WiTricity’s Acquisition of Qualcomm Halo Paves the Way for Wireless Charging, but How Best to Integrate?

WiTricity announced this February that it will be acquiring Qualcomm’s electric vehicle charging technology Qualcomm Halo. As part of the deal, Qualcomm will become a minority shareholder in WiTricity. WiTricity was spun out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2007 and has since raised around US$40 million from investors such as Intel and Foxconn, while Qualcomm Halo was born as a result of Qualcomm’s acquisition of HaloIPT. WiTricity gained a massive advantage in the market when BMW became the first OEM to incorporate wireless charging using its technology, while Qualcomm Halo struggled to gain any OEM customers. The acquisition will therefore allow WiTricity to double down on their already commanding position in wireless charging while also allowing Qualcomm to focus on other areas in automotive, such as infotainment, 5G, and V2X.

Critically, this acquisition will bring together two competing technologies, simplifying interoperability as well as helping to accelerate time to market by simplifying the process toward a single standard for wireless charging, which currently does not exist. However, with only one OEM currently using the technology, there are still some major challenges ahead for wireless charging and, for the technology to truly succeed, it will require a rethink of how consumers may wish to charge their vehicles.

WiTricity is a clear market leader when it comes to wireless charging in automotive. The technology was the first factory-standard wireless charging to be available in automotive, having been selected by BMW to be used in its 530e iPerformance Sedan. The company also has numerous licensing engagements with other key OEMs, tier one suppliers, and other companies such as Toyota, Aptiv, Mahle, TDK, IHI, Shindengen, Daihen, BRUSA, and Anjie Wireless. Despite these numerous partnerships and a growing number of engagements for wireless charging, the lack of a wireless charging standard severely hindered the commercialization of WiTricity’s technology.

To push the development of a standard, Qualcomm Incorporated and WiTricity have been working collaboratively with various global standards organizations to develop a standard for wireless charging with the current process involving both companies submitting their own references designs for the technology. The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), for example, is currently working toward a standard, J2954, that will establish minimum performance and safety criteria for wireless charging of electric and plug-in vehicles. Having a standard in place for wireless charging will be a significant step for the technology, as it will simplify the design process for OEMs, allowing them to be more confident that their products meet the approved level of safety required for automotive without the need for complex internal validation. This acquisition will therefore simplify the ratification of global standards by reducing the complexity of having to integrate multiple designs and help ensure interoperability across automotive, meaning consumers will be able to use any standards-compatible pad to charge their vehicles.

The ability to potentially provide a single standard for wireless charging, allowing interoperability between different OEMs, would give wireless charging a huge advantage over current plug-in charging methods. The charging of electric vehicles via plug-in methods is currently a hugely segmented market due to its numerous competing standards. Currently, several charging standards exist, such as Tesla’s Supercharger, CHAdeMO, CCS, and GB/T in China. This means that if a consumer wishes to charge their vehicle via fast-charging methods, they must find a charging station that supports their charging standard and offers the correct plug-adapter type. This increases complexity, creates an inconvenience for consumers, and increases infrastructure costs, as most charging stations will incorporate all the different types of charging standards.

The interoperability of wireless charging, as well the fact that consumers do not even need to get out of their vehicles to charge their them, means that wireless charging could potentially provide a huge convenience to consumers over plug-in charging methods. There exist other issues about how best to incorporate wireless charging methods, however. Wireless charging is not simply plug-in charging minus the cable; it is very different from plug-in charging in its application as well as its capabilities. To incorporate wireless charging to allow consumers to truly benefit from the technology will require a rethink of how electric vehicle charging is carried out.

Although the convenience of wireless charging is the biggest market driver for the technology, WiTricity’s wireless charging offers several other significant advantages:

• High Efficiency: WiTricity Technology runs typically at 90-95% efficiency, while typical plug-in charging runs at 88–94% charging efficiency. Performance is therefore comparable to plug-in charging methods.
• Greater Spatial Freedom: Outside of automotive, wireless charging via inductive charging/Qi has taken off. WiTricity’s technology, however, uses magnetic resonant charging rather than inductive wireless charging. Magnetic resonant charging allows power to transfer over greater distances and with greater spatial freedom through surfaces at different power levels than would be possible with induction technology.
• V2G Capable: As discussed in ABI Research’s Vehicle-to-Grid Technologies and Applicationsanalysis report and demonstrated in a pilot by Honda, WiTricity technology can be used for V2G applications with relative ease.

The technology does still have some major drawbacks, however:

• Cost: The cost of the technology is currently much higher than traditional wired charging for consumers, OEMs, and infrastructure providers.
• Maximum Power Available: The power rating of wireless charging is much less than the power rating of plug-in charging. Wireless charging is currently capable of 22kW, compared to plug-in methods that are capable of 450kW. This effectively means it is 20X quicker for consumers to charge their vehicle with DC-fast charging standards than wireless charging methods.

Although costs will inevitably come down with scale, the maximum power rating of wireless charging versus plug-in charging means that wireless charging will have to be implemented in a different way than plug-in charging.

In the home, given its convenience, wireless charging could seemingly represent a suitable alternative to plug-in charging. In the home, the maximum power rating of fuse boxes is like to be no more than 10kW; fast charging methods do not apply here and so the second disadvantage regarding maximum power also does not apply. Provided the installation costs of wireless charging come down and OEMs charge less for the technology, wireless charging could be provided to consumers who wish to charge their vehicles wirelessly. However, ABI Research believes this will likely remain a niche offering among premium OEMs that may wish to differentiate their brands. Plug-in charging will still be the primary method of charging due to DC-Fast charging needs, and it would therefore not make sense to incorporate both plug-in and wireless just for home charging. Instead, the real benefits of wireless charging come from public charging.

Public charging via wireless will require a different approach than the current method of public charging via plug-in methods. Instead of public charging via dedicated stations, wireless charging points should be used as methods of “power snacking” in more discrete locations. “Power snacking” refers to tactically placing wireless charging panels in the ground so that, as vehicles stop over the panels for a reasonable period of time, they can charge. A good example of this is the current wireless charging of electric busses at bus stops in Korea as part of a trial. Other locations for these panels could include busy traffic junctions in urbanized areas or the temporary parking spaces often present in cities.

The real use case for this type application, however, is future driverless mobility operators. Wireless charging would be hugely beneficial for these operators, eliminating the need for their driverless vehicles to return to a central charging point to be plugged in by an operator and ultimately significantly reducing operational costs. Therefore, those infrastructure vendors that can provide wireless charging could stand to gain a lot from being able to provide a wireless charging service.

Overall, the short-term opportunity for wireless charging via home charging is likely to remain a niche offering among premium brands. The long-term opportunity for wireless charging lies in charging points that are integrated into the infrastructure, with consumers likely to respond well to such technology. Furthermore, future driverless mobility services, which will be looking to minimize operation costs in any way possible, will definitely see value in wireless charging. For this concept to become a reality, however, wireless charging infrastructure needs to start to be rolled out before these operations reach the mainstream, and so infrastructure providers and OEMs need to start making investments in the technology now. Given that the future is electric, and the future is mobility, wireless electric vehicle charging could be a foundational technology for the future automotive and mobility market.