Wireless charging for xEV – pronounced “ex-EV”and refers to pure electric vehicle (EV) or plug-in Hybrid (PHV) – is one of the hot areas of industry studies. The possibility to charge a vehicle without a cable would generate a number of advantages: automatic ‘hands-free’ charging, cable-free clean look of charging stations, and so on.
However, car manufacturers can’t directly jump into commercialisation. “We first need to ensure customers’ peace of mind by establishing a globally harmonised standard for charging process and systems. Without such a standard, customers of electro mobility will face the same frustration as with mobile phone chargers. Each time we buy a mobile phone we also have to buy a new charger, which may not be compatible with the next one we will buy in future either. In case of xEVs and their charging stations, the frustration would be much bigger.”
Toyota has been participating in the negotiations on future standard. It is a huge challenge, but there was significant progress lately. After five years of discussions between industry representatives within the official standardisation bodies’ framework (*), the very first version of technical guidelines has been agreed this year which is called SAE TIR J2954.
“This is an important milestone, because the direction of the future standard has been narrowed down significantly, with some critical details frozen,” says Ivo. “It helps convince the standardisation community and governments that the industry is really starting to build a consensus. This is very positive.”
