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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.
(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.