Porsche's New Cayenne Will Charge Itself Like No Other EV:
Those who closely follow electric cars will have heard whispers of wireless charging for a while now. And if you're not an EV aficionado, you've probably wondered why it hasn't happened. Well, that's all about to change. Porsche announced on Thursday that it's rolling out wireless charging on the upcoming all-electric Cayenne later this year.
The goal is to put an end to wrangling thick and bulky charging cables. Instead, Porsche is stepping in as the first electric car maker to offer wireless charging that's actually going into production.
Porsche's inductive charging system delivers up to 11kW with around 90% efficiency, which is on par with traditional wired AC charging. But unlike most EV solutions that involve a jungle of wall-mounted boxes, Porsche's setup requires just one unassuming floor plate in your garage or driveway. Given that Porsche says roughly 75% of electric charging happens at home, it's not hard to see the appeal.
This one-box system does away with the wall box and bulky control units, making the process look effortless. Just park your Cayenne Electric over the slab, and you're good to go. The car even lowers itself slightly to align with the plate -- which makes charging as efficient as possible.
Many startups have tried and failed to make wireless charging for EVs happen over the years, said Antuan Goodwin, CNET's senior cars writer. "Challenges that have kept the tech from widespread adoption include: fragile hardware (it will be run over by drivers), alignment issues, energy losses that make it significantly slower than plugging in or excessive/dangerous heat generation from sending high amperage over air."
Porsche thinks it's managed to overcome these roadblocks. The system works via a transmitter coil embedded in the base plate and a corresponding receiver in the vehicle's underbody, sandwiched between the front wheels. It transfers energy using a magnetic field over a gap of a few centimeters, and it has all the safety features you'd expect: motion sensors, object detection and a big red pause button.
The Cayenne Electric, which will be the first to offer this tech, is due for its release later this year. As for the floor plate, it will go on sale in 2026 through Porsche Centres and online. Pricing hasn't been detailed yet, but expect it to land at the premium end.
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Porsche AG on Friday dialled[sic] back plans for its electric vehicle rollout due to weaker demand, pressure in key market China and higher U.S. tariffs, causing the luxury sportscar maker and its parent Volkswagen to slash their 2025 profit outlooks:
The move highlights the challenges for one of the most well-known car brands, which has been squeezed by its two most important markets - China and the United States - over price declines and trade barriers.
Volkswagen, Europe's top carmaker, said it would take a 5.1 billion euro ($6 billion) hit from the far-reaching product overhaul, which delays some EV models in favour of hybrids and combustion engine cars, at its 75.4%-owned subsidiary.
The changes are a major shift for the Stuttgart-based maker of the iconic 911 model, and are expected to hit Porsche's operating profit by up to 1.8 billion euros this year, it said.
[...] Porsche said it would delay the launch of certain all-electric vehicles, adding that the new SUV above the Cayenne model would initially not be offered as an all-electric vehicle, but with combustion-engine and hybrid models.
Also at ZeroHedge.
Previously: Porsche's New Cayenne Will Charge Itself Like No Other EV
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(Score: 2, Funny) by Mojibake Tengu on Sunday September 07, @04:28AM
Cool. Now even a cute woke programmer can have her own Porsche.
Rust programming language offends both my Intelligence and my Spirit.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Gaaark on Sunday September 07, @12:06PM
I'm skeptical; they should give me one so i can try it out.
Heh.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Sunday September 07, @01:05PM (5 children)
Be a shame if something happened to it. Like, for example, you take a long drive and need to recharge 300 miles from home.
Parents in Africa: "Finish your food kids, there are starving children in America"
(Score: 4, Funny) by sneftel on Sunday September 07, @03:28PM (3 children)
Presumably you’d use the wired charging port for that. Honestly, you thought that was something nobody thought of? Seriously??
(Score: 4, Touché) by aafcac on Sunday September 07, @04:24PM
Fortunately, your average Porsche owner can afford a 300 mile extension cable.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Sunday September 07, @10:48PM (1 child)
"Presumably you’d use the wired charging port for that. Honestly, you thought that was something nobody thought of? Seriously??"
After the design and manufacturing lunacy I have witnessed over the last twenty years, I have become so jaded that nothing like that would surprise me.
I am just an old engineer. I used to design and build these things. I took my work very seriously, as if I were the customer. And I hate lousy design.
Well, I really can't do much about it if the financiers buy into sales pitches, hire "managers", and make engineers subordinate. Our goal becomes repurposed from making the world's best ( whatever we made ) to becoming the leader in investment return.
Sales ingenuity and legal craftsmanship are used to monetize reputations that had taken decades to build. They count on "too big to fail" to insure continued business, even though those employees who built the corporate reputation no longer work there, nor did they teach their replacements. The business still has the same name, which at one time had a reputation for solid quality, but now only a paper tiger.
So, all I know to do, knowing my own time grows near, is to surround myself with things made right with high design quality and craftsmanship. Others may consider what I treasure to be "mutts"; I will take a mutt any day over some useless show dog whose only value is whatever marketing skills can goad the price to. Its obvious that my skills and ethics are dated. It seems we celebrate ignorance and helplessness, as if "the government will simply pass a law" to provide for our needs, where I had believed the laws of physics would do that.
Everything existing along the time vector ( x, y, z, t) seems to have a "time constant", "time-to-live". For human empires, it's around 250 years. Does July 4, 1776 ring a bell? 2026 is next year.
Its been one helluva party. Everybody's drunk and in debt to those who print up debt notes, and the debt will never be repaid though theoretically it still accrues usury.
I guess at this point, nothing to do but wait it out. Not much sense trying to do anything as one is sure to step on someone else's claim, resulting in legal penalties which must be paid with yet more debt.
The future is not in building, rather it is in law-making and law-enforcement. And I have chosen the wrong skill to pursue. But for me, personally, these skills will serve me well.
The whole thing is to avoid interacting with men of the handshake, pen, and tie, whose skills are focused on psychology and compelling others to servitude, instead interacting with men of the construction tools, directing natural law of physics to provide for creature comforts.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 1) by anubi on Sunday September 07, @10:57PM
OMG. I cross-circuited after reading "what the hell is going on right now" topic.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by epitaxial on Monday September 08, @02:59AM
There are more chargers out there than you think. https://www.plugshare.com/ [plugshare.com]
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday September 07, @08:29PM (5 children)
That sounds like someone told a non-technical, or maybe AI, journalist about switching power supply air-gap core transformers. They're pretty efficient although they do pump out some heat. A creative idea to split the probably switching power supply xformer in half and use a robot arm like gadget to hold the other half in the car.
Transformer cores like that are pretty sensitive to position you can't get "close enough" they have to be dead on or not much power flows. I suppose if the car wiggled back and forth and the plate on the ground wiggled side to side this would help.
I wonder about metal contamination. There's a roofing nail on the floor, the charger fires up and accelerates the roofing nail into low earth orbit like a little electromagnetic railgun. Or inductively heats it at a couple KW rate that'll cut like a plasma torch. Speaking of plasma torches I wonder what happens if you transfer a couple kilowatts of AC magnetically and make a teeny tiny little spark, does it blow up 10x more exciting that putting metal in a microwave oven? I'd think so.
(Score: 2) by corey on Sunday September 07, @09:04PM
Yeah it’s interesting. Your thought about the contamination raises some risks but maybe the frequency is such as to not interact too much with small conductors.
> 11kW with around 90% efficiency
So it’ll dump 1kW of pure heat. Not too bad but not fun on a hot summer day.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Monday September 08, @12:00PM (3 children)
> pretty sensitive to position
The key is capturing all the magnetic flux lines between primary transformer coil(s) and secondary.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformer [wikipedia.org]
I wonder if one can dynamically improve the efficiency by switching in additional transformer coils? For example instead of one mega transformer coil, introduce multiple small transformer coils in the base plate. Tie into a measurement of the relative position of the car/base plate, which can be done just by reading out the energy transfer efficiency and applying "AI" (i.e. some simplistic optimisation algorithm).
> I wonder about metal contamination.
It's possible to detect deformation in the field and raise an interlock. Induction hob doesn't have this problem (albeit operating in 10s kHz regime, lower magnetic fields but still heating issue).
> does it blow up 10x more exciting
Note that microwave operates with er microwaves i.e. 800 MHz RF. That's probably quite a different regime to this where I guess it is more like a 50 Hz transformer.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday September 08, @01:06PM (1 child)
Hmm yes I wonder about the precision issue.
Sure, we have the tech, and its cheap, to measure currents and voltages in and out of the system and a little wireless connection to compare them. True corrected RMS at a high rate (for safety) is a little harder, but possible.
Mass produced electronics has problems exceeding 5% accuracy and better than 1% is essentially non-mass produced non-consumer or is aerospace grade costs.
The problem with "meh 1% is good enough" is lets say its pushing 10 KW (possible) and there's a 1% measurement error so 1% losses is ignored. Some woman with hoop earrings walks into the garage and captures 1% of the power in her ears, that 50 watts per ear that'll leave a mark. Ditto "alternate piercing locations" with ring jewelry. Or heck, just imagine a ring taking 100 watts.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Monday September 08, @02:35PM
> Mass produced electronics has problems exceeding 5% accuracy and better than 1% is essentially non-mass produced non-consumer or is
If it has a major impact on the energy transfer it presumably has a concomitant impact on the voltage and current. If the impact is minor then who cares?
> aerospace grade costs.
Well, this is Porsche
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Monday September 08, @02:29PM
The really obvious way to improve efficiency is to put a mechanism in the floor pad that pushes it up against the receiver in the car. If it could scoot around to accommodate less than perfect alignment, that would be even better.
It's hot in my garage, and charging at 240V/48A =~ 11KW. If this kit is 90% efficient, it's still dumping 1KW as heat. That's a decent hair dryer of waste heat, running continuously, whenever the vehicle is charging.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Sunday September 07, @08:32PM (1 child)
The people who collect super cars at super prices like the idea they're buying art that'll sell for the same price or more in a couple decades if they don't put too many miles on it.
I don't know how that will work with EV fad of the month and EV charger fad of the month.
You can justify buying a $1M car if it'll sell for inflation adjusted $1M+ in a decade or three. However, buying a gadget that'll be scrap due to technological change and embedded obsolescence in a decade or less... I donno.
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Sunday September 07, @09:37PM
Depending upon the specifics, a working induction charger with decent efficiency would solve a bunch of problems related to people destroying charging stations, stealing charging cables and you could potentially place them over a larger portion of a parking lot without needing to have a bunch of space in between the rows for the chargers as you'd be limited by the permanent wires being installed, rather than by people having to carry the cables with them and then walk too and from the charger.
Induction charging has been around for quite a while and it works relatively well, especially in situations like bathrooms where there's a bunch of moisture. The big questions are really going to be related to efficiency and ability to scale. You could potentially install a bunch of them in areas where you know that people are going to be stopping for long periods of time anyways, like the line up to get on the ferry.