Tesla confirms it's working on wireless inductive charging

19 December 2023

Smartphones have wireless charging, so why not cars? After all, the batteries are similar. The answer is, as always, "it's complicated", but Tesla is working on a solution (like Volvo and Xiaomi).

According to the company's chief designer, Franz von Holzhausen, and its VP of Vehicle Engineering Lars Moravy, wireless charging is currently in the works. The remarks were made as part of the duo's conversation with Jay Leno - this was all about the Cybertruck, but went into other avenues as well. The full video is embedded below.

During Leno's test drive of the finally-available Cybertruck, Von Holzhausen outright stated: "Oh, we're working on the inductive charging. So you don't need to plug something in at that point. You just pull in your garage, drive over the pad, and you're charging".

Tesla has teased such a feat before, at its Investor Day back in March, but this is the first outright confirmation we're getting from company execs that it is actually coming. Now, this being Tesla, the when is the mystery - after all, the Cybertruck took four years to go from show car to real vehicle. We are hoping that wireless charging isn't four years away still, but we can't be sure.

If marketed like this, for your own garage, then, similarly to wireless charging for phones, this won't be a 'game changer' - but a very nice thing to have nonetheless. It's not that much of a hassle to plug in a charger, but it's not not a hassle either, so this improvement in the user experience would be welcome. It will be especially useful since, we assume, it will stop mattering how you park - no more trying to get the car's charging port on the same side as your wall charger. Stuff like that.

Of course wireless charging would be much more of a 'game changer' if it were to be introduced for public parking places, but that's probably not where we'll see it first, if we go by what the Tesla execs said. One could easily imagine a world where every parking spot has an induction charger built-in, but one needs to remember that even for phones, wireless charging is slower than wired charging, and if that's going to be the case for cars as well, then it only really makes sense for office buildings where you go and leave your car idle for hours at a time - not necessarily highways and other places where you need charging to happen as fast as possible.