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Jonathan M. Gitlin - Sep 15, 2022 3:34 pm UTC

In our recent explainer on electric vehicle charging, you might have noticed that we didn't mention wireless EV charging. Now common on smartphones, wireless charging works the same way on cars, just at higher power levels and with much bigger batteries. But after some demos and news releases during the mid-teens, the technology seemed to fall off the radar.

Behind the scenes, though, engineers were hashing out an industry standard, aided by industry consolidation along the way. That's now final, and the first EVs with factory-fit wireless charging systems are starting to appear, albeit not here in the US just yet. But given its ease of use, even for drivers who can't imagine life beyond the gas pump, the potential for adoption seems good.

Ars got its first look at wireless car charging back in 2015. Back then, chip-maker Qualcomm was developing what it called Halo, which it was demonstrating at Formula E races by recharging the battery in a safety car, a BMW i8 plug-in hybrid. It wasn't the only outfit developing wireless charging, however. In Massachusetts, an MIT spinoff called WiTricity started playing around with wireless car charging in 2010 after an investment by Toyota.

"We fully engaged in a new standards group that was set up at the SAE—the Society of Automotive Engineers—to set a global standard," explained Alex Gruzen, WiTricity's CEO.

"So the view was that cables had been such a mess—different automakers, different regions, different connectors, cables, and standards," he told Ars. "And they said, 'Look, if wireless is the next thing, let's just do it once. Let's do it as one global standards organization led by the SAE.' So all the automakers started engaging, and the primary technology providers in that standards effort were WiTricity and Qualcomm Halo. And I think in some ways, each company advanced the technology, but in a lot of ways, we had different architectures, and I think it showed some confusion and really slowed things down."

But in 2019, WiTricity acquired Halo and spent the next year integrating the best aspects of each system. "By October 2020, it was ratified and done," Gruzen said. "So once we did the acquisition, we came to the industry with one proposed architecture, and frankly one IP portfolio that anyone could license, and consolidated the IP from WiTricity and Qualcomm. Less than a year and a half later, [the standard] was ratified and done and automakers are off to the races to start producing vehicles." 

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