Tesla Home Wireless Charger

[Buckminster]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1631159765337358339

 

[Don.Church]

I want one!

 

[Buckminster]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1631069837178048512

 

[Buckminster]

V2H coming in 2 years. Could this be bidirectional?

 

[Buckminster]

No chance this will be for car charging. Heavier cars, less efficiency. According to Wiferon's page, 7% additional efficiency loss. Multiply with Tesla's loss that they worked excruciatingly hard to reduce. Would be ludicrous to throw that work out the window by adding wireless charing.

I can see them buying this for onboard phone chargers, for factory equipment and for Optimus. Also, could be a cheaper way to hire all these engineers that Tesla needs anyway, instead of going through the HR process.

Onboard phone charging is a solved problem with readily available chips from major semiconductor companies.
Besides phone charging is low power. This startup specializes in high power wireless charging.
It is possible to significantly reduce the charging loss by greater integration with the receiving vehicle. The charging plate could extend upwards and reduce the air gap for instance. Tesla excels at that kind of engineering that takes an emerging technology and brings it to its fullest potential.

Wiferion’s page does not say 7% additional loss; it says 93% efficiency. The additional loss is 7% - some assumed loss for a charging cable.

Also, who says 7% is the efficiency limit? For example, what if the coil is lifted up against the car - soft touching it. Plus, what's the losses from the existing systems considering the cooling requirements for a charging handle and cable + cable resistance. And further, does this offer any other advantages if we keep doubling the charging speeds? Like the car itself is part of the heat sync or something else new.

It could also be a legal move. Keep the tech away from other companies to maintain the lead... or simply prevent competition from locking up the patents and throwing away the keys. I don't know their IP portfolio, but I'm confident that it's significant enough to want to own the company and get going more quickly.

Wrt the Wiferion deal, we can (and I suspect we will) speculate for pages worth of posts.

I'll just trust that Tesla knows what they're doing and it will turn out to be a great move.

I don’t think there are any technical advantages to wireless charging. There are likely some logistical advantages. It reduces the visual impact of blanketing major urban centers with road side chargers for instance. More chargers can be moved out of garages and onto the roadside in Manhattan for example. The chargers would be less susceptible to vandalization in areas where it is a problem

Momentum Dynamics does inductive charging with the same or less loss (grid to battery) than conductive charging, project with some taxis in Oslo. Upto 70kW over an airgap of like 18-20 centimeters (lookup magnetic resonance)

The biggest problem of inductive charging is not (anymore) the efficiency or the costs.

The biggest hurdle is the chicken-and-egg situation: no car makers will build it into the cars if there are no chargers, nobody will put the infrastructure in place if there are no cars.

Now if only there would be a company that makes the cars and also installs charging infrastructure…

I agree with both of you, it’s not impossible. Wireless charging just seem like a loss for cars though, with not much gain. Cars need ground clearance. If you have a moving plate to close the gap you lost the solid state advantage. might for same complexity and less cost get an inverted catenary or plug. Which Tesla patented for that purpose.

Potentially interesting thought: S, X, and Cybertruck are all standard with air suspension. If the 3 Highland and a future version fo the Model Y get an air suspension added, that's a built-in height adjustment on all the cars, and perhaps a hint of inductive charging intentions.

From what others have posted, it sounds like an inductive charging system can be optimized to work across an air gap of at least 8 inches, which I think would cover the Cybertruck at its lowest setting (from the reveal, air suspension was at 12" ground clearance, and could move 4" up or down). All the other Tesla cars are already closer than that.

I still feel like there's limited advantages for wireless charging for typical car uses...but if it was fully automated (car parks itself in just the right spot, and lowers/raises as needed), it would cut out that 10 seconds it takes to plug in the car at home, and eliminates the need for human interaction in a robotaxi scenario.

*Edited for clarity.

Will be very useful for Robotaxis. Also, even if the losses are 5%, that's still within spitting distance of the 2.5% that gets paid to the credit card company. Add in far less maintenance costs and vandalism costs and it could easily break even or do better if you can get losses down lower.

Optimus doesn't actually need it as it can plug itself in. And presumably Optimus would charge via DC-DC charging to negate the weight of an on-board AC-DC charger.

 

[Olle]

Thanks for consolidating all these comments @Buckminster.
For a robotaxi context, I see one benefit mentioned for inductive charging over conductive charging, which is it that it won't be vandalized. Haven't seen a vandalized charger in my life, 10 years of EV driving. Why would somebody do that? But if that's the concern, imagine a flat DC conducting plate on the ground that just looks like a manhole cover with 3 zones (+, - and gnd). I don't see why that would be vandalized any more than an induction plate.

Energizing once it has confirmed there is a car on top with its catenary dropped down onto it. Seems pretty cheap and efficient.

 

[Buckminster]

That's my take also. They say it's for robots, technically the car is a robot, but I think they are referring to robots like these:
View attachment 949660View attachment 949661View attachment 949662
These will frequently pause in specific places while they wait for humans/robots to do something with the thing they are moving around. That would be a good place to add some charging to extend battery life before they have to return home and charge.

When you have optimus doing a task in one area it can place its feet on the charger and as its energy consumption is rather low when it's only moving its smaller motors not a lot of power is needed:
View attachment 949663

I think Tesla are thinking long term. Humanoid form factor is useful for many reasons, but long term specialized form factors such as quadcopter, wheeled, quadrupedal, hexapod etc will be added to their lineup. And Elon probably though that long term wireless charging will be useful for many applications so they decided to add it to their competency.

Think of your own use of QI-chargers for your iPhone. It's flimsy, slow and not super practical. But robots can solve the flimsiness problem themselves and this company is doing 6kW which is plenty for many applications.

 

[Buckminster]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1672390929762881536

 

[Buckminster]

From the 10Q, we can see that Tesla paid about $76m for Wiferion. Doesn't seem like much money.

View attachment 959661

Tesla acquires German wireless charger firm Wiferion. - Interesting Reads

 

[Buckminster]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1686085626221723648

 

[Buckminster]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1711970074527957111

 

[Buckminster]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1736816525036925032

 

[Buckminster]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1760814277307302338

There was some other chat that I wasn't listening to properly. Extrapolating as a super bull:

• Could charge by plug and wireless simultaneously
• Tesla should add this sort of capability to Robotaxi. $2k additional cost is worth it.
• Discussed supercap possibility
  • Again worth a $10k cost increase for Robotaxi
• Supercap aids V2G possibilities
• Charge cycle could be
  • Robotaxi rolls in at 5% charge rather than 20% given more SCs
  • 5-25% in 5 mins from wireless to battery
  • 25% to 50% in 1 min (plug or wireless or combo) to supercap
  • Vehicle leaves after just 6mins
  • Supercap discharges slowly to battery
  • This would double supercharger capacity / revenue

 

[MC3OZ]

Tesla should add this sort of capability to Robotaxi. $2k additional cost is worth it.

I agree with this, because there is no need to plug in a Robotaxi.

I doubt that the Supercap is needed, because charging is a "fleet scheduling" problem.

The fleet needs to be sized for the peak demand, probably morning and afternoon peaks.

IN the middle of the day say 10am-3pm there is a 5 hour window where the fleet could progressively cycle though 20 min changing sessions..
In 5 hours each wireless charger could charge 15 Robotaxis... with a large fleet this requires a lot of chargers.

Tesla might be able to push this to a 10 min charge which doubles the number of Robotaxis for a single charger.

Robotaxis could charge an additional 10 minutes over night 8pm-6am. This is an 8 hour window....

Finally in the busy windows a small portion of the fleet could charge for 20-30 mins meaning they only need to charge once per day.
if a job comes up the Robotaxi can stop charging and take the job, and the scheduling software can look for the next "free" Robotaxi to charge.

The fleet will never be 100% utilised, a high number of geographically distributed chargers can be installed, sometimes a booked Robotaxi may charge while waiting for an appointment,

The scheduling problem is achieving 3 requirements:-

1. Each Robotaxi gets the charge it needs each day.
2. All customer jobs are handled in a timely fashion,
3. Within the constrains of 1. & 2. charger utilisation is as high as possible.

Any resource crunch would be solved by adding more chargers, idle chargers are not a big deal.

 

[Buckminster]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1771040487945781599

 

[tivoboy]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1771040487945781599

Doesn’t really look like inductive charger of any type…are these the ports to connect the inductive charger, or do they simply mean it’s some form of not truly wireless semi automated connector?

 

[MP3Mike]

Doesn’t really look like inductive charger of any type…are these the ports to connect the inductive charger, or do they simply mean it’s some form of not truly wireless semi automated connector?

It is just the connector to hook the wireless charger to. It currently just has a plug to fill the hole and prevent dirt from getting in. So, there will likely be a wireless charger assembly that can be installed under the rear aero shield, i.e. "the diaper", sometime in the future.

 

[DBeckwith]

Big question here. Is this AC level 2 or DC? What amperage or Kw? Or more simply put, if Cybertruck, how many miles per hour possible.

Can we tell from the type of connector?

Is this strictly home and destination charging?

 

[Krash]

Big question here. Is this AC level 2 or DC? What amperage or Kw? Or more simply put, if Cybertruck, how many miles per hour possible.

Can we tell from the type of connector?

Is this strictly home and destination charging?

It would be great to hear some EE speculation.

Funny that Tesla’s main reason for AC/DC converters in early cars was to home charge with AC in, but in 20 years Tesla’s might not have a reason to ship AC/DC in the car, if all the home chargers were DC induction in and out of the car to an AC connected V2x charger on the home side.

If you couldn’t do supercharging speeds, I can see why Tesla wouldn’t want to have both induction and supercharging in the same stall as the induction folks would tie up valuable space during peak charge times.

I bet those new home induction chargers will to V2x out of the gate.

I also bet the induction control hardware on the car side is 48v and consequently that we won’t see these same connectors in anything before the new roadster, since none of the S/3/X/Y cars are slated for a 48v makeover.

 

[Buckminster]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1774837773628821932

Wow, this is way better than I anticipated. This will be a killer product when Tesla make it available. Maybe compact crossover launch?