Wireless car charging on the way

Sunny California. We don't have a lot of inclement weather out here so you're not dragging one of these through ice and snow. And that can be a real headache if you charge outside but even if you don't have those kind of problems we all deal with which connector is that the charger and does it fit my car. And if so doing what rate of charge and after I figure that out, do I have the right payment system for whoever's brand of charger I pulled up to sure is a lot harder than putting gas in a car, isn't it? That's where wireless charging, getting rid of this may solve a lot of the headaches. [MUSIC] What if it was like this instead. Not a cable to be found that you have to touch. There's a box connected to the grid. It has a fixed cable that sends power to this thing. A ground pad that is resonating power from it within a limited area. And here's what cares about that. This receiving resonator that would be mounted under your car built there by the factory looking for these things, gets a full charge at level two, which goes on to your battery. It's basically no touch. [MUSIC] Here's another way to visualize what I just showed you. This is a demonstration version of the ground pad, a little mock up of that. And let's say this is the part that would go on your car. First of all this thing will not be on until your car approaches. Then they have a WiFi handshake that tells the one on the ground to wake up and starts sending power, resonating power around itself. Now as you get near Notice before you're even entirely over it, power transfer is happening. Hence the blue LEDs. I can get quite a ways off before it starts to dim showing that I'm starting to get lower power but anywhere near the middle, I've got full transfer and notice this there is no contact that's an air gap that would be of several inches on a real car. What I've just showed you is what they do it WiTricity a Boston area startup born of MIT innovations and the guts behind an award winning BMW wireless charging pilot program. Here's a simple sort of a physical block diagram of how this system works with some actual components This part of the system starts with grid power. 240 volts at 60 hertz, US standard, comes in here. Inside here, one of the chief jobs is to convert this thing to 400 volts, that goes here into the ground pad, and the ground pad has this inside of it, among its other components. And this is a place that has many courses or tracks for this interesting wire that fills all of these in a precise pattern. This is called [UNKNOWN]. This is not a single piece of wire as you can imagine. If you look at this piece I got right here, inside there is a huge number of literally hair thickness filaments. And each one of those is insulated. It's kinda like the world's finest transformer wire [BLANK_AUDIO]. Once you get through all this, it goes over to the vehicle side, and then the conversion goes the other direction to turn from the AC that's being radiated between these two panels back to the DC the car's battery wants to eat up. [MUSIC] Alex Gruzen is CEO of WiTricity, and something he has to do a lot of is explain what their tech isn't. Right about now. There it is. And it's charging. So a lot of folks will say, I got a toothbrush that does that. I know what you're doing. It's not the same as it. It's not the same. That's it. That's the technology generally referred to as induction. So that's been around for decades. Yeah. And it has one sort of unique thing about making it work is the source of the power and the receiver like in your electric toothbrush have to be like, perfectly aligned. You have a car that might be a sports car or a sedan or an SUV. Yeah, that relationship is going to change with this apparatus over here. But You don't. [UNKNOWN] to have a hard enough time parking your car, let alone parking it exceedingly precisely. And so those are some some natural challenges that make induction or not work in the car environment. Okay. We can have space for a nice, larger ground pad on the floor of the garage, or even embedded in the ground, which gives you more parking flexibility. Okay, so that's also a part of that flexibility is the fact that these don't have to be so tightly coupled in size. Correct. So I could have a small receiver on the car. This is car size, okay. And a large receiver on the ground. So again, all of these things, the parking flexibility, the height variation, the fact that I could have snow and ice and whatever on there it wouldn't matter. That I could be in the cement, it wouldn't matter Because our magnetic fields can go through materials, and that all this power removing, like 11 kilowatts of power- Which is essentially what any level to charge exactly, right? It's really the most you can get in your house. This isn't really a sacrifice charge. No, it's gonna charge just as fast as if you had plugged in That's sort of the fundamental principle here of magnetic resonance technology is that even with parking inaccuracy, even with different height of a car, I'm still moving just as much power, just as efficiently as if you've been plugged in If it sounds like things on the ground will get fried if they come between the car and the charging pad. WiTricity says that is not the case. Something their tech does have in common with say an induction cook top. [MUSIC] One of the biggest inhibitors for sort of main volume of consumers to consider an EV Is like, I don't have to think about charging, right? Think is the key word. I have to think, I have to proactively- That's different than charging, that's think about charging, and that's an interesting distinction. With the gasoline car, I've been totally reactive. My tank is nearly empty, I find a gas station, I fill it up in five minutes, I don't have to think about it for a week. The lack of planning didn't have a lot of downside, right? It was just reactive. now with an EV you have to be proactive. And we have to acknowledge that today's EV buyers are largely early adopters. I mean if you look at the percentage these people who have a lot of motivation, which is fantastic And I wanna help us reach every customer. And so I wanna take the whole act of charging out of the equation. So you just never have to think about charging. I parked the car. I come back to the car, it's charged. I didn't have to do anything. We've set a global standard For this technology for this wireless charging technology, so that one charging pad could work across every vehicle makers car, we don't wanna repeat again what happened to flux. There's one wireless charging standard. It allows like if I buy a pad with my car My wife's car will work on it. That's sort of the natural way we think about interoperability. Yeah. I don't want to think about works with or some label program because that's not the way it is in the liquid fuel market. Every gas station works with every car and that's where it always has. And that's where we're onna get to. But there there's a, that's where we are with a new standard. Yeah. But there's another element here, which is. If I have enough standard, public infrastructure can be built. If I have the parking garage, or parking lot, or apartment building with parking, I know I can invest in putting one of those charging in for my customers because I know whatever vehicle they show up with.>> [MUSIC] BMW was one of the earliest customers We sold the BMW a test system back in 2012. And they were really at the leading edge of bringing the technology the market, they introduced their 530. I performed once with BMW wireless charging, and they had a great sort of marketing message around. Which was BMW wireless charging makes charging easier than refueling. Now none of this obviates DC fast charging. That's the kind of charge that can give you 80% in a half an hour or less like at a Tesla super charger or on a Porsche tychon. Wireless can't do that. And that kind of wired charge will still be valuable for long edge case trips, and it does mean car makers may face the prospect of installing two charging interfaces in the future one wired, one wireless, but at least the latter will be based on a standard. And that's key and avoiding the confusing array of charge connectors and charge levels out there today, that inspire you to send me a lot of emails asking how it all works. Bunch of wireless charging potential lies not in the charging tech but in how much prevalence its convenience and technical standard can achieve most trips in the US or six miles or less and frequent effortless sips of power out in the wild model well against that Especially for millions who live in places where they can install their own home charger. Now all this is not that far away from production vehicles why trust me is pretty sure this may start showing up in some OEM vehicles by 2022 as they work through not just the car makers, but also with the tier ones, the big companies that build the subsystems that are assembled by car makers. Into the cars you buy. Want to taste what might come next. This thing here on the ground is an example of semi dynamic charging. We've talked about charging as you drive down the highway. That may be a bit of a moonshot still, but this is an idea of having a series of these ground pads embedded. Maybe for a few hundred yards of curve at an airport so as taxis are lined up and waiting, they're getting a charge without having to sit still and take up valuable real estate. [MUSIC]