Irish Times: BMW to offer wireless charging this year

unkel

For a start just for the 530e PHEV, but all other EVs and PHEVs to follow. Not a proprietary system either, so should work for other cars too if they adapt the same system

Guessed cost of this option + install in your driveway €3k, which is a lot of money, but not unreasonable for a leading edge solution. Would take away a whole year of fuel savings or more though.

Linky

ELM327

Nothing more than a gimmick IMO at this stage.

munchkin_utd

3 grand worth of light (transportable) plastic laying on your driveway ?
How long will that last before someone nicks it ?

unkel

ELM327 wrote: »

Nothing more than a gimmick IMO at this stage.

Why a gimmick? It works and it saves a lot of hassle plugging in. Nearly all my phones have had wireless charging in the last 6 years and I would hate to go back to ever plugging it in

And I have a tethered car charger at home, right beside the charge point in my car, so home charging couldn't be easier. Still do not like to have to plug it in. Would love a wireless solution. Just park the car and next morning it will be charged. Same as my phone.

ELM327

It's a gimmick because it is too theft prone and expensive to be widely adapted.
Additionally it will not be feasible to send any sort of decent charge speed through the air.

KCross

And I bet it won't be compatible with anything other than a BMW. They say it will, but I bet it won't.

The tell-tale is "... it is likely to work..." and then they talk about Audi. So, probably German cars only.

bp_me

ELM327 wrote: »

It's a gimmick because it is too theft prone and expensive to be widely adapted.
Additionally it will not be feasible to send any sort of decent charge speed through the air.

If the article is accurate its an average charge rate of 2.6kWh (assuming they meant 9.4 available and not total). The question might be how many kWhs are consumed to provide that 9.4kWh.

oinkely

They would be better off launching a much expanded range of EVs than creating solution to what is to most normal people a non-problem. In two years of EV ownership i have never forgotten to plug in the EV. And it has never been a chore, it takes all of 30 seconds, and our charger is not tethered and i have to take the cable out of the boot.

If anyone feels that taking 30 seconds to a minute to plug in the car is a barrier to ownership then they are not goign to be swayed. They are just daft. I had to fill the ICE with diesel today. I would rather spend a minute everyday than spend the 5 minutes (and €100) once every week or two to go to the petrol station, search around the pump for disposable gloves to keep my hands from stinking of diesel for hours, stand in puddles of rainwater mixed with diesel dribbles etc and then have to pay a 90% premium over the cost of running an EV.

Diesel is both dirty and dead. Can' wait till I can afford to replace the diesel with a suitable EV (unfortunately that will not be in the near future).

ELM327

bp_me wrote: »

If the article is accurate its an average charge rate of 2.6kWh (assuming they meant 9.4 available and not total). The question might be how many kWhs are consumed to provide that 9.4kWh.

2.6kW is very slow.

seamus

I'm not sure if the theft issue is a blocker on this. There'll be a limited market and there are several easy ways to make them difficult to lift and difficult to sell on.

Main issue as far as I can see is that it will get destroyed. Between bad drivers driving over it, kids jumping on it and cycling over it, bad weather, etc, you can't make it robust enough.

Just as easy to embed the induction coils in the concrete/asphalt of the driveway. Requires a little more installation expertise, but is theft-proof and virtually indestructible.

Yes, we are getting such a lazy species, plugging in a plug is now too inconvenient, I read on another thread here where people want apps to control their heating and hot water. I'm glad I have the ability to get off my ass to set a timer in the hot press, I can switch on and off a light.

If I was physically impaired I'd say this tech is great but for the rest of us it just makes people lazier and lazier and more dependent on technology which I never agree with. We depend on internet and technology to do far too much and some day when it all goes tits ip we'll realise it was a mistake.

Don't get me wrong, I love my tech but I'm trying to cut back and there are some things I'll never give into an that's having a "smart home", never.

unkel

Deleted User wrote:

I'm trying to cut back

You cut back while the rest of us are swiftly moving forward :pac:

oinkely

oinkely wrote: »

They would be better off launching a much expanded range of EVs than creating solution to what is to most normal people a non-problem. In two years of EV ownership i have never forgotten to plug in the EV. And it has never been a chore, it takes all of 30 seconds, and our charger is not tethered and i have to take the cable out of the boot.

If anyone feels that taking 30 seconds to a minute to plug in the car is a barrier to ownership then they are not goign to be swayed. They are just daft. I had to fill the ICE with diesel today. I would rather spend a minute everyday than spend the 5 minutes (and €100) once every week or two to go to the petrol station, search around the pump for disposable gloves to keep my hands from stinking of diesel for hours, stand in puddles of rainwater mixed with diesel dribbles etc and then have to pay a 90% premium over the cost of running an EV.

Diesel is both dirty and dead. Can' wait till I can afford to replace the diesel with a suitable EV (unfortunately that will not be in the near future).

I think its not that. I think its because when you plugged it in you have to take hours to fill, but with diesels you can have full range again in 5 minutes

unkel

unkel wrote: »

You cut back while the rest of us are swiftly moving forward :pac:

lol I'll happily stay behind. I'm not convinced it's actually moving forward, technology is good but when people allow themselves to be more at the mercy of technology I think it's actually a bad thing. But I'll gladly watch the world move on and see the effect.

Matt Simis

I think a lot if people on this thread arent thinking like the mass market.

I'm all for this. Handling cables is just not as clean and easy as parking in the charge zone. Also people with kids, bags, better things to be thinking about etc will love it. Don't like it, then don't get one, it's an optional extra.


Ps: I was "charging (refueling)" my car via hose in the garden before you new school EV kids came along via a private LPG fueling station I had installed. Time to move on.

I have Children and it doesn't bother me at all.

This is just another way for a company to make money and if people want to buy into it then fair enough.

I suppose someone would think a machine that would dress them in the morning is also a good idea or perhaps a robot that would do absolutely every house chore including taking care of the Children so they could sit in bed all day and play with their mobiles.

Oh yes there are plenty of people who would do it.

Oh how about a device implanted in their heads that would communicate with the phone so they don't even have to do the dreadful task of having to physically touch it.

Yeah I can see where technology is going and I don't like it one bit.

Reati

unkel wrote: »

Why a gimmick? It works and it saves a lot of hassle plugging in. Nearly all my phones have had wireless charging in the last 6 years and I would hate to go back to ever plugging it in

And I have a tethered car charger at home, right beside the charge point in my car, so home charging couldn't be easier. Still do not like to have to plug it in. Would love a wireless solution. Just park the car and next morning it will be charged. Same as my phone.

I'd agree that a gimmick is a bit overboard but it's still a long way off being the better option for charging.

Just like a phone on wireless

It use more energy to charge vs using wire.
It is much slower to charge vs using wire. (my s8 wireless charge can take 3-4hrs compared to 1.20hr on wire)
It has to be positioned just right to work at best efficiency or it'll charge even slower.

Using a wire will always be better in the near term, hence why phones still come with a wire.

Wireless is the future but it's a chicken and egg. If it's worse than a wire it's had to get adoption but it's hard to make progress without adoption...

seamus

Deleted User wrote: »

lol I'll happily stay behind. I'm not convinced it's actually moving forward, technology is good but when people allow themselves to be more at the mercy of technology I think it's actually a bad thing. But I'll gladly watch the world move on and see the effect.

"Convenience" doesn't always mean "laziness" though. In fact, it's usually not.

Plugging in, for example. You say it takes 30 seconds. But you pull in and it's pissing down. You're late getting home, the kids are in the back, they're tired and cranky.

"The car can wait", you think. You bundle everyone into the house, get the heating on, make the dinner, kids into bed, sit down in front of the telly with a beer and then toddle off to bed.

Then you get up the next day and realise you forgot to go back out and charge the car. "Bugger".

With a charging pad, that problem goes away.

It's the little conveniences, the ones that remove your need to remember to do anything, that make all the difference.

Like the Nest system, the biggest benefit I get from it isn't the fact that I can control the heating from my phone. It's that I never need to remember to turn the heating on or off. It does it for me.

I've already been in those situations and it takes way less than 30 seconds to plug in the car and unplug it when done.

I plug in before I get the Boys out or they're in the car and then unplug, then get them out, easy peasy.

The rain lashing down isn't really more of an issue because the time to plug in is minimal.

ted1

For public charging it makes sense. As it removes the trip hazard of cables trailing over footpaths

goz83

ted1 wrote: »

For public charging it makes sense. As it removes the trip hazard of cables trailing over footpaths

They would really need to get the speed of charging up. If money were no object, we should have a solution like this build into our M, N and R roads. Then charge per mile. Feck it....where are the hover cars?!!!

zilog_jones

My biggest problem with this would be the lack of efficiency - you can't charge via induction without losing a significant amount of power along the way. No big deal if it's some low power device like a phone, but we're talking about a significant amount of lecky here. If it's say consuming 3.3 kW but only charging at 2.6 kW, that's not great...

unkel

Yes you would have significant losses over the losses you already have with a wired charger. Would it bother me to get a full charge for €2.20 instead of €1.80? Not really

ELM327

It's not the cost its the inefficient use of energy, at high cost, for no benefit.

unkel

It's all relative though. Still far, far cleaner than petrol or diesel and charging will be done mostly at night with quite a lot of wind energy.

200km in a zero emissions car charged with renewals setting me back €2.20 or 200km in a cancerous diesel setting me back €20...

ELM327

Of course, everything EV (even one charged from a petrol generator) is exponentially greener than a fossil car.
But that's not the point.

Charging wirelessly for me is not worth it at this point. And isnt there some limit due to frequency and pacemakers etc that you can't send more than 7kW (delivering about 4kW to the car) wirelessly.