Tesla confirmed recently that they are working on a wireless charging pad for your garage. This will be a useful charging mechanism for everyday users and for robotaxi fleet operators.
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Tesla Confirms Wireless Charging Pad For the Garage
While riding in a Cybertruck, Lars Moravy (head of vehicle design at Tesla), Franz von Holzhausen (creative director at Tesla), and Jay Leno were discussing personal charging for the future. While having this discussion, Jay Leno asked:
"How far away is the day of having a Tesla home charging car only unit that is in your garage?"
Franz replied:
"We are working on induction charging. You don't need to plug in something at that point. You just drive over the pad and charge it."
Lars replied with additional insight:
"With PowerWall3, we are getting tighter and tighter power electronics and now with Powershare, that device is becoming basically could power your whole house if you had solar and charge your car ecosystem."
Back in July, Tesla planned a $76 million takeover of German wireless electric vehicle charging technology company Wiferion. I think Tesla bought them for the key patents and employees in order to build their own wireless charging technology in-house.
Wireless vehicle charging technology will become incredibly important in the future. And it won't be because it makes it easier for a homeowner to simply drive over a pad instead of plugging in their vehicle directly.
The wireless charging pads will be for fleet operators of robotaxi divisions. Having a car be able to automatically park in a parking space with a wireless charger will make the robotaxi process much more seamless and easy than it would be right now.
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When Will Tesla Have Wireless Charging Pads
In order for Tesla to have wireless charging pads available for customers, they would have to be viable enough for use. In my opinion, it means they should be able to offer as much power as a standard outlet would, or about 3 miles of range per hour. This may not seem like a lot, however, simply driving over a wireless charger and getting 24 miles of range replenished each and every night will handle the commute of most people.
And, I think this is the bare minimum, not where I think Tesla should eventually get. I think wireless charging for vehicles will then need to get to what a typical Level 2 chargers does, and that is about 30 to 40 miles of range per hour. This is what a typical ChargePoint or grocery store charger does.
Lastly, the wireless charging pads will then need to get to fast charging speeds that an L1 charger can do, which is to me, anything over 10 kWh or more, or 60 to 80 miles of range an hour or more.
The reason these last two stages of wireless charging pad are important is for a robotaxi fleet. A pad that charges 24 hours a night is great for a typical homeowner using their vehicle for a commute. It's even better when paired with home solar.
However, it will be too slow for a robotaxi fleet, where a car needs to charge fast and get back out on the streets earning money. It's also possible that only the Model 2 or compact model and future versions may qualify or work with the wireless charging. That may be simpler for Tesla to do - rather than retrofitting millions of older cars. However, Tesla could offer a retrofit at a service center that has to be paid for by the Tesla owner.
Imagine a parking lot with wireless pads throughout the parking spots and a robotaxi fleet operator who is simply using Tesla's smart parking feature - which isn't available yet - but will be - and has each car park itself by finding an available parking spot. This will be done by the Tesla vision parking system. Once charged, the car goes back out and drives passengers around.
With Tesla's high fidelity park assist moving cars to empty parking spots, the maintenance then becomes tire rotation, tire replacement, and any air filters or brake pad changes.
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What do you think about Tesla building wireless charging pads? Will this be necessary for robotaxis?
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Hi! I'm Jeremy Noel Johnson, and I am a Tesla investor and supporter and own a 2022 Model 3 RWD EV and I don't have range anxiety :). I enjoy bringing you breaking Tesla news as well as anything about Tesla or other EV companies I can find, like Aptera. Other interests of mine are AI, Tesla Energy and the Tesla Bot! You can follow me on X.COM or LinkedIn to stay in touch and follow my Tesla and EV news coverage.
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