Porsche's Tech Makes Charging Your Car As Easy As Charging You Phone

However, Porsche is heading to the Munich Auto Show to show off the new all-electric Porsche Cayenne as the first model from the brand with an option for the Porsche Wireless Charging receiver. To recharge your Porsche EV with this tech, the owner just needs to place the floor plate ready to park the car over, and park over it for up to 11kW of charging.

Simplifying Charging
This is not a new idea, and BMW toyed with it a few years ago in a limited way in the US. But, Porsche opening it up to its common production cars is a big step forward. Porsche has designed a "one-box" base plate that contains all components barring the supply cable in the floor plate, eliminating the need for a wall box or control unit.

There's one issue that Porsche engineers had figure out — and that relates to reducing the distance between the receiver unit located in the underbody of the vehicle between the front wheels and the base plate on the floor. That problem was solved by equipping the car to detect charging and lower the adaptive suspension to get closer to the charging plate. Contactless charging occurs over a distance of around four to six inches.

Of course, the system is also part of Porsche's companion phone app and capable of standard charging features like preconditioning and departure timing. To help with parking the car for optimal charging placement, there is a special view available in the Surround View parking system. The base plate has safety precautions, including a motion detector and foreign object detection, but what Porsche isn't clear about in the press release is whether the charging plate comes with a Porsche Wireless Charging package or if it is a separate purchase from the receiver.

Hopefully, this is one of those things that starts off in luxury cars and filters into the mainstream as the technology gets cheaper. We've read a bunch of white papers from various companies claiming 95 – 99 percent efficiency, but no demonstration of that. The realistic aim seems to be 90 percent efficiency. If Porsche has cracked the efficiency problem, that will be huge: Imagine parking your car overnight to charge in the garage, but it's ten percent more expensive than before and using ten percent more resources than you usually would just for convenience. The company says that Porsche Wireless Charging will launch in Europe as early as next year, with "other markets around the world" following.

That Fluorescent Camouflage, Though
Porsche is also proud of the electrically lit fluorescent camouflage wrap it's showing at the Munich Auto Show on the all-new electric prototype Cayenne. The design on the wrap comprises 25 "extremely thin layers" made up of conductive primer, electrode and insulating layers, and "the actual electroluminescent material with color pigments." The light is emitted and controlled with voltage changes, and seems to activate "as soon as electricity flows" - likely for display purposes when the car is parked over the base plate to initiate charging. The car in question will be on display at the IAA Mobility event in Munich from September 9 through 14; the Cayenne Electric will be premiered later this year.