Charging at home is already more convenient and quicker (in human time) than driving to a gas station, and now they're optimizing the 30 seconds it takes to plug the car in.
And the funny thing is China's already picked up the dropped torches elsewhere; Xiaomi's going to be launching a robotic arm for your garage by the end of this year to plug in for you. Tesla gave up on their charging tentacle, but, wellp.
I don’t know. I’ve stopped using my wireless phone charger because it’s spotty. Sometimes it charges. Sometimes it doesn’t (or barely charges). Sometimes it wakes me up at night because it’s glitching in between charging and noncharging states and my phone feels the need to beep and wake me up.
I’ve seen similar issues with multiple watch chargers. “Oh, it didn’t charge overnight again.”
I’m not as sold on wireless charging as I once was.
It's all in the execution. Tesla's been working on them for awhile, but apparently they haven't found tech they think is ready yet. There's actually a chunk of empty space on cybertrucks where the induction receiver was designed to go, but it didn't make it in time. Tesla bought a german wireless charging company a couple years ago (then sold it off, keeping some employees/tech).
I agree in so far that plug-in charging shouldn't be an issue for most people.
Yet I can see the advantages for someone with a disability.
And what a lot don't seem to understand: at 11kW we aren't talking about high charging efficiency anyway.
Meaning, you cannot assume close to 100% for cable based charging and talk about how much 90% loose on a full battery (like others here do).
It's not just that; there's a new capability unlocked. You can now have self driving cars charge at remote places and come back without human interaction. Imagine you live in a place with no grid power
I guess if you see the video on the linked post, you'll see what the usecase is unlocked. A neighboor city with a wireless charger station or a road wireless charger station can receive a self driving car above it, charge the car and with some kind of NFC do the payment and goes back.
The 3D rendered video of a car driving over the pad doesn’t really show anything unlocked. There are a lot of possible ways to build automated charging stations. This is not necessary tech for that scenario.
I have a robot vacuum that manages to do automated direct contact charging just fine. I don’t understand why wireless would be any easier. It seems more complex and less safe than a direct wired connection.
I also have a lot of trouble believing in the scenario of a neighborhood that has an automated charging station for EVs but no grid. That seems like very misplaced priorities.
Robo vacuum charging is almost inherently safe. They probably charge at something like 12V/2A. Voltage too low to penetrate skin, wattage too low to cause serious injury unless you’re really trying.
You can kind of just leave them exposed and live.
None of that applies to a 220V, 50A (or whatever amperage) charging. That can absolutely kill somebody; jet fuel may not melt steel beams, but 11,000W sure will.
You’d end up needing some kind of recess probably, and then getting cars to connect to it like planes refueling mid-flight is a nightmare. You could try some sort of USB-C like signaling before power is sent, but people are never going to enjoy “exposed 220V contacts that may or may not be live depending on if things malfunctioned”.
The point wasn’t that my robot vacuum is handling large current but that “moving device connects to power” is a solved problem. A car capable of driving itself onto this pad could as easily drive itself to a spot to plug in. Extendo-arm from the car could easily slot into an outlet in the floor. Or vice versa. Or a wall or pole.
Planes refueling mid flight is hardly an apt metaphor given the charging station isn’t moving at all and the car can move as slowly as needed.
This seems like one of those “reality has a surprising amount of detail” situations.
Surely getting something to autonomously without fail extend an arm and plug in for the lifespan of these vehicles vs just park in this allocated spot you would park in anyway is an obvious tradeoff.
It’s definitely a trade off but both options have a lot of real world concerns. If safeguards on the wireless pad fail you could easily cook an animal or start a fire. The bottom of the car now needs to be metal free to allow this to work. Distance matters which means if it charges your Porsche it might not be able to charge a Rivian and certainly not with the same efficiency.
I also frankly do not believe the 90% efficiency claim because it seems so much higher than any other wireless charging I’ve heard of.
This seems like one of those things that seems cool but is not generally practical. As a convenience for wealthy Porsche EV owners, sure. As a general purpose charging solution? I doubt it.
> you could easily cook an animal or start a fire
Starting a fire, maybe, cooking an animal, extremely not likely.
Turn on an induction stove to max. Put your hand on it. Did it burn your hand? No. Put a ferrous pan on it. Suddenly, really hot.
Same concept happening here. A 36" induction stove top is likely putting out about the same inductive power. If the risk of being over the pad while it operated was enough to burn someone, so would cooking food on an induction stove.
Maybe? I’m definitely not an expert in inductive charging. I would think a cat laying between the charging pad and the receiver would be getting a big hit of radio waves. Maybe not.
Inductive current generation isn't utilizing radio waves. This isn't like a microwave oven.
If you put a chicken breast in a microwave oven and turn it on, it will rapidly cook. If you stand next to a radio antenna emitting hundreds of watts you can potentially get burns. These things use electromagnetic radio fields (E + H) to blast energy out, and those fields can stably radiate out on their own.
Inductive cooking and charging is radically different. If you put a chicken breast directly on an induction cooktop and turn the cooktop on, nothing happens. The unit doesn't even really increase its energy usage, because there is no load. This is because this energy transfer is relying on just the magnetic fields (H). It relies a lot on the target being harmonically in tune, and the other side needs to actually be conductive and at least somewhat magnetic. Non-magnetic materials don't couple with these magnetic fields. This is why some pans (like aluminum and copper) "don't work" with induction cooktops.
So if a cat did climb on the charging pad, maybe some parts of the collar would energize and heat up.
If animals were significantly affected by things like wireless charging pads or inductive cooktops we wouldn't be able to survive MRIs.
I did not mean that the inductive pad was blasting microwaves but that the transfer is via electromagnetic waves.
Regardless, your MRI comparison is very apt. MRIs use similar amounts of energy for scanning and do sometimes cause burns. But no one seems to be getting cooked.
My MRI one isn't really that apt, and you're showing the reasons why. An MRI does bombard the imaging target with RF and watches those waves using inductive fields. My point was that if you were reactive to pulsing magnetic waves you'd instantly be cooked in an active MRI. The magnetic fields are intensely powerful, but they don't affect your body at all.
> that the transfer is via electromagnetic waves.
An induction charger doesn't transmit its energy through electromagnetic waves. That's what I'm saying. It's inducing a current through magnetic fields. Its a very different process. If the material isn't magnetic it doesn't react. Which is why a steel pan heats up very rapidly while your hand is cool, why an induction stove doesn't use much electricity at all when there isn't a pan on it to heat. If it worked by emitting RF, it would have the same power output regardless of the pan type. Which is like your microwave, if the magnetron is energized it's putting out 1,000W regardless of what you have in there.
A radio is emitting its power regardless of if there's an antenna on the other side tuned to receive it. If there's nothing on the other side of the inductive charger, there's no load, there's no power usage. You need something able to receive the power to actually transmit the power. With that something being how well it reacts to magnetic fields.
I am well outside my area of expertise, having underinvested in electrical engineering fundamentals. I trust that you are generally correct but I can’t reconcile that with the fact that Porsche specifically calls out that the system detects living creatures and halts charging. Clearly Porsche believes this is a necessary feature. So does the SAE standard (SAE J2954) apparently.
So while I buy the distinction between magnetic coupling and propagating EM waves, it seems that there is some risk.
I will acknowledge, some parts of your body are weakly ferromagnetic or can react to magnetic fields, especially things like nerves (see: <a href="https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/transcranial-magnetic-stimulation/about/pac-20384625" rel="nofollow">https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/transcranial-mag... ). For these reasons there are regulations, especially in Europe, about how strong of magnetic fields people can be exposed to for products sold there.
Maybe at 11kW+ of effective power delivery these fields are enough to actually make eddy currents in your blood enough to cause damage. There's a decent chance it could cause neurological disruptions while in the field. But once again, its really not the same kind of thing as RF radiation emissions, and how these things will affect you is pretty different in the end.
> A car capable of driving itself onto this pad could as easily drive itself to a spot to plug in. Extendo-arm from the car could easily slot into an outlet in the floor.
Those two things really aren't comparably difficult. Eg in the dumbest case for pads, you could make the pads slightly smaller than axle diameter (to prevent dead shorts) and have the car randomly jostle around the space until it detects current flow. I've seen some amateur systems that work vaguely like this. Some signal that charging is nearby, and then a semi-random search to find exposed contacts.
That's not going to cut it on a recessed outlet. Your odds of hitting it randomly are tiny, and it will probably the damage the port with enough repetitions of ramming it into the floor.
> Planes refueling mid flight is hardly an apt metaphor given the charging station isn’t moving at all and the car can move as slowly as needed.
Change your reference point to the plane carrying the fuel and they get an awful lot closer. The planes are moving a lot relative to the ground, they're moving very little relative to each other. I'm not sure if you've watched them doing it, but relative to each other it's actually a very slow process.
> Your odds of hitting it randomly are tiny, and it will probably the damage the port with enough repetitions of ramming it into the floor.
Why would it be random? The scenario here is self driving cars. Suddenly we are talking about random jostling instead of actually targeting.
> Change your reference point to the plane carrying the fuel and they get an awful lot closer. The planes are moving a lot relative to the ground, they're moving very little relative to each other. I'm not sure if you've watched them doing it, but relative to each other it's actually a very slow process.
What is your point here? I’m totally lost. You seem to be trying to hand-wave away the difficulty of refueling mid flight. The specific difficulty there is the fact that it’s happening at high velocity, not the difficulty of plugging a hose into a port. (Traditional mid air refueling is manually directed anyway.)
You are probably fully capable of fueling your car at a self serve gas station. Try doing the same at highway speed. Just reach out the window of the vehicle you are in and fill up your friend’s car from a gas can. Should be easy since the cars are “moving very little relative to each other”, right?
We’re talking about a particularly inconvenient 30 seconds coming out of an expensive machine built entirely for convenience. Some people will want it and pay for it. If I was in the market, I probably would.
Home charging us a reasonably thick cable. It’s not bad by any stretch but it’s more than an appliance cord.
Plus you just got home. You probably want to go inside and may be carrying packages or such, which you might have to juggle or put down to get the cable and plug in.
When it’s time to leave you have to unplug and then store the cable, leave it on the floor (trip hazard for others), or have installed an overhead cable system.
With wireless it’s all gone. Pull into you’re garage? You’re done. You were doing that anyway, so it’s no different. Ready to leave? Just back out. Again, same thing. Nothing extra.
Yeah it’s convenience. But it’s not a small win, it’s big. And it’s every time you use your car. Twice.
Your car can always charge. It can always precondition. You used to have to go to gas stations, now you don’t even have to plug in. It’s fully automatic and taken care of for you.
“You don’t need a remote. You can just get up to change the volume”. How well did that argument go over? Every TV has remotes. Buttons are hidden and effectively dead.
The article is very much not clear if that 90% is talking about round trip or just the efficiency of the wireless charging in addition to the usual charging losses.
Applying a little common sense with experiences of other wireless chargers, its most likely just the losses of the wireless charging solution.
The convenience factor is nice because most people (like me) don't bother to actually charge the EV every night.
Just laziness / not necessary for my commute. However, my understanding is that keeping the battery around 80% is better for lifespan. So, the convenience will actually result in longer lasting batteries?
It does seem a little silly, especially given the inherent losses.
Yet, the five seconds you save by not plugging in a USB cable have led to charging coils being added to nearly every phone to the market these days.
It's a flashy convenience feature, but this is Porsche we're talking about. People interested in buying these cars are all about flashy features without any practical use, because if they wanted a practical car, they wouldn't be buying a Porsche.
I prefer to wirelessly charge my phone because the charging port is the part that typically wears out before the rest of the phone. My first EV's charging cable also wore about after around seven years of use, so I had to replace the entire charger. Charging port doors on some EVs also also known to develop faults in the locking motor, and the ports and/or its cover tends to fall of, which is is costly to repair as you need to repaint the new part. And then come the issues with having to choose EV models to suit the layout of your garage, as well as issues with the cable getting in the way when trying to pass the charging car with your bike, etc.
I cannot afford the Cayenne, but once this gets to cheaper models this will be an option I would be willing to pay for.
pornel · · focus · HN ↗
kotaKat · · focus · HN ↗
<a href="https://carnewschina.com/2026/06/13/xiaomi-unveils-home-charging-robotic-arm-targeting-q4-2026-launch/" rel="nofollow">https://carnewschina.com/2026/06/13/xiaomi-unveils-home-char...
BoingBoomTschak · · focus · HN ↗
thejazzman · · focus · HN ↗
dgellow · · focus · HN ↗
quickthrowman · · focus · HN ↗
dpark · · focus · HN ↗
I’ve seen similar issues with multiple watch chargers. “Oh, it didn’t charge overnight again.”
I’m not as sold on wireless charging as I once was.
toyg · · focus · HN ↗
scottyah · · focus · HN ↗
GuestFAUniverse · · focus · HN ↗
Yet I can see the advantages for someone with a disability.
And what a lot don't seem to understand: at 11kW we aren't talking about high charging efficiency anyway. Meaning, you cannot assume close to 100% for cable based charging and talk about how much 90% loose on a full battery (like others here do).
kova12 · · focus · HN ↗
beAbU · · focus · HN ↗
brunoarueira · · focus · HN ↗
dpark · · focus · HN ↗
The 3D rendered video of a car driving over the pad doesn’t really show anything unlocked. There are a lot of possible ways to build automated charging stations. This is not necessary tech for that scenario.
solarkraft · · focus · HN ↗
dpark · · focus · HN ↗
I also have a lot of trouble believing in the scenario of a neighborhood that has an automated charging station for EVs but no grid. That seems like very misplaced priorities.
everforward · · focus · HN ↗
You can kind of just leave them exposed and live.
None of that applies to a 220V, 50A (or whatever amperage) charging. That can absolutely kill somebody; jet fuel may not melt steel beams, but 11,000W sure will.
You’d end up needing some kind of recess probably, and then getting cars to connect to it like planes refueling mid-flight is a nightmare. You could try some sort of USB-C like signaling before power is sent, but people are never going to enjoy “exposed 220V contacts that may or may not be live depending on if things malfunctioned”.
dpark · · focus · HN ↗
Planes refueling mid flight is hardly an apt metaphor given the charging station isn’t moving at all and the car can move as slowly as needed.
jpc0 · · focus · HN ↗
Surely getting something to autonomously without fail extend an arm and plug in for the lifespan of these vehicles vs just park in this allocated spot you would park in anyway is an obvious tradeoff.
dpark · · focus · HN ↗
I also frankly do not believe the 90% efficiency claim because it seems so much higher than any other wireless charging I’ve heard of.
This seems like one of those things that seems cool but is not generally practical. As a convenience for wealthy Porsche EV owners, sure. As a general purpose charging solution? I doubt it.
vel0city · · focus · HN ↗
Starting a fire, maybe, cooking an animal, extremely not likely.
Turn on an induction stove to max. Put your hand on it. Did it burn your hand? No. Put a ferrous pan on it. Suddenly, really hot.
Same concept happening here. A 36" induction stove top is likely putting out about the same inductive power. If the risk of being over the pad while it operated was enough to burn someone, so would cooking food on an induction stove.
dpark · · focus · HN ↗
vel0city · · focus · HN ↗
If you put a chicken breast in a microwave oven and turn it on, it will rapidly cook. If you stand next to a radio antenna emitting hundreds of watts you can potentially get burns. These things use electromagnetic radio fields (E + H) to blast energy out, and those fields can stably radiate out on their own.
Inductive cooking and charging is radically different. If you put a chicken breast directly on an induction cooktop and turn the cooktop on, nothing happens. The unit doesn't even really increase its energy usage, because there is no load. This is because this energy transfer is relying on just the magnetic fields (H). It relies a lot on the target being harmonically in tune, and the other side needs to actually be conductive and at least somewhat magnetic. Non-magnetic materials don't couple with these magnetic fields. This is why some pans (like aluminum and copper) "don't work" with induction cooktops.
So if a cat did climb on the charging pad, maybe some parts of the collar would energize and heat up.
If animals were significantly affected by things like wireless charging pads or inductive cooktops we wouldn't be able to survive MRIs.
dpark · · focus · HN ↗
Regardless, your MRI comparison is very apt. MRIs use similar amounts of energy for scanning and do sometimes cause burns. But no one seems to be getting cooked.
<a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9849420/" rel="nofollow">https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9849420/
vel0city · · focus · HN ↗
> that the transfer is via electromagnetic waves.
An induction charger doesn't transmit its energy through electromagnetic waves. That's what I'm saying. It's inducing a current through magnetic fields. Its a very different process. If the material isn't magnetic it doesn't react. Which is why a steel pan heats up very rapidly while your hand is cool, why an induction stove doesn't use much electricity at all when there isn't a pan on it to heat. If it worked by emitting RF, it would have the same power output regardless of the pan type. Which is like your microwave, if the magnetron is energized it's putting out 1,000W regardless of what you have in there.
A radio is emitting its power regardless of if there's an antenna on the other side tuned to receive it. If there's nothing on the other side of the inductive charger, there's no load, there's no power usage. You need something able to receive the power to actually transmit the power. With that something being how well it reacts to magnetic fields.
dpark · · focus · HN ↗
So while I buy the distinction between magnetic coupling and propagating EM waves, it seems that there is some risk.
vel0city · · focus · HN ↗
Maybe at 11kW+ of effective power delivery these fields are enough to actually make eddy currents in your blood enough to cause damage. There's a decent chance it could cause neurological disruptions while in the field. But once again, its really not the same kind of thing as RF radiation emissions, and how these things will affect you is pretty different in the end.
everforward · · focus · HN ↗
Those two things really aren't comparably difficult. Eg in the dumbest case for pads, you could make the pads slightly smaller than axle diameter (to prevent dead shorts) and have the car randomly jostle around the space until it detects current flow. I've seen some amateur systems that work vaguely like this. Some signal that charging is nearby, and then a semi-random search to find exposed contacts.
That's not going to cut it on a recessed outlet. Your odds of hitting it randomly are tiny, and it will probably the damage the port with enough repetitions of ramming it into the floor.
> Planes refueling mid flight is hardly an apt metaphor given the charging station isn’t moving at all and the car can move as slowly as needed.
Change your reference point to the plane carrying the fuel and they get an awful lot closer. The planes are moving a lot relative to the ground, they're moving very little relative to each other. I'm not sure if you've watched them doing it, but relative to each other it's actually a very slow process.
dpark · · focus · HN ↗
Why would it be random? The scenario here is self driving cars. Suddenly we are talking about random jostling instead of actually targeting.
> Change your reference point to the plane carrying the fuel and they get an awful lot closer. The planes are moving a lot relative to the ground, they're moving very little relative to each other. I'm not sure if you've watched them doing it, but relative to each other it's actually a very slow process.
What is your point here? I’m totally lost. You seem to be trying to hand-wave away the difficulty of refueling mid flight. The specific difficulty there is the fact that it’s happening at high velocity, not the difficulty of plugging a hose into a port. (Traditional mid air refueling is manually directed anyway.)
You are probably fully capable of fueling your car at a self serve gas station. Try doing the same at highway speed. Just reach out the window of the vehicle you are in and fill up your friend’s car from a gas can. Should be easy since the cars are “moving very little relative to each other”, right?
toasty228 · · focus · HN ↗
This thread is full of people trying to invent problem to a solution.
Avshalom · · focus · HN ↗
cyanydeez · · focus · HN ↗
Welcome to capitalism.
solarkraft · · focus · HN ↗
MBCook · · focus · HN ↗
Plus you just got home. You probably want to go inside and may be carrying packages or such, which you might have to juggle or put down to get the cable and plug in.
When it’s time to leave you have to unplug and then store the cable, leave it on the floor (trip hazard for others), or have installed an overhead cable system.
With wireless it’s all gone. Pull into you’re garage? You’re done. You were doing that anyway, so it’s no different. Ready to leave? Just back out. Again, same thing. Nothing extra.
Yeah it’s convenience. But it’s not a small win, it’s big. And it’s every time you use your car. Twice.
Your car can always charge. It can always precondition. You used to have to go to gas stations, now you don’t even have to plug in. It’s fully automatic and taken care of for you.
“You don’t need a remote. You can just get up to change the volume”. How well did that argument go over? Every TV has remotes. Buttons are hidden and effectively dead.
ok_dad · · focus · HN ↗
margalabargala · · focus · HN ↗
The losses from this charger are nearly the same as the losses from a wired charger.
MisterMunchkin · · focus · HN ↗
margalabargala · · focus · HN ↗
vel0city · · focus · HN ↗
Applying a little common sense with experiences of other wireless chargers, its most likely just the losses of the wireless charging solution.
DonsDiscountGas · · focus · HN ↗
ok_dad · · focus · HN ↗
piperswe · · focus · HN ↗
Ancalagon · · focus · HN ↗
AI;DR
MisterKent · · focus · HN ↗
Just laziness / not necessary for my commute. However, my understanding is that keeping the battery around 80% is better for lifespan. So, the convenience will actually result in longer lasting batteries?
dgellow · · focus · HN ↗
jeroenhd · · focus · HN ↗
Yet, the five seconds you save by not plugging in a USB cable have led to charging coils being added to nearly every phone to the market these days.
It's a flashy convenience feature, but this is Porsche we're talking about. People interested in buying these cars are all about flashy features without any practical use, because if they wanted a practical car, they wouldn't be buying a Porsche.
jacobgorm · · focus · HN ↗
I cannot afford the Cayenne, but once this gets to cheaper models this will be an option I would be willing to pay for.
hinkley · · focus · HN ↗
Damaged equipment >> time savings
Step reduction >> time savings
sagarm · · focus · HN ↗