At the recent Power Electronics Society meeting in Korea, Andy Daga, the CEO of wireless charging system manufacturer Momentum Dynamics, said he believes that 25 kW wireless chargers will be the norm for all EVs within 5 years, with commercialization beginning in 2016.

Most current passenger EVs charge at 3.3 or 6.6 kW, although a few models support levels of up to 10 kW.

“The impact of wireless charging is to fully automate the charging experience and relegate it to an unnoticed background function,” Daga said. “This will make the experience of ‘fueling’ far better than pumping gasoline into a conventional gasoline vehicle. The most important benefit will be EV driving range extension. This is because automatic operation enables more frequent charging, and more frequent charging is the best way to increase driving range.”

Daga said the potential scale of the EV market is so large that the way people charge vehicles in the future needs to be fast and automatic, and cannot be accomplished in residential garages.

“There isn’t enough power available on residential streets, and the fact is, most people do not have a garage,” said Daga. “The concurrence of mandates and regional market growth make it clear that EV sales will increase, but we must recognize the corresponding need for rapid automatic charging with a ubiquitous network of chargers.”

Source: Momentum Dynamics via Green Car Congress