Leading American automaker Tesla has just confirmed the long-speculated development of its own wireless inductive home charger for electric vehicles, as per Chief Designer Franz von Holzhausen’s off-hand comment in Jay Leno’s YouTube content.
Tesla is working on a wireless inductive charger
After several months of speculations, the online space finally got some kind of confirmation with Tesla Chief Designer Franz von Holzhausen’s remarks in Jay Leno’s YouTube content about the Cybertruck. Notably, Vehicle Engineering Vice President Lars Moravy was also present in the video.
“Oh, we’re working on the inductive charging. So you don’t need to plug something in at that point. You just pull in your garage, drive over the pad, and you’re charging.”
Tesla Chief Designer Franz von Holzhausen
Background
It alluded to the possible launch of a wireless charging system to allow its owners to bypass the need to directly plug in their electric vehicles, Teslarati reported. With this technology, owners can just pull their EVs over a stationary platform to charge their EV batteries.
The teaser photo caused a significant buzz among Tesla owners and fans, especially considering its previous acquisition of European wireless electric vehicle charging startup Wiferion in July 2023. However, the Musk-led company resold Wiferion shortly thereafter and kept its engineers.
Apart from these, Tesla did not provide any more updates about its wireless EV charging development.
Advantages
Wireless electric vehicle charging has continued to interest numerous players in the industry as they race to offer customers the most advanced and convenient technology. In fact, Electreon already completed its wireless charging road project in Michigan early this month.
Electrek emphasized that wireless charging technology simply cuts the need for owners to plug in their EVs directly to the power supply, which is not an extremely complex or time-consuming task.
Although the introduction of wireless charging does not solve a major problem, it could significantly aid Tesla’s efforts and preparation for its true full self-driving technology. That said, it is only natural for Tesla to develop a wireless charger that can enable the car to charge itself when it is capable of autonomous driving.
However, interested customers must really save up or prepare their pockets if they want to get Tesla’s wireless home charger for their EVs. It would undoubtedly be expensive, including the installation cost and the system itself.