• I’m skeptical too, mainly because i think energy losses are hard to prevent in a wireless charging system, but let me just play devil’s advocate here for a bit: what if you don’t want to get out of the car to plug the charger in? What about having less exposed components? Charging cables can be vandalized or stolen, no? And i’m sure some people are also considering the possibility of charging while driving if you put them under the roads (i personally think that is not going to be feasible in practice any time soon, but who knows?).

    • A step in the right direction, maybe? No. It isn’t difficult to plug it in, but wireless charging would bring up interesting possibilities. Maybe in the future we build roads with these charging units in them and allow for indefinite travel as the car charges while it drives?

      • Apple already thought of an idea like that to charge their devices, but it turns out to generate a huge amount of heat so it doesn’t work. I would expect this to be even worse in cars. At most you could implement wireless charging at stoplights, but the goal of stoplights is not really to stop there for a long time. In any case, a train or tram with electrified tracks or overhead wires is superior in throughput when compared to EVs.

        • Stepping stones. Just because it’s bad now, doesn’t discount its future merit. We have a nasty habit of letting perfection be the enemy of progress.

  • One day we’ll get the “power everywhere and no batteries or cables required” tech from the later parts of the Trisolaris/Three Body Problem trilogy.