Porsche Taycan charges wirelessly to 50% in 10 minutes, thanks to 270 kW wireless power transfer system
When it comes to EVs (Electric Vehicles), charging duration as well as convenience - or rather, inconvenience - has always been a major issue that has plagued the minds of prospective EV buyers. It's a worry that's as old as the electric vehicle itself, and one that isn't exactly without merit. After all, EVs do indeed take anywhere from around 40 minutes to several hours to fully charge depending on charging speeds. This, obviously, leads to great inconvenience.
Moreover, wirelessly charging EVs has long been a far-fetched dream, owing to the inefficiency and slow speeds of wireless power transfer. However, for vehicles, apart from the opulent allure of simply parking your car and having it start charging, wireless charging is more of a gimmick than a necessity. Despite this, researchers at ORNL (Oak Ridge National Laboratory) have been hard at work addressing the inefficiency and speed issues of wirelessly charging vehicles, and have successfully set a new world record for wirelessly charging a production vehicle.
How ORNL achieved this, is quite sophisticated, to say the least. The researchers demoed the first 270 kW power transfer using a production Porsche Taycan - not some pie-in-the-sky concept EV that you will never see in your neighbor's driveway. This whole experiment was conducted with the aid of Volkswagen Group of America, utilizing ORNL's innovative polyphase wireless charging system. Essentially, the system uses lightweight polyphase electromagnetic coupling coils with a diameter of just over 19 inches, allowing for higher power density. This is similar to the wireless charging tech of smartphones, except that it is scaled up to a ludicrous extent.
ORNL's system reportedly achieved a 50% increase in state of charge in a rather brisk 10 minutes, thanks to an excellent efficiency of 95%. The power transfer was conducted over a sizeable 4.75-inch gap between the coil mounted on the underside of the aforementioned Porsche Taycan and the charging unit on the ground. This handily defeats ORNL's previous best of 100-kW wireless charging.
Needless to say, safety has undoubtedly been one of the biggest concerns of this whole exercise. ORNL appears to have left no stone unturned in that regard, and included protection mechanisms to prevent exceeding voltage and current limits, overheating, and short-circuiting - the dreaded trinity of electrical nightmares.
ORNL and Volkswagen plan on further improving the 270-kW wireless charging prototype, perhaps in an attempt to make it a more affordable and manufacturable system. In its present form, it will likely not be a part of your garage anytime soon, but both ORNL and Volkswagen are hard at work collaborating on a residential system as well.
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