With electric cars as they are today, as with those powered by refined fossil fuels, require us lazy humans to pull up to a designated location and wrestle with hosed thing-a-ma-jig that needs to be hooked up to the actual vehicle. How archaic and unbecoming.
The solution seems to be wireless charging of the kind that feature in more and more smartphone, and has been an obvious step years. However, several issues have prevented it from becoming mainstream, chiefly the greatly reduced rate of energy exchange between inductive receivers compared to wired connections, also true of virtually everything in consumer electronics.
BMW hasn’t let that stop them from introducing the first wireless charging pad, though, which will be rolled out as a factory-fitted option for the 530e iPerformance. Because said energy exchange rate is compromised when moving from wired transfer to wireless, the consensus seems to be that it’s unfeasible for full battery-powered electric vehicles.
But because the 530e iPerformance uses a comparatively much smaller battery to aid the 2.0-litre turbocharged petrol engine under the bonnet, the ensuing slower charge time becomes less of a thorny issue. All you’d need to do is position the car under the charging pad when parking and it should be fully charged in 3.5 hours, at a quoted rate of 3.2kW, and shuts off once the full charge is achieved.
BMW says that the pad itself is weather sealed and can safely be installed outdoors - just don’t run it over, maybe. Peak efficiency is 85 percent, assuming the car is positioned optimally above the ‘GroundPad’, and is flexible enough to still charge should that alignment run by up to 14 centimetres laterally and 7 centimetres longitudinally.
Virtually every other automaker operating in PHEV space with ambitions of a fully electric range is already plotting to have their cars, current or future, support wireless charging, but BMW has beaten them to market with this.
Unsurprisingly, Germany will be the first place this wireless charging system will be available to buyers, with other major markets such as the UK and US to follow. No word yet on exact prices, though.
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