Vehicle Electrification and Wireless Charging

The automotive industry has been desperately trying to convince consumers to go electric for almost a decade. However, in most countries, pure electric vehicles still only represent less than 1% of the total vehicles shipping, despite the relative success stories of Nissan (Leaf) and Tesla (which struggles to scale production to larger volumes). While the consumer adoption barriers are well known (range anxiety, price, limited model range, etc.), the more serious issue is the lack ofa market driver. The very large majority of consumers simply don’t seem to care about the type of powertrain when making purchase decisions.

Clearly, relying on consumers to drive adoption of EVs increasingly seems an unrealistic or at least an excruciatingly slow process. However, recently, non-consumer drivers have started to appear in terms of various stakeholders announcing their commitment to vehicle electrification:

• Car OEMs – Several car OEMs have confirmed their commitment to electrification in some cases even announcing 100% electric strategies. Volvo Cars will only introduce new models with electric powertrains (pure electric or hybrid) from 2019. Earlier it communicated plans to phase out diesel engines. In the wake of diesel gate, VW announced to offer electric versions of all 300 models in the 12-brand group’s lineup by 2030. Other German brands like Daimler and BMW are adopting similar strategies, mostly driven by increasing competition from Tesla.  JLR plans to go all electric by 2020. Clearly, this will constitute a pressing incentive for brand loyal consumers to go electric together with their favorite brands.
• International Governments – Regions like the EU impose strict carbon emissions targets; this explains some of the strategic shifts occurring at car OEMs outlined above.
• National governments – The UK and France plan to ban combustion engines models by 2040. China also announced to set a date by which fossil fuel powered vehicles will be phased out. Both China and India have also set ambitious targets for EV addition in the shorter term.
• City governments – Multiple cities in the EU and beyond already have implemented or plan to implement emission zones, banning older polluting diesel vehicles from entering city centers. This is part of a wider policy expected to progressively ban all vehicles with combustion engines. This is resulting in additional incentives for car OEMs to accelerate electrification.
• Fleets of shared driverless electric vehicles in smart city contexts – This constitutes the Mobility as a Service “end game” of pure shared electric fleets with driverless operation mandating wireless charging but also 24 hour commercial operation preventing vehicles to be immobilized for charging from a business and profitability perspective.  

A limited number of technology vendors including Witricity and Qualcomm are investing heavily in the development of resonance-based wireless electric vehicle charging. It is also in the process of being standardized by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) as part of the SAE TIR J2954 standard specifying a common frequency band of 85 kHz (81.39–90.00 kHz) and four classes of wireless power transfer levels (3.7 kW, 7.7 kW, 11.0 kW, and 22.0 kW).

It is a matter of time before the first EVs supporting wireless charging will be launched by car OEMs. BMW will offer 3.2 kW wireless charging on the 530e plug-in iPerformance in 2018. However, a wide range of wireless EV charging use cases can be distinguished, from a nice to have convenience feature to a must have capability:

• Stationary wireless charging for extended periods – This essentially represents a strategy to replace fixed charging stations at home, the office and shopping malls with their wireless equivalent. It mainly offers improved convenience buy ultimately provides limited value due to limited number of charging events. On the other hand, it provides a key use case for first generation low power wireless chargers. 
• Semi-stationary “Power Snacking” – The next level of more widespread availability of wireless charging points will allow keeping EV batteries charged during their daily use, and in turn allow EVs to be equipped with smaller batteries. The installation of charging infrastructure at for example junctions would already accomplish this in city contexts. It is akin to the wireless charging of electric busses at bus stops as already trialed in Korea. These use cases cannot be catered to by wired charging infrastructure. Another important application of wireless charging is plug-in hybrids which have small capacity batteries that need to be charged more frequently. Wireless charging would (re)valorize the investment in Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEVs) which today remain largely under-utilized in terms of electric operation due to the lack of convenient charging opportunities.
• Dynamic Electric Vehicle Charging (DEVC) – This represents the “end game” of charging EVs on the fly, while driving, finding its ultimate application in the driverless vehicle sharing and Mobility as a Service paradigms. While not currently the object of standardization, it has already been demonstrated by Qualcomm testing its Halo Wireless Electric Vehicle Charging (WEVC) technology charging EVs dynamically at up to 20 kilowatts at highway speeds (trial in France in cooperation with VEDECOM and Renault as part of the €9 million EU-funded FABRIC project). 

The role of wireless charging in terms of making charging both a more convenient and a more frequent experience is obvious. However, it will also have important repercussions on the design of EVs. With the current focus largely centered around maximizing range through very large batteries charged at home at night which decreases the dependence on a non-residential charging infrastructure, wireless charging holds the promise of designing EVs with much smaller batteries that are charged nearly continuously, addressing the double challenge of range anxiety and the high cost of EVs. This will radically change the current focus on fixed, fast charging stations. 

While the momentum around EVs is clearly increasing, it is hard to see if and when they will become mainstream (which can be conveniently defined as the point at which 50% of all vehicles shipping will be pure electric). While wireless charging can initially help fuel organic growth through increased convenience, only the emergence of shared, driverless electric vehicles will move the needle towards mass adoption. Ironically, by then, it will have removed the consumer out of the equation completely, putting the technology decision entirely in the hands of whoever will operate these fleets. This will coincide with the consumer increasingly abandoning vehicle ownerships and starting relying on mobility services as the main way to consume transportation.

This will represent a double transformation: technological and business. It will be the pivot around which all key transformational automotive technologies will come together: fully driverless systems (level 5), cooperative mobility infrastructure (V2I), 5G, and an embedded wireless charging infrastructure. It will require close cooperation between the automotive industry and city governments, in particular as it relates to the joint funding of infrastructure via Public-Private Partnerships, balancing the short term deployment of fixed charging stations with the long term planning of embedded wireless charging infrastructure for future proofing EV infrastructure strategies.

ABI Research sees 2025 as the pivotal year by which the paradigms described above will see critical uptake. Clearly, for Witricity and Qualcomm, having invested heavily in wireless EV charging, the stakes are high, though pay offs will not necessarily be achievable in the short term. The key conundrum they are grappling with is the seemingly contradiction between on one hand the slow nature of wireless charging limiting it to home-based charging in the short term and the real value it can offer through use cases of continuous charging while driving based on infrastructure built into roads. However this ultimate Uber use case is a long term vision not helping their business move forward in the short term. In the mean look they should look into intermediate opportunities where EVs would be “power snacking” through distributed fixed charging positions for semi-stationary charging.

In any case, wireless EV charging is a foundational technology for the upcoming mobility revolution.