Imagine this: It’s a beautiful weekend for a quick getaway. You didn’t plug in your electric vehicle overnight – but you didn’t have to. As soon as you parked in your driveway, your car began to charge wirelessly. Now, as you head down the motorway, the charge gets topped up regularly by the road itself, meaning your battery never gets too drained, which helps prolong its life. 

Right now, this scenario exists only in pilot testing. But it could become part of your life sooner than you might think. Grant Covic of Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland is one of the world’s leaders in wireless charging technology. The Electrical, Computer and Software Engineering professor is working with colleagues around the world to make the future of transportation not only sustainable but easy.

There’s more to Covic’s vision. When you stop for lunch, the restaurant car park tops up your vehicle’s charge. Because there are similar charging pads all over, there isn’t a massive drain on the power grid at night even though all your neighbours also drive EVs. The throughout-the-day use means the natural variability of renewable energy sources such as solar and wind isn’t a problem. Because it’s so easy to top up, batteries don’t have to be huge. Charging systems work regardless of vehicle make or model.

At your holiday destination, you can go shopping secure in the knowledge that goods have been sustainably transported by electric trucks. At night, after a few drinks, you can catch a ride back to your hotel in an autonomous shuttle that runs 24/7 and is charged as it waits in the taxi rank. 

All this infrastructure is safe and economic. When your child drops a ball under the car in the driveway and reaches for it, the charging system turns off automatically.

Your car might have a wireless charging compartment for your devices but neither you nor your electronics are affected by wandering over a car park. Equipping kilometre-long stretches of roadway with dynamic charging capacity doesn’t cost much more than building a regular road. The infrastructure lasts decades, so the initial outlay is soon offset by savings to the health system as fewer people need care for smog-exacerbated respiratory disease.

 What will it take to make this vision reality? A lot of research and investment, much of which is already underway. For the past three decades, the Power Electronics Group at the University of Auckland, which today includes Covic, Patrick Hu, Udaya Madawala and Duleepa Thrimawithana, has been working with international colleagues and manufacturers to provide technical solutions while also leading efforts to establish universal standards for wireless charging. Standards suitable for private vehicles were finalized last year and heavy-duty standards are in development.

With the University of Auckland as the key international collaborator and strategic partner, Covic and his colleagues have also been working with Advancing Sustainability through Powered Infrastructure for Roadway Electrification (ASPIRE), a U.S.-based consortium working on charging vehicles on the move. 

The University of Auckland has a long history of research on wireless charging technology. John Boys and Andrew Green began researching inductive (contactless) power transfer (IPT) back in the late 1980s. Covic started working with them in the early to mid-1990s.

Though their initial research focused on other applications, Covic, Boys and Green began to research wirelessly charging electric vehicles around the end of the 1990s. Their work resulted in the first wirelessly powered EV in commercial application, an electric bus system used at Whakarewarewa in the Rotorua area. 

A decade later, with help from UniServices, Covic and Boys set up a startup, HaloIPT, to commercialize wireless charging systems for EVs. HaloIPT was bought by wireless technology company Qualcomm in 2011. WiTricity, a U.S.-based wireless charging company, acquired Qualcomm Halo in 2019. With WiTricity opening an Auckland office this year, Covic and his team continue to work closely with industry to bring wireless charging to the EV market.

Fundamentally, wireless charging is based on a coil with a high-frequency current running through it. A flowing electric current generates a field. Bringing another coil into that field causes the current to flow. What happens next is like tuning a radio to a particular frequency. Wireless charging technology tuned to resonance at a particular frequency can magnetically couple two coils, which enables highly efficient power transfers. 

Of course, charging vehicles wirelessly is more challenging than, say, turning on a light bulb.

“You’ve got to transfer quite a large amount of power and you’ve got to do it in a way that’s efficient and safe, which means shaping the electrical field to be where you want it to be and not anywhere you don’t want it to be,” says Covic. “We’ve got to deal with different types of vehicles with different heights and different power demands. People who make roads have to be assured the road will still have a long lifespan. Car manufacturers want the technology to be incredibly compact and well-integrated and they want to be able to mass-produce it for many types of vehicles because that’s how you get the prices down. So there’s a lot to consider.”

So, when are we likely to start seeing wirelessly charged EVs? In a few places, buses and trucks are already being charged wirelessly but they use systems built just for them, says Covic. The rollout of standardised IPT technology will start next year in Asia and Europe. New Zealand may be a few years behind, but within five years, Covic believes urban Kiwis will be getting into wirelessly charged taxis and early adopters will be buying cars that can be charged either wirelessly or through plugs. 

The early systems will only charge parked cars but once dynamic charging capacity is installed in enough of the right roads, it will be possible for electric heavy vehicle fleets to haul goods around the country without having to worry about range or significant down time at charging stations.

Covic’s colleague Doug Wilson, a transportation engineer, is a member of the multidisciplinary team working on integrating wireless charging into the road network.