Volvo starts testing wireless chargers for electric cars in the field. The taxi company Cabonline will have several copies of the XC40 Recharge at its disposal for this. It should become clear in a three-year experiment whether this technology has potential.
The XC40’s Recharge will serve as a taxi in Gothenburg, Volvo’s home city. The batteries of the Volvos can then be charged at certain wireless charging stations of the company Momentum Dynamics. Charging starts automatically when a suitable vehicle parks above the charging point, which is built into the road surface. The charging station sends the energy to the receiver in the car via a charging path. The car and the charging path do not have to make physical contact. To do this, the car must be perfectly aligned with the parking space of the charging station, something the 360-degree camera can come in handy with.
According to Volvo, the charging capacity of the wireless charging stations is ‘more than 40 kW’. That is considerably slower than with a conventional fast charger, because you can supply the XC40 with fresh power via the cable with a charging speed of up to 150 kW.
Volvo XC40 wireless charging
The field test will run for a period of three years, during which the electric Volvos will be used daily by Cabonline and will drive approximately 100,000 kilometers per year. For Volvo, this test is also a great opportunity to see how a fully electric Volvo holds up in a commercial application. Whether wireless charging will also be made available to consumers remains to be seen. Mats Moberg, Head of Research & Development at Volvo, says the field test is a good way “to discover alternative charging options for our future cars”. Perhaps the next generation of electric Volvos will have access to this technology.
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl