Comment by pornel
3 days ago
Charging at home is already more convenient and quicker (in human time) than driving to a gas station, and now they're optimizing the 30 seconds it takes to plug the car in.
3 days ago
Charging at home is already more convenient and quicker (in human time) than driving to a gas station, and now they're optimizing the 30 seconds it takes to plug the car in.
Home charging us a reasonably thick cable. It’s not bad by any stretch but it’s more than an appliance cord.
Plus you just got home. You probably want to go inside and may be carrying packages or such, which you might have to juggle or put down to get the cable and plug in.
When it’s time to leave you have to unplug and then store the cable, leave it on the floor (trip hazard for others), or have installed an overhead cable system.
With wireless it’s all gone. Pull into you’re garage? You’re done. You were doing that anyway, so it’s no different. Ready to leave? Just back out. Again, same thing. Nothing extra.
Yeah it’s convenience. But it’s not a small win, it’s big. And it’s every time you use your car. Twice.
Your car can always charge. It can always precondition. You used to have to go to gas stations, now you don’t even have to plug in. It’s fully automatic and taken care of for you.
“You don’t need a remote. You can just get up to change the volume”. How well did that argument go over? Every TV has remotes. Buttons are hidden and effectively dead.
Let’s waste precious energy to save 30 seconds twice a day. A remote control is apples to oranges here.
Maybe your remotes run on fairy dust but the rest of ours run on alkaline batteries.
The losses from this charger are nearly the same as the losses from a wired charger.
We’re talking about a particularly inconvenient 30 seconds coming out of an expensive machine built entirely for convenience. Some people will want it and pay for it. If I was in the market, I probably would.
I agree in so far that plug-in charging shouldn't be an issue for most people.
Yet I can see the advantages for someone with a disability.
And what a lot don't seem to understand: at 11kW we aren't talking about high charging efficiency anyway. Meaning, you cannot assume close to 100% for cable based charging and talk about how much 90% loose on a full battery (like others here do).
It's not just that; there's a new capability unlocked. You can now have self driving cars charge at remote places and come back without human interaction. Imagine you live in a place with no grid power
I have a robot vacuum that manages to do automated direct contact charging just fine. I don’t understand why wireless would be any easier. It seems more complex and less safe than a direct wired connection.
I also have a lot of trouble believing in the scenario of a neighborhood that has an automated charging station for EVs but no grid. That seems like very misplaced priorities.
Robo vacuum charging is almost inherently safe. They probably charge at something like 12V/2A. Voltage too low to penetrate skin, wattage too low to cause serious injury unless you’re really trying.
You can kind of just leave them exposed and live.
None of that applies to a 220V, 50A (or whatever amperage) charging. That can absolutely kill somebody; jet fuel may not melt steel beams, but 11,000W sure will.
You’d end up needing some kind of recess probably, and then getting cars to connect to it like planes refueling mid-flight is a nightmare. You could try some sort of USB-C like signaling before power is sent, but people are never going to enjoy “exposed 220V contacts that may or may not be live depending on if things malfunctioned”.
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How does wireless charging unlock this usecase? Robot arms exist?
I guess if you see the video on the linked post, you'll see what the usecase is unlocked. A neighboor city with a wireless charger station or a road wireless charger station can receive a self driving car above it, charge the car and with some kind of NFC do the payment and goes back.
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This is a lot better maintainable than a robot arm.
They're optimizing the cable you can trip over/have to walk around/remember both at home and at, eventually, parking lots.
guys, guys. They're optimizing: people with a lot of money being nagged.
Welcome to capitalism.
It’s the time that matters the most to users imho. You arrive home, you want to just be done and not think about your car one bit
And the funny thing is China's already picked up the dropped torches elsewhere; Xiaomi's going to be launching a robotic arm for your garage by the end of this year to plug in for you. Tesla gave up on their charging tentacle, but, wellp.
https://carnewschina.com/2026/06/13/xiaomi-unveils-home-char...
Porsche’s induction charging strategy seems a lot smarter and much more reliable than a robot arm.
It's all in the execution. Tesla's been working on them for awhile, but apparently they haven't found tech they think is ready yet. There's actually a chunk of empty space on cybertrucks where the induction receiver was designed to go, but it didn't make it in time. Tesla bought a german wireless charging company a couple years ago (then sold it off, keeping some employees/tech).
I don’t know. I’ve stopped using my wireless phone charger because it’s spotty. Sometimes it charges. Sometimes it doesn’t (or barely charges). Sometimes it wakes me up at night because it’s glitching in between charging and noncharging states and my phone feels the need to beep and wake me up.
I’ve seen similar issues with multiple watch chargers. “Oh, it didn’t charge overnight again.”
I’m not as sold on wireless charging as I once was.
Wall-E future here we come. Soon the people loader that lifts you from your sofa and plops you into the seat!
I think of this / feel this way when I ride my onewheel instead of walking
We are talking about a car. Something already designed for convenience