Tesla is playing with wireless charging technology, will this be the next trend?

According to a report by German media Teslamag on July 31, Tesla completed the acquisition of German wireless charging company Wiferion for a price of US$76 million (approximately 543 million yuan). The lower left footer of the company’s website now displays “Tesla Engineering German GmbH 2023”, confirming Tesla as the parent company.

Wiferion is a company specializing in "contactless charging and energy systems", providing inductive charging solutions for autonomous transportation systems in industrial environments such as warehousing.

After the acquisition, the company listed charging, battery systems, and cable-free "smart robot charging" as its products and described itself as "the industry's leading provider of automated, contactless energy transfer."

At Tesla’s Investor Day in March this year, Rebecca Tinucci, Tesla’s head of global charging infrastructure, proposed potential wireless charging solutions for homes and workplaces.

In June, US media reported that Tesla wanted to acquire Wiferion, a wireless charging company, and had registered documents with relevant German authorities.

Tesla’s second-quarter financial report shows that it spent US$76 million on “business combinations.” Some speculate that this US$76 million was used to acquire Wiferion.

Wiferion was founded in 2016 and only officially launched its products in 2018. It mainly engages in ToB business. With its low-loss wireless charging, it has won over hundreds of companies and sold more than 8,000 sets of equipment in five years.

The energy utilization rate of Wiferion products is around 93%, and the charging equipment is safe, durable and basically maintenance-free. At the same time, Wiferion has also developed a digital energy management system - etaHUB, which can access all data of the wireless charging pad and battery.

Judging from public information, its technology is more used in industrial equipment and robots. Therefore, wireless charging technology may first be applied to Tesla's car-making equipment or the humanoid robot "Optimus Prime".

Cao Zengguang, president of the Energy Chain Research Institute, said that Tesla is relatively leading in the construction of electric vehicle energy replenishment and supercharging piles, and its acquisition of a wireless charging company is more in line with its strategy.

Yin Chengliang, professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University and chairman of Shanghai Intelligent Connected Vehicle Technology Center, believes: "For Tesla, I think the car is one aspect of wireless charging. Now that we have bought such a wireless charging company, we will have the possibility of providing wireless charging for the car in the future. Absolutely."

At the same time, he also pointed out that Musk has cars, energy storage, and Space You can find a place for wireless charging more or less.

For this matter, Automotive Business Review also consulted the Swedish giant that provides DC and AC charging services, as well as Kamax, of which Volkswagen is a shareholder. ABB told Automotive Business Review that wireless charging is different from DC and AC charging businesses. The group has always been encouraging towards new technologies and it is not convenient to express any corporate views this time. Kamax stated to Automotive Business Review that the wireless charging business is rarely mentioned and would not comment for the time being.

Although Wiferion's wireless charging technology may not be used in Tesla vehicles for the time being, other companies are already looking at adding wireless charging capabilities to existing vehicles.

On July 12, wireless electric vehicle charging company WiTricity announced the launch of its FastTrack integration program for automakers, which can complete initial vehicle integration in just three months, greatly accelerating automakers’ integration on existing and future electric vehicle platforms. The speed of conducting wireless charging tests.

Wireless charging will be fully enabled and operational on the OEM’s electric vehicle platform using WiTricity Halo™ receivers and WiTricity Halo™ 11kW chargers. WiTricity's FastTrack integration program also helps OEMs develop dealers to install wireless charging options to meet market demand while production plans are developed.

In February 2022, the company launched a modification system for Tesla Model 3. In Europe, the company is working with ABT e-Line to offer wireless charging kits for the Volkswagen ID.4 from 2024.

Yin Chengliang is not optimistic about installing wireless charging functions in existing cars. He believes that if modified in this way, the vehicle structure, driving characteristics, and safety will change. The vehicle manufacturer may abolish after-sales services such as multi-year warranty. If anything happens, the vehicle manufacturer will no longer be responsible. Vehicle insurance may not cover it either, and this business model doesn’t work.

If the company cooperates with a car company, the car company will treat it as a parts supplier, and it is technically impossible for a third party to add a separate one. The car manufacturer must control and manage the safety system and integrate it completely with the entire vehicle. Do integration. In his opinion, this approach may be successful in theory, but it is unlikely to be realized in practice.

Is wireless charging possible?

Wireless charging of cars is actually nothing new. The technology is relatively mature at present, but the scale of commercialization is not large. There are still relatively few models that support wireless charging, and there is not much infrastructure construction.

From the perspective of wireless charging principles, there are mainly electromagnetic induction power transfer (Inductively Coupled Power Transfer, ICPT), magnetic resonance power transfer (Electromagnetic Resonance Power Transfer, ERPT), microwave power transfer (Microwave Power Transfer, MPT) and electric field coupling wireless power transmission. (Electric-field Coupled Power Transfer, ECPT). Most of them used in the automotive field are electromagnetic induction type and magnetic field resonance type.

Electromagnetic induction wireless charging systems are usually divided into two parts: power supply and power reception. Usually, a power receiving coil device is installed on the chassis of the car, and another power supply coil device is installed on the ground. When the electric car drives to the power supply coil device, the power receiving coil can receive the current of the power supply coil, thereby performing battery maintenance. Charge.

The magnetic field resonance wireless charging system mainly consists of a power supply, a transmitting panel, a vehicle receiving panel and a controller, as shown in the figure. When the electric energy at the power transmitting end is induced by the car receiving end with the same resonance frequency, the battery is charged by the resonance effect.

From the perspective of wireless charging methods for electric vehicles, they are divided into static wireless charging and dynamic wireless charging.

Static wireless charging is to charge the electric vehicle while it is stopped, while dynamic charging is to charge the electric vehicle while it is driving.

Dynamic wireless charging technology mainly transmits electric energy through power supply rails buried under the ground in the form of high-frequency alternating magnetic fields to the vehicle receiving end electric energy pickup mechanism running within a certain range on the ground, and then supplies power to the vehicle-mounted energy storage equipment. , which can enable electric vehicles to be equipped with a small number of battery packs to extend their driving range.

Cao Zengguang told Auto Business Review that the principle of wireless charging technology for electric vehicles is similar to that of mobile phones. It is mainly based on the principle of electromagnetic induction. The technology is relatively mature and has existed for many years. Compared with the wired charging method of plugging in and out of the charging gun, the advantage of wireless is that it is more convenient. In the future, wireless charging roads can even be built to charge while driving, which is more adaptable to autonomous driving and avoids the need for contact charging. The trouble with unified interfaces.

Compared with wired charging, wireless charging is safer because wireless charging is automatic charging. Users do not need to manually plug and unplug the charging gun. The probability of contact with live objects is greatly reduced, and the risk of electric shock is also reduced.

In addition, wireless charging is easy to maintain and manage. In many remote charging areas, once the charging tip is worn, the heat will increase, affecting the charging efficiency or even stopping charging. Wireless charging does not have these concerns.

In June, Yin Chengliang participated in the Wireless Power Transfer Conference (WPTC, Wireless Power Transfer Conference), an international conference on wireless charging organized by IEEE in the United States, and obtained a lot of the latest information on wireless charging applications.

For example, there are thousands of kilometers of uninhabited land in the Gobi desert. The communication equipment at one station after another needs to have electricity. It is definitely not possible to lay cables and build a large power grid. Installing a solar photovoltaic panel will not work well at night or on cloudy days. ; The cost of using wind power to supplement electricity, or using methanol reforming to produce hydrogen to generate electricity, is prohibitively high. If wireless conduction is used to transmit electric energy through directional wireless transmission, it will be more feasible to transmit electricity from some places.

In addition, NASA has tried to transmit power through directional wireless power transmission technology on space stations and Starlink satellites. The efficiency is very high, but it has not yet been put into practical application. (Please refer to Automotive Business Review’s June 12 report “Space Solar Power Station is Coming”, link: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/mQW0dZcEpOIcwIOjE3a6rg)