Volvo to trial wireless car chargers
Wednesday, 9 March 2022
Volvo has announced that it will be rolling out a three-year trial of wireless chargers across the city of Gothenburg, in Sweden.
It is partnering with taxi company Cabonline, which will use a small fleet of electric Volvo XC40 Recharge models to determine if a large-scale deployment of the wireless chargers is feasible.
The charging units were developed with Momentum Dynamics, and work just like a wireless smartphone charger – a pad on the ground charges the vehicle through electromagnetic induction, sending power to a receiver in the car. Drivers will be able to easily align the car over the pads thanks to the 360-degree camera system. There will be built-in safety systems to prevent injury as well.
At 40kW, they are slower than a fast-charging cable but far more convenient, in that all you really need to do to charge your car is drive over a pad. Much faster than a standard home charger too, which outputs at about 11kW.
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“Gothenburg’s Green City Zone lets us try exciting new technologies in a real environment and evaluate them over time for a potential future broader introduction,” said Mats Moberg, head of Research and Development at Volvo Cars.
“Testing new charging technologies together with selected partners is a good way to evaluate alternative charging options for our future cars.”
The pads will be embedded in streets throughout the Green City Zone, an area dedicated to developing sustainable technologies in a real-world setting.
Of course, Volvo isn’t the only manufacturer working on wireless charging. BMW has offered wireless charging for 530e customers in Germany since 2018, while Hyundai and Renault are two other brands also working on the technology.
Back in 2017, the Israel government confirmed it was testing roads that could wirelessly charge cars as they drove along.
It is collaborating with Israeli start-up ElectRoad to install a public bus route in Tel Aviv, using an under-the-pavement wireless technology that eliminates the need for plug-in recharging stations.
'You only need to pave for the infrastructure one time, and that's it. You can use it for all kinds of vehicles, so that's a big advantage,' said Oren Ezer, chief executive and co-founder of ElectRoad.