Volvo plans to wirelessly charge taxis

If it’s one thing that every EV owner dreads about the ownership of electric vehicles – it is the charging aspect. Every individual that owns an EV detests the long charging times, the feasibility of finding the right fast charger and various other small issues related to charging the vehicle. Although what if we told you that one manufacturer is trying to revolutionize this problem of EV ownership. That’d be great you say right! Well, the Swedish luxury carmaker Volvo is working on this very problem. Volvo is collaborating with Cabonline, the largest taxi operator in the Nordic region and Momentum Dynamics a wireless charging solution provider to launch a 3-year EV wireless charging pilot in Sweden.

Under the Gothenburg Green City Zone initiative to test new zero-emission transport technologies, Volvo will be launching this new programme. The company will be deploying a small fleet of all-electric Volvo XC40 Recharge vehicles in the city as part of Cabonline’s taxi fleet in which these vehicles will be driven for more than 12 hours a day and 100,000 km per year. Following which each day these vehicles will be charged wirelessly through Momentum Dynamics’ wireless charging stations. The Swedish carmaker is also marking the first durability demonstration of fully electric Volvo cars in a commercial use scenario.

There will be a total of two wireless charging stations from Momentum Dynamics which will be placed at two different locations in the city of Gothenburg. These chargers will utilize inductive technology similar to the one used at wireless smartphone chargers and will comprise of a charging pad embedded in the road while the vehicle will be fitted with a receiver pad. This technology from Momentum Dynamics is based on resonant magnetic induction in which power transfer takes place via a magnetic field.

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To initiate the charging procedure the car will be parked over the charging pad, and the process will begin automatically. Drivers will be guided to the charging position with the onboard 360 camera. Meanwhile, in the real-life scenario, the charging will be partial rather than complete, thereby slowing the pace of battery deterioration and extending its usable life. Momentum Dynamics has been commercially using this technology on various types of EVs for four years now. Volvo also announced that it will be regularly collecting the data from the programme and will take the feedback from the drivers as well as the passenger in order to further improve the efficiency and charging experience.

Mats Moberg, head of Research and Development at Volvo Cars said, “Gothenburg Green City Zone lets us try exciting new technologies in a real environment and evaluate them over time for a potential future broader introduction,” He also added, “Testing new charging technologies together with selected partners is a good way to evaluate alternative charging options for our future cars.” Meanwhile, Momentum Dynamics CEO Andy Daga added that “This project perfectly outlines the automatic electric taxi charging model for any city looking to implement zero emission transportation as well as use by passenger vehicles.”

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