has not come close to the level of efficiency. I would rank this among the worst of Matt Farrells videos. Undecided my ass.
I am very much hoping Congress can pass a law outright banning self-driving and making it a criminal offense with PRISON time for using it.
We have not been able to keep anything secure. Critical infrastructure, banks, credit agencies, weapons systems.. Tesla allows their cars to be updated over the air and now all of them are doing it. I do not want to wake up one Sept 11th morning and find out all the 2026 Honda Civics are deliberately ramming other cars, buildings and people.
Either the software is on ROM chips which cannot be upgraded or changed in any way without swapping the chips or we ban any ability for any car to drive itself.
All this is assuming it even worked right, which it doesn't.
I don't see why a car needs to be wireless at all.. just automatic. Have the car help alignment, then have a pad of pins on an arm move up to connect the pins to an array of pads at the bottom of the car. Then pin by pin check for connection and shorts, then use the safe/remaining pins to conduct the charging. Obviously don't send a current until safe connection is established. Also helps with the "cat" problem.
I guess because it solves the problem for every make and model, dum de dum dum dum.
www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=m.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DuMM0lRfX6YI&ved=2ahUKEwjy0ufxgKT6AhX4k4QIHYOiDCsQjjh6BAgaEAI&usg=AOvVaw2ntmp-A42xzKgFsOfDi5H6
I believe that homeowners (and home builders) would definitely be interested in the benefit of simplicity and convenience alone. The additional possibility of bidirectional capability for vehicle to grid or vehicle to load would be a killer feature that many would pay for as well.
Being able to charge your vehicle without needing to think about it is super cool! I am a little bummed that it turns of when it detects foreign object on the pad though, I was looking forward to speed charging my 42 cellphones at once...
All jokes aside, this is definitely something I would buy.
Well, I was sceptical of wireless charging until now because I wasn't aware that there's an actually efficient way to do it.
So far I only knew of the lossy version that goes to 80% under perfect conditions (which you never end up with outside a lab) so this is something I'm looking forward to become the standard.
And on a side note: I'm very glad that the puns were few in this episode. They used to give me a headache in the others were it was up to 2 per minute...
Until we see independent review of one of these units installed on site charging an actual car over top of it, I'm not buying their claims at all. It's the same "In theory" "in the lab" bullshit everyone else does, and then in real-world conditions you'll see 50% efficiency and end up with a 3 kilowatt garage heater.
@@GerryRR Yeah, like early WLAN 54 MBit, which at the time /was/ possible, when you soldered the antenna together. Realistically was more around 80% max.
I would love to be able to have wireless charging as long as the loss is not too large. It has been around for a while in Europe, but has not seemed to take off.
And I am concerned about road damage from running over objects on the road, rocks and other things thrown up from other cars, etc. It could cost the owner a lot to replace the charging pad and connected circuity.
one of my worries with wireless charging is the level of noise across the RF spectrum especially on the HF band's and medium wave and longwave, I'm a licenced radio ham and short wave listener having multiple 11kw transmitters close to home around 85KHz worries me that it'll generate a high noise floor that'll make using my radios impossible to listen to.
These systems have to pass the same EMC testing as other automotive components so SAR and EMI etc. are already tested for. Plus they employ ferrite shields to get the system to compliance. I’m an engineer and used to work in this field a few years ago. Wireless charging is a tough thing to get to pass EMC, that’s for sure!
I can see these popping up everywhere. Like privately owned ATM's they'll be anywhere appropriate power can be supplied. Shopping Malls, supermarkets, restaurants, parking garages, bowling alleys, amusement parks, etc... They'll incorporate large display screens on the wall units in front of the parking spot to incorporate advertising. Eventually the systems may be able to access the screens inside the vehicle with selective advertising. It's time to INVEST in this idea.
I want this yesterday! It would make it so easy for places like grocery stores to add to parking spaces. If enough places do this, your car could "sip" power whenever it stops for a while.
It seems like wireless charging adds a lot of issues and is expensive without adding much benefit. Its really not that hard to remeber to plug in your car. Also its supposed to be “convenient” but it seems less convenient. You really cant move the charging pad around quickly so that one spot is the only place you can charge. A cable with a decent cord legnth you can be parked in different spots and still charge.
cost to mount that wireless charger in garage are to big (renovation and mount cables under floor)
its like few times more than charger itself.
"forget to plug in" .... thats problem of tesla drivers xD
In my town we have a drive-in theater with those window speakers things. Those get run over or ripped off more than you would think. I imagine if your local Amazon warehouse had 100 EV vans they would have a similar issue with all those charging cables. If the pads could be buried in parking spots, wireless charging could fix that problem. You could just park your fleet of delivery vans and they could charge.
Getting this onto fleets (taxis, mail, buses) is key to scale enough to bring costs down. But long term, turning every EV into a massive distributed battery bank for the power grid would be a huge deal (wonder how that would effect the battery life, though).
new battery tech being released would solve that issue by the time this is added to any infrastructure
@@wickedalpaca2343 “New battery tech” has been touted for years. We’ve been stuck with lithium forever. I really hope it comes sooner then later.
Why do we need to turn our cars into distributed power packs for the grid?
@@evancombs5159 Because when the tornadoquakeflood hits your house you'll need a power source. Unless you're one of those climate change deniers, in which case just mind your business and pray that your power comes back on in God's Country Texas.
@@evancombs5159 If we want to get most or even all of our energy needs from renewables, one of the problems is energy storage
Economically, for the private consumer this doesn't make sense. You are essentially paying 4 digit sums to have this installled (plus inefficiencies from use) to not have to grab the charger and plug that in - V2G isn't in the balance because it works on both. Now, convenience wise - there will be people who will pay a lot of money for a slightly more convenient situation, so it'll play there.
Where I do see this having play is the public transport sector. Imagine a smart taxi that charges itself when not in demand. Also, busses - could be charging at major bus stops.
Thanks for this, Matt. I had no idea that magnetic resonance charging could be so efficient. I thought the air-gap would kill the efficiency to the point that you'd be spending too much to charge your EV. As an EE, I wish you'd spent more time explaining why they're so efficient, & maybe providing some curves, but I trust that you've done your homework & aren't trying to lie to us. Which makes it pretty cool!
He’s not going to. You cannot move the volts or amperage needed to recharge.
95% of what this guy yaps about will not get funded. His channel is nothing more hope in a field of wide eye wanderers.
I’ve calculated solar five different ways. In the end it’s prepaying for power that in ten years may pay for itself. We already seen power companies lower payments for power back into the grid and the narrative change towards the new reality.
Magnetic resonance and coupling are the same things. Both coils have resistance, that generates heat. A cable has much bigger cross section and has shorter length. The efficiency claimed in that video is even higher than a cable which is the perfect conductor. The truth will be revealed easily by looking at how much goes in the charger and how much gets into the battery. Laws of physics didn’t change overnight.
This is the future and oems need to get on it imo. Build the coils right into the bottom of the pack's and eliminate the charge doors being in different locations. Breaking, freezing shut etc. Plus nobody can unplug your wirelessly charging ev either. 👍🏻😎
Well, someone can throw a quarter onto the pad
@@randallte2556 Have an automatic wiper or an automatically retracting cover
I'm somewhat skeptical of that 99% efficiency number. we'll have to see how it pans out.
As for V2G, that's a funny story, cause there is a really old EV that did it better then anyone i've heard of today. So in a EV you have a motor controller that takes DC and turns it into 3 phase AC of various frequency to drive the motor. If your EV has regen breaking, that controller also takes 3 phase AC from the motor and turns it back into DC to charge the battery.
So, the old EV i'm talking about used the motor controller to drive the car, it also turned wall AC power into DC to charge the car, or it took DC power and turned it into AC to pump it back out. All the bits we need for charging, driving, and powering the grid\house are all already part of a motor controller. There's no need to have a seperate charger, or inverter for V2G, you just need to tweak the controller a little and it can do all 3 jobs (and often much better then independent chargers or inverters since controllers are already designed for very high loads)
You're thinking of the AC Propulsion eBox
My EVSE installer knows very little about the EV industry, however he mentioned the name Matt Ferrell as being one of the channels he watches, so he's on the right track;)
I have to say as a user of an EV it’s not really tough to plug-in once in a while at home to recharge - I wouldn’t pay much for the ‘convenience’ of not plugging in
I think you are in a minority lots of people like extra convenience. Like it not really hard to lock your car door with a key yet we all like to use a key fob. I can see people paying the extra to have this installed especially if it's there first charging station.
My cell phone is two years old, and has never been plugged in. Wireless is so nice! Having this functionality for a future EV would be a no-brainer.
This could help alleviate cable cutting done at public charge spots as well. Especially if the wires are built under the pavement.
Then they hammer it
I don't think you'd want a system where any kind of basic maintenance requires digging up concerete. My guess is a real-world system would have drivers driving over a metal cover. To service the system, you just remove the cover.
One concern that I have about wireless charging is that of implanted metal medical devices or active devices like pacemakers. The magnetic field required for a phone charger is WAY smaller and weaker than the field required to charge a vehicle, and as such isn't really much of a concern. I worry that the stronger fields may cause interference or injury, even if you just happen to be walking near such a charger instead of standing right on it.
That said, I am by no means an expert nor am I making any claims that this will happen. I'm just curious and concerned, as I've never seen this mentioned in any discussions about this technology.
Definitely a valid point, but I believe that is also involved in what was addressed at the end in terms of safety, if it detects you coming near, it turns of, that would be the same for another item that runs interference, but I am also not a expert so… can’t say
I am sure there is a first authentication mechanism like NFC or ble to find the car and not to ping for the car with the actual charging field. Thus, it will be safe.
@@peterzahn5290 I'm aware that it won't be active unless a vehicle is there. The concern I have is about possible interference or injury to people with medical devices due to the fact that RF/magnetic fields act on conductive materials at a distance. Depending on the strength of the field, these effects may occur several feet away from an active charger.
I’ve got a pacemaker that is not compatible with MRIs (some are), and I wonder about this. I’m not supposed to go through metal detectors, my career is in the utility industry and I can no longer visit substations, and I wonder if this will be feasible for me. I’m sure it will have safeguards and shut off, but that doesn’t still. I wouldn’t want to walk by someone else’s vehicle and shut their charger off. I wonder how they will address that.
@@gridjac This is exactly the reason for my concern. I have titanium and steel hardware implanted in my spine, and while I'm also barred from being near MRI machines I'm at far lower risk than someone like yourself.
The biggest concern I have with pacemakers is that in order for the charger to shut itself off, the field has to already have induced voltage/heat in an object in order to detect it. With my hardware, that may never be noticeable, but with a pacemaker that small amount may be enough to damage the pacemaker or make it stop working.
One use case for this tech that often goes unnoticed is that it's orders of magnitude easier to operate if you're disabled. Both fuel pumps and cable chargers have stiff and heavy lines. Fuel pumps have settled on a standard where the line is suspended from above to help mitigate their weight to some extent and the pump handle has an oversized trigger that is easy to actuate even with limited grip strength - it's hard to say the same about the competing EV cable designs. Not having to plug anything in at all would obviously flip this situation around and makes EVs the easiest kind of vehicle to operate independently as a disabled person. Anyone who's had to call assistance hotlines for help will know how tedious and unreliable these systems can be and the best solution is to make everything as universally accessible as possible. I really hope this tech becomes mainstream.
I think this is the best way forward and I'm really looking forward to this being widely adopted. To me it's especially compelling for public charging infrastructure. It eliminates all the ugly and potentially dangerous cables lying around where people can trip over them. It greatly reduces the opportunities for vandalism, and it completely eliminates the problem with people prying cords out of cars while they're charging. The biggest downside is cost, but economies of scale and competition will address a lot of that. People will also pay more for convenience and this is way more convenient than wired charging.
I agree
That’s really inspiring. Thank Matt for a great Video. I also think Alex the CEO is doing a fantastic job explaining everything.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Definitely would like to get it but like to see implementation by Tesla (personally for my EV) I think auto manufacturers can do a lot better implementation that fits in to the onboard UI. People will hesitate installing something that could void a 8 year warranty for aftermarket installation. Great idea though.
Going into this video, I was somewhat skeptical about wireless charging. But, if it really is as efficient as wired charging, safe, and can be retrofitted onto existing cars vs. needing to buy new cars to take advantage of it, that would address a lot of my concerns.
I can see this being particularly useful anytime you have people waiting in line for something in their cars, inching forward extremely slowly. Fast food drive thrus being an obvious example of this.
I also like jack_a's comment about how it avoids problems of cable theft and vandalism, potentially making the EV charging experience somewhat counter-intuitively more reliable than with wired charging, rather than less.
“Most people when the battery is fully charged they don’t plug in” I feel like almost everyone leaves the car plugged in even when it’s fully charged. It’s a habit to plug it in when you get out at home. Mine is plugged in 100% of the time at home
Wireless charging will be game changer for ev's. I think when it becomes as easy as just driving to where your going and parking... We will see that ah ha moment where everyone just gets it.
It might even replace the extra step of a parking fee, it's just built into that charge session.
yes
Retrofitting your Tesla with CarPlay. Please tell me more! 🙏
I like that added screen!
that's the one thing I can't stand about some of the Teslas is the lack of a dash.
I’d like to know more too , please.
My first reaction when the video started was “meh, plugging in isn’t that hard”. A retrofit that added V2H on my current vehicle that doesn’t support it would be a game changer. It would also need to support current limiting so that I can only draw on excess solar. That plus the ability to integrate into home assistant and I want it now!
Sure, it’s not that hard if you don’t have any mobility problems. But for older people or anyone with physical disabilities, wanting to remain independent, this tech will enable a huge improvement to their lives.
Hi. Great video! Amazing progress. The next 20 years will look like a condensed version of one century of ICE industry. Fascinating times!!!
For delivery vehicles and public transit vehicles, both of which make regular stops, this could be very transformative. Build those vehicles with smaller batteries and then charge them throughout the day. Smaller battery means lower up front cost for the vehicle, and more efficient energy usage when driving due to reduced weight.
They are never still long enough to get any useful charge until they return to the depot, and very often can't park in the same precise spot each time.
@@davidmccarthy6061 I tried posting a link to a story in CleanTechnica about a bus route in Washington state that is doing exactly this, but TH-cam seems to have deleted it. I guess links set off spam alerts. Anyway, the bus was able to travel it's route, and its battery never went below 90% state of charge.
Ultimately this is all contextual. For urban transit, how long is the bus route? Does it have any stops that last longer than 5 minutes? (ie, to give the driver a break, to wait for passengers at a station or route hub etc). So there may be situations where wireless charging doesn't fit. But transit agencies have this data. They will know the routes that it can be applied to, and the routes that it won't.
For delivery trucks, I wasn't thinking so much about say, amazon or USPS trucks that hit different stops every day, but more like trucks delivering bread to grocery stores, or linens to hotels. Trucks that go the same handful of places every day and back up to a loading dock for 5 to 10 minutes while stuff gets offloaded.
You should check out what AVTA has been doing with their fleet of busses.
NOA in Australia is designing a mat for the floor of your garage that requires no careful alignment and can wireless charge at a relatively high power. So you just drive into your car space and charging will start automatically.
As cool as this is, I think it will remain a luxury for most people. It’s cheaper and simpler to just use wired. It’s also easier to share a wired charger than a wireless one. You don’t have to move cars when you need to switch which one is charging, just move the plug. Sharing the charging station with my boyfriend was easy and involved no extra costs.
In time this will drop in cost, but you are right ... for at least right now this will be a luxury add-on. This is usually the way new tech starts in the auto industry. Things start out at the high end, but fast forward a number of years and it's common place among all cars.
@@UndecidedMF A response from the OP? I have been blessed!
I've always thought that wireless charging in the case of EVs is inevitable. The primary use cases IMO would be for onstreet parking EV charging. Rather than need to have error prone cables, think plates built into the parking spot run by the local utility. The EV owner has an account with the utility. Park and start charging using a utility app.
Fleet charging, and public transport e.g shuttle charging as well.
Personal use in a garage doesn't seem that useful to pay a couple thousand bucks for the system instead of the 10sec task of just plugging the car in.
I guess that my top priority question beyond cost and consumer availability timelines (either OEM or aftermarket) would be whether or not the wireless charging hardware would coexist with plug-in chargers on the same vehicle for the sake of redundancy.
Good Question.
One would think that it would easily coexist since high speed DC charging is going to be required for travel and that will be done with the present port. Tesla's charging port is a very clean solution for that. Adding the charging plate in parallel with that (one or the other at a time) would be fairly trivial.
or you can wireless then another hole to plug in wire and wireless like what you with computers or phones.
@@markbalentine1962 Wireless requires an under car charging plate connected to the charging circuitry. So it would share all the charging circuitry with the charging port and would be switched depending upon sensing the charging plate or a plug. This is fairly trivial for the manufacturer if they design it in per the new standard.
@@brianbeasley7270 but the standards will be there it won't be fairly trvival if the tech can be implemented right :)
Highly doubt the effeciency is the same, that being said it would be alot easier to have some kind of robot esque arm that can just find the plug and stick it in.
Agree about the fact that there are potential applications (like bus charging at bus stop for a cheaper price easier engineering than a top level contact). But the case defended being mainly home / personal car charging, I think that there is a MUCH simpler solution like a notification when your car is parked at home or next to a charger without being in charge... A solution more complicated than that just for covering cases like "I forgot to plug" + the 8% efficiency drop compared with a cable sounds like over engineering to me or inventing problem when that actually doesn't really exist (for now).
Wireless sounds like a significant convenience thing. Then again, plugging in at home or VRBO never seemed that stressful, so mostly a nice to have. The vehicle to grid thing sounds like maybe the biggest benefit, or maybe fleets where you want to make charging as easy and low fuss as feasible (though even for fleets, plugging in doesn't sound that bad).
Plugging in for overnight is fine. However we would find it a hassle for 5 or 10mins. That's when inductive makes most sense. Park, walk off, come back, drive away
Vehicle to grid is just a fancy way of fucking up your battery life to save some cents on the elctricity bill.
@@yuidesu5625 with today's batteries this is somewhat true, if I change "fucking up" to premature age. Smart charging males far more sense. 80% of the benefits of V2G, with none of the downsides, or waiting for technology to change
I would mount the fixed coil (not the one on the car, but the one on the charger) on an arm that can take better care of alignment (even if there's no need for perfect alignment, it would still be better to rely on the charging coil to align) and it should be able to rise to the point that almost touches the coil attached to the car, so that stuff won't get between the charging coil and the car coil. For that to work, when at rest, the charging coil should be inside a sort of pouch and it would get out only when needed. It's easier to make the fixed part more complicated than the part you take with you every time you drive. Just my thought (I am not an engineer).
More parts to go bad. NO.
@@XFDADX Exactly! It's not necessary and just more complexity for moving parts to fail.
This system specifically does not need very close proximity or alignment, though. It works with different sized pads, ones that are not aligned perfectly, or at all, etc. There's no alignment to need a system for, so no need to add mechanical bits at all.
For Qi style charging like you would find on your phone, absolutely - if this system had the same limitations it would be the optimal solution for it.
If there is no need to align, why there is a device showing how to align inside the car? Is that any more reliable? Recently, I notice many more software glitches than mechanical failures. Of course the moving coil could be optional, as not everyone needs it.
If no alignment is necessary and pads don't need to overlap, can I recharge my car parking near someone else's pad? I'd save plenty of money.
Does the efficiency vary with distance? If not, I'll park my car at home and use someone else's pad from the other side of the world. I could even recharge while moving, so no need for batteries. I'll have my pad powering my car as I drive.
I'm not holding my breath, though.
The mechanical bit to add could be a few magnets, rubber pads and castors for the coil. It would be attracted to the car and kept at a tiny distance by rubber pads. Using electro-magnets would allow the magnets to work only when charging.
It may be more reliable than the system shown in the video, where you have a screen and some sensor and software to draw shapes to show an alignment that you may or may need. I am not saying that everyone must have the alignment device, just that I'd like to have the option to choose one, if I wanted to.
This was a great episode Matt, Thank you for putting this clip together. The big questions still hangs in the air, how do we manage power loss due to the media, will we lose millions if watts per year ? I've been following WITRICY, time will tell, this is impressive. Big markets await for the team for all walk of life, people with mobility issues, lack of knowledge of EVs, removes hurdles on challenges on connectors. Brilliant!
Great video as always, Matt. Could you do a video to expand on the Vehicle to Grid complexities? I struggle to wrap my head around how a purpose built battery backup for my house is the same price and storage capacity as a used EV, plus you get a free car. Granted, that vehicle has been through a few cycles but seems like it should be able to keep my house running for a few days in a grid down scenario, especially if I have solar to replenish during the day. Living in New Orleans, we have fairly frequent outages from storms and old infrastructure so this topic is near and dear.
It's not a show stopper, but there is a huge safety issue with V2G today, in that the power company needs to be able to completely isolate sections of the grid to do work. This is why it's illegal to backfeed power into your house without specific breaker structure put into place. It is also why your solar panels likely won't run your house or charge your car in a grid down situation. It is one of the reasons "House" battery systems are so expensive. There is more safety built into the inverter than what a vehicle can provide. Again, not an insurmountable problem to solve. It's probably $1k-$2k worth of work/equipment for an electrician to structure your house panel properly, but it is a big reason V2G has a long way to go.
The automatic transfer switch technology to isolate a house from the grid has been around for a really long time and available "off the shelf". Having one installed isn't necessarily cheap, but like you said, it doesn't seem like it should be prohibitive to widespread adoption. Solar can definitely work grid down but it needs a battery to balance loads against. Grid-tied solar inverters also use the frequency of the grid to synchronize the conversion of DC coming off the panels to AC so it can be integrated in parallel with the grid. This is more the reason why solar doesn't work when the grid is down, there's nothing to synchronize against so it turns itself off. Hybrid inverters like Sol-Ark can synchronize phase "on the fly" if the grid is up or down. Again, all these things are "off the shelf" now. The only thing that's missing is the ability to use the big ole batteries in my fancy new EV but most EVs don't have bi-directional charging. That's the part I'm interested in hearing more about.
This will be most useful for electric busses. They can have like 2 charging pads in each bus parking in the terminal and the buses can start without having to worry about cables.
It'd be such an awful thing to have to disconnect one or two cables before starting your shift. Do you also need a food holder that extends out just beside your mouth so that you can eat while you drive? lazy bum
@@joebloggs24 I don't think you understand public transport, not at least in the developing countries. Here buses will mostly be over utilized than under utilized. People will come for shifts, but buses might get 20-30 minutes breaks in between. In conventional diesel buses, they go to the pump they refill end of story, but for electric buses the best solution would be a gradual top-up every time they reach the terminal and full battery during off-peak times. If people board and the bus gets full, the driver doesn't need to worry about plugging, and unplugging and start the trip directly. And moreover, drivers would prefer to sit and chat rather than to worry about plugging and unplugging for short charging times of 20 minutes.
Excellent program. Clear & concise. Thank you for the update. I am holding off on an EV car until I can afford one. I am retired and live on a fixed income. That said I am anxious to see the future happening today.
Thanks for watching and commenting.
The efficiency loss here is something that still is a cause for query. Just get more plug in spots. Like lampposts
Did you say 99% efficient!? I think that's pretty good. Hopefully the industry will adopt it soon. Also, I wonder if they could make low powered ones to use on small devices like smart phones in the future. Obviously, it wouldn't work with current wireless charging phones, but they could work with a smart phone manufacturer to make a compatible phone.
would not happen ..even samsung with their watches using non-standard qi charging =\. The problem is, that these guys making money on selling accessories, why they should shoot themselves in the foot?
There is no way it’s that efficient.
@@Raums he said 92%
The reason why I believe that wireless charging is going to be a major element going forward is not the convenience of parked charging, but the ability for a vehicle to charge *_while moving!_* Imagine major highways with a dedicated lane for electric vehicles _including trucks._ With wireless charging imbedded in the lane you have long distance electric vehicles. Add self driving and you have long distance overnight travel. With this, people can go Toronto to Miami in 24 hours non stop in anything from a car to an RV.
2:00 you cannot just keep saying "efficient" and "efficiency" without actually telling us the power conversion rate. Nothing tops a cable. We need to reduce our power consumption. Not design extra energy loses into the grid.
8:45 99% efficiency over the air gap, so almost no different to a cable.
This is covered in the video. Keep watching.
@@NickFoster Lets say that is true 1% is already a lot, you can't say there is no difference in the same sentence . You also need to account for the loss on both ends in energy conversion, which would not happen with a cable. The true efficiency is going to be abysmal compared to wired.
Making wireless charging of some sort the universally accepted one would eliminate the "plug wars." If I were Witricity, I would already be lobbying governments to adopt this tech as the DeFacto standard, not just for fleet vehicles and public transportation, but for all vehicles to standardize charging across the board. It would go a long way to making EV adoption simpler for average consumers.
Wireless charging is, today, massively inefficient compared to battery swap/regular cable charging. So I don't believe in it at the moment
Right! Using your car's battery to help power your home during peak hours.... then charging your car in the early am... during cheap hours is a great benefit.
As a civilization we've evolved to a point where we can't be bothered to plug in our devices. 🤣
If it's anything like phones, where the battery noticeably heats up more during charging, I'll pass. Copper will always be the more efficient conductor.
That's just physics and the battery heats up using a cable too which is why the cars have active thermal cooling/heating, and the faster DC cables are also cooled.
Looks good. Hope the standardization effort works. Cool!
How is it 92% efficient? Could you go into more depth on that? I thought it would be a squared distance fall off, so there's no way it could be 92% efficient.
I feel at times this channel has jumped the shark....it seems to tailor the videos at times to what's trendy in "public policy" rather than focusing on scientific innovation and exploration. I'm debating unsubscribing....but obviously I haven't decided yet. I'm trying understand if the topics picked and discussed are genuinely done on an objective exploration basis or if it's driven by popular opinion and gov't policy decisions.....
Yes, these topics are picked by my curiosity and exploration. This has nothing to do with government policy decisions or popular opinion. I talked to them a while back because they caught my eye and I thought it was a time for a revisit to see how it's progressing. I'm trying to to that with a lot of the topics I cover (revisit a year down the road kind of thing).
The charger is not a radio antenna that is always beaming out. Its a magnetic force. A magnet on your desk doesnt need to be plugged in to be a magnet.
@@Bobucles I'm not sure I understand. The magnetic field still follows the inverse quare law, and the pad must be an electromagnetic field, so I still don't understand how they're achieving those kinds of efficiencies over, say, a foot of distance.
this is the key for future parking lots.....which would require to include the wireless charging for each parking spot.
Once things get ramped up I imagine they could put MR coils under the road surface so you’re charging all the time and just bill your debit card while you’re driving.
I think the recent trains in Germany using hydrogen tanks as opposed to electric trains should be another example of why electric roads can't happen (especially in the US).
We already have really really poor road designs (cheap, need constant repairs) so embedding coils in the roads would increase cost to an alarming level nobody would be willing to pay, especially many folks driving gas powered cars.
This is a powered rail train but with extra steps
There's a difference between doing something right, and doing the right thing.
Roads are already ecologically damaging. Adding more infrastructure that requires a lot more recourses, energy, and pollution to install, maintain and renovate is probably not a sustainable solution.
@@Ben_Gates Roads need to be ripped up and replaced every so many years anyways. I hate to break it to you, but no one is crying tears for the ecological damage roads do. If we can get to a point where all cars are fully autonomous in a decade, the lives it will save alone is totally worth it.
@@scottcarver7393 Look, no need to be hostile. We can think critically about this, or we can choose to be enthralled by new shiny tech and lose all sight of it's ramifications. Good and/or bad.
You're argument sounds like a reason to replace roads with a different technology rather than a reasonable defense for them.
And Who's lives? I'm assuming you're referring to human lives? Maybe so. But what about the lives of all the species that inhabit the area in/surrounding the mines where the material needs to be extracted from? Let alone the people who live in these communities?
Or those species inhabiting areas our roads cut through? Self driving cars might reduce collisions with crossing animals. However, the increase in the amount of people traveling due to the ease of transport that self automated vehicles would allow, would also come with equal if not greater increase in recourse and energy usage from said people. Neither of which is good to the health of any ecological system.
What I'm saying, is we need to be really wise in how we choose to build our transportation system. Less is usually more. It would be much less invasive, recourse intensive and more energy efficient to have better public transport instead. Like high speed rail rather than millions of self driving cars.
I'd love this for hotel, grocery store and strip mall parking lots; you don't have to worry about the public destroying the charging cables, and 11kW is a great goal for those locations.
There cost of adding it to a car sounds good too
It is very interesting to learn that the system is about 99% efficient - that is a make or break aspect, I think.
i'm not really sure i believe that number. Definitely the make or break number, and i'm worried they're fudging it.
It is not 99% efficient. Maybe what transfers in the air gaps is 99% efficient but the coils generate a lot of losses. It won’t be as good as a cable. This is going 100% against our goals to reduce energy consumption
@@nlagas THIS
92% efficiency is what was quoted for the system. 99% efficiency was that quoted purely across the airgap. And before disbelieving rambert it is because of such magnetic efficiency in electric motors that they can outperform petrol cars.
@@johnpublicprofile6261 The difference between electric motors and this is there's a large air gap between the coils, where an efficient motor typically has very close tolerances.
You might find they have 99% magnetic coupling, but as others have said, there may be things like hysteresis losses in each core, or if there is no core, the coil is going to be massive and have more resistive losses.
However, with most charging systems you're going to have to change the voltage at some point with a transformer or inductor circuit, so this can do that role and therefore take the place of another inefficient component. I would guess that a decently designed boost circuit would be more efficient than this, but they're saying otherwise.
Hopefully this matched frequency technology will get into all forms of wireless charging as well as the cars.
I really can't wait for this stuff to take off and be included as standard in all EVs. Would be really incredible to see; not to mention, would open up possibilities like potentially building charging lanes into highways where EVs charge wirelessly while driving, which I imagine would help a lot with getting electric semi-trucks to be feasible.
They are called trams and trains and we already have those. Powering miles of road just isn't smart. A lot of material expense that we replaced with a battery or gas tank.
Glad they are looking at fleet use first to drive the price point down. If the car makers really adopt this, which is a big IF even as an optional package, then this will be a game changer for parking garages, and all the outdoor parking areas that don't get snowfall. Less damage potential than corded stations and seemingly easier to scale up as demand rises; stick 15 in your parking garage and install more as needed. I'm just thinking of all the rental car stalls at the Atlanta airport for instance.
Electrics cars are going to be the solution we need to level out the power generated by renewables and will serve as a back-up for grid failures. It's actually an amazing solution as people will continue to buy new cars and battery tech improves we will have a battery back-up that sorta upgrades itself.
And older batteries will be repurposed for home use, I guess.
I just did some quick calculations, because I was unsure how the numbers line up. So: A Tesla model S has a 100kWh battery, the model 3 has 55kWh. Electric power consumption per capita in the US was about 13000 kWh per year in 2014 (last year I my quick source had data from), 13000kWh/365 = 35.6kWh. So with 100% electric adoptions and plugin it would probably about work out. You obviously can't use all the capacity for the grid (as the cars still need to move), but you also won't need to store all 35kWh. So while there won't be a car for every person, I think it about works in principle. In practice there will probably need to be some (perhaps a lot) extra.
While I understand the car seems like a convenient solution for this, it is really less than ideal. For beginners it just isn't reliable. Your car won't always be there or charged up to provide power to your house. This is most often true during peak hours as well.
There are several other major potential issues with using a car as your house's backup battery. A better solution would just to have a dedicated battery for each house, which could be much larger than what a car can fit.
V2G is very tempting but at the moment few cars offer it. Perhaps legislation could force manufacturers to include it, however I think we have to wait a while until the car manufacturers catch up with Tesla’s software. As it is most are having problems of one kind or another with their software most noted of all is VW.
Is it just me or did he not say anything about how long the car charges and how that compares to the wire? I'd prefer less videos with higher quality, like Veritasium or Real Engineering channels.
He says the charging is 11kW (~35miles/hr) and talked about all the different speed chargers they’re working on
I did cover that in the video. It's no different from plugging in. The model I tried was an 11kw charger, which would charge just as fast as a plug in 11kw charger, but their tech can scale much higher than that.
With a bigger gap from a truck like Rivian or Ford, will the charging pad still work?
Cool concept. Nice video as always Matt
Glad you think so!
All these videos never show dirty, mud, snow..just fresh clean road, drive and cars..
Whenever I hear about wireless charging for EVs I can't help but think that it's a solution looking for a problem. People are OK with inserting a hose into their combustion-mobiles to fill them up. Any skeptic I've ever talked to complained about having to do the equivalent of that more often and for longer with an EV. Any EV owner I've ever talked to complained about charger availability and difficult/fragmented payment methods. Nobody ever complained about the cable.
After fully watching the video this actually seems worse. The car *will* have to park itself. You only have to give a glancing look at any given parking lot to see that you cannot trust drivers to align their cars with charging pads with any kind of accuracy. Cables are, by contrast, pretty forgiving when it comes to positioning.
@@jfolz You saw in the video this has a good amount of wiggle room, and if the driver wants a charge they will need to stay in the sweet spot. It should improve parking a lot!
@@davidmccarthy6061 even if the margin for error was very generous (it wasn't in the demonstration we saw) you'd still have the issue of placement of the coils. If manufacturers can't even agree on the placement of the charge port, why would anyone expect them come to an agreement where charge coils would go?
It's an exciting technology! It can also be used on shuttle busses, where the charging pads are placed at the bus stops, so the bus gets charged when picking up passengers. Or maybe, you can build long charging "lane" on highways for EV cars to charge, but I don't know, could it works? Just a crazy idea though 😂
Funny enough, some countries have started making highway lanes for electric freight trucks with suspended cables that allow those trucks to keep charging while they are staying on the highway to extend the length those trucks can go without needing to switch back to gas
@@Volvary I know that much. But imagine, using conductive charging, you would see massive conductive receiver on top of a Tesla. And different EV cars have different height and distance to the suspended cable, and it's heavy. Wireless charging seems makes much more sense.
Based on my experience with wireless charging on my phone I'd have to say I'm skeptical of this working like they claim. But I'm willing to be proven wrong.
Oak ridge national laboratory has worked with ups and proved this out a couple years ago now. 92%+efficiency 150kwhs charging over an 18" air gap. They don't mess around either over there.
It's slightly different tech vs standard induction charging, from what Matt was saying.
They area actually already using this wireless charging for public busses in Wenatchee, WA. It definitely works as advertised.
@@kj_H65f Do they have any issues in winter with the salt, sand, and ice on the roads causing issues with charging? I suppose one remedy to that could be as simple as an undercarriage wash before charging but just curious if you heard anything about winter charging.
I suspect this will be much better than the tiny phone coil mating with the $11 charge pad from China.
There’s been allot of theft of the charging cables (for the copper) at charging stations. It’s very expensive and slow to fix them, and a huge pain if you show up and the cables are gone.
So, this may be necessary for all unattended charging stations regardless of low efficiency.
Yes, let's reduce charging efficiency.
Yeah, sounds like a real good idea.
Did you watch the video? At 8:43 he literally says magnetic resonance maintains a 99% charging efficiency and is indistinguishable from plug-in charging.
@@n8mo But the even the slightest lowering in efficiency will lead to a lot of energy being wasted given the amount of EVs we will have.
@@SciFiFactory not sure if you watched the video before commenting...
@@lockdown66681 Yes, that is what they claim. There is a LOT of wireless charging bs on the internet from companies that claimed to have solved wireless energy transfer. For now I have not seen a system that does not introduce additional losses compared to wired charging. Add to that the different conditions of a lab and real world environment.
I believe it when I see independent measurements.
wireless charging needs to be fast tracked before more money is spent on more petrol pump sized chargers.
on street charging should be no more visible than painted tarmac. all interactions with the charger should be done through the car display, including payments.
In an era where energy prices are going sky high, wireless charging makes no sense as its well documented that there's always a good amount of energy that gets completely wasted in it.
You obviously didn't listen to the talk. This has a high efficiency rate. Even your copper cable gets losses
The video states about 92% efficiency. Depending on the charger I use, I get about 95-97% charging efficiency when I plug in directly to a EVSE. So this wireless solution isn't that far off.
Agree, wireless charging when parking doesn't make much sense to me until we are already 100% renewable with surplus to waste.
I feel like it is better just to add a charging port under the car and plug in the charger automatically when parking.
That's why I've always been against it, but if I'm understanding this correctly (8:30-8:55), it's right around the efficiency of wired charging, meaning this no longer is a valid reason to oppose it.
@C L yeah carrying around the one cable every EV uses except for tesla is so hard in my vehicle with a load capacity of 1000s of pounds.
Imagine this coupled with autonomous driving. When parked at the office or the mall, if your car needs a juice-up you can send it over while you are away doing something else. When it’s done it won’t hog the charging space, just move out of the way to free up for the next customer. At a condo, instead of everyone needing their own EVSE you have communal charging and the cars shuffle themselves around during the night to top up based on pre-set parameters. There might even be a bidding system if someone failed to plan ahead and really need priority charging, automatically giving charging credits to those it bumps down in priority. Interesting
All this “progress” is developing in the wrong direction. It all requires dependence on the grid and the grid can’t handle it. And why is air conditioning killing the planet but charging your EV is not?
Gasoline is a very indirect and inefficient way to power cars. It had to be pumped out of the ground, pumped into storage, refined, then transported to the vehicle before getting burned. AC uses a remarkable amount of energy, and running it continuously to cool a large house contributes to lots of extra energy usage. As the power sources change, it'll be less dirty.
Grids can be upgraded, power sources are being improved. What are you having difficulty with?
If we even started implementing ANY of this new innovation we see on channels like these, we'd already be a carbon-zero utopia. PEOPLE CAN BARELY AFFORD TO MAINTAIN A GAS GUZZLING CAR LET ALONE BUY AN EV. We need government intervention up the hoohah - giving everyone a electric boiler would be start.
Who said it has to depend on the grid? If you have solar panels you don't
@@talldude1412 charging an EV takes a lot of power too, so much so that California has told people not to charge them. Which makes their 2035 mandate ridiculously unrealistic. And my “difficulty” is that the whole world is trying to reduce grid dependency developing EVs that charge themselves. Everyone except us.
@@FiDonkor California has more solar panels than anyone. And they tell residents not to charge their EV because there’s not enough power.
It’ll take longer to follow the screen to line the car up with the charger than the 2 seconds it takes to plug it in. Plus the cost of the charger and the extra electricity cost spent on inefficiency. There’s no way it’s as efficient as plugging in
Ended up watching this as I am increasingly frustrated with charge ports starting to go bad on 2 different evs. One of the 2 120v pins loses their "caps" and the car either slows charges, evse gun gets hot, or stop charging before car is fully charged, etc. This happens as cars get older, more miles, ports wear and tear,and increased charging cycles. Wireless charging ends all that for both car owners and public evse providers.
I thought of this when I saw the I-phone charger.
If they put a magnetic strip down the middle of the highway,
it could reduce the batteries needed & extend range.
I think there is a lot of room to grow for this technology. In Italy there is a pilot program for a wirless charging system integrated in the roadbed of a highway.
I use my garage floor space for other things when I pull the car out- exercise, wood working, other projects. If the charging plate could be moved aside as needed, I’d be interested. If it was fixed in place, I’d be less excited. A great solution for fleets, particularly if they regularly return to a spot to pick up people or items.
In can be install inside the floor slab and work. That how the Witricity buses work.
Wow thats in my hometown, didn't even know such a cool technology was being developed in my backyard!
The efficiency is my biggest concern when people talk about wireless charging on mass scale. If they have gotten to a couple of percentages points of wired that makes it actually a good alternative. If the speed of charge is equally as close, it is a no brainer. Just put it in every car. I would be surprised if the manufacturing costs would be substantially more that just a regular plug (when done in mass scale).
Besides autonomous cars with no human to plug things in the main use case has to be buses that stop at each charger for a short period when the driver is busy taking on passengers.
Your broad coverage these days is awesome Jordan.tankyou, and behst wishes.!
Thanks for the explainer. My first thought was that it's inefficient like wireless for phone but you nailed that one. The other logical progression would be incorporating a charger into the road surface 🙂 .... Thanks Jim Bell (Australia)
I was amazed to here 92% efficiency. I do not understand how that's achieved (and I'd love to better understand the science behind it), but if the numbers are accurate, then yeah I'm all for it.
This could be a game changer for rental properties. Provided that a handshake will be used to enable charging. That in turn can be connected to a customer's electrical account for billing purposes. These could be installed at designated spaces in off-street parking. I'd be curious to know how they function in various weather conditions: rain, snow, ice. This technology is in the early stages, but they have likely investigated some of these real world variables already.
I saw another video (can't remember where if I think of it I'll reply back) where they had a wireless charger covered in 5 or 6 inches of snow and it still worked fine
As we discuss robotaxi more and more, I see the need to build out this infrastructure. I’m sure it’s coming, but never soon enough. The idea occurs to me that,, once robotaxi is a reality and we can put our privately owned vehicles on the network, this is the best solution. Can you imagine programming your Model Y to leave your garage at 2:00 am and drive to one of these charging stations and then return home when finished?
I hope this technology happens in my lifetime.
Matt, I know Detroit has the U.S.'s first segment of in-road charging. I think this could bring another real solution for people who live in an apartment or don't have a good solution for home charging. Not to mention taxis, buses, & last mile delivery trucks.
@Matt, at the very end you mentioned that it's being rolled out in select areas. I wish you would have asked about areas where there's snow. Having something outside and above ground isn't going to work when they plow the parking lot. I would have like to see what they have to say about the tech when it's beneath asphalt or concrete. Does it disrupt the magnetic waves and if not, how does it impact the efficiency. As far as having one in my garage, I would as long as there's a way to install it so that it's flush with the floor. All of the smart home products need to be better at concealing the tech....IMO.
That's really exciting! The next step would be embedding the chargers in highways so that EVs would have nearly unlimited! Probably wouldn't make sense in city streets, except for places like bus stops once pubic buses go electric. Also, parking lots. This technology could eliminate range anxiety!
trolleys? but yes overhead lines on highways for trucks would be awesome. Tom Scott has a video on this. Technology that is available now and makes sense!
@@martinzihlmann822 no, I mean embedded in the concrete of the highway in the center of the lanes.
@@321brianh yes i mean, did you ever hear of trolleys? a proven technology that provides higher efficiency charging at a lower construction cost.
@@martinzihlmann822 oh, I misunderstood you. No, I haven’t heard of it being used in an EV context. I’ll check it out.