Apart from the repeated remark ‘you only drive electric at the fair’, picking up a muddy charging cable at the start of the day will be the biggest irritation for EV drivers. Come on, PHEV drivers who occupy a charging station for two days will also make it to the top three. Park your car in front of the door and immediately get a knock on the center console that it is charging, that’s the dream. Volvo is working on it and is now testing the wireless charging of electric cars in Gothenburg, Sweden.
The technology has been researched and tested for some time – Volkswagen, among others, is working on it. Volvo is now going to apply it in practice on a larger scale. A fleet of electric XC40s takes part in the three-year test in Sweden. They drive around there as a taxi and charge via wireless chargers from the company Momentum Dynamics. The Volvos have special receivers on their bellies to take in the power.
Charging speed of wireless charging in electric cars
The stations send energy through charging pads built into the asphalt. Because the cars have to be positioned well, the XC40s all get 360-degree cameras. Volvo tells us that the charging pads can charge at a speed higher than 40 kW. The Volvo battery pack is 70 kWh, so the full pack should be charged in almost two hours.
Having to take a two-hour charging break every time sounds impractical for a taxi, but in practice it will come down more to topping up the batteries. Taxis sometimes stop for a while between journeys, for example at the airport or station. In principle, they should therefore be able to drive without interruption of work.
The taxis run twelve hours a day
Each Volvo XC40 has to be used for more than 12 hours a day during the test and Volvo aims to achieve 100,000 kilometers per year; a side-test of the durability of EVs in commercial use. For the time being, you cannot charge your electric car wirelessly in your own driveway.
“Gothenburg Green City Zone allows us to try new technologies in a live test environment and evaluate them over time, ultimately exploring the potential for large-scale application,” said Mats Moberg, Head of Research & Development at Volvo. “Testing new charging technology in collaboration with selected partners is a good way to discover alternative charging options for our future cars.”
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