Can You Wirelessly Charge An Electric Car? This Genesis Trial Wants To Find Out

Wireless charging works for smartphones and AirPods, so why can’t it also work for cars? That is the question Genesis wants to answer with a trial taking place in its native Korea.

The trial will see 23 wireless chargers distributed across the country, each delivering power at up to 11 kW. So while these aren’t going to fill batteries particularly quickly, they are more powerful than many home chargers, which often run at just 7 kW.

Because electric cars can’t be wirelessly charged as standard, Genesis has modified 22 vehicles, including a mixture of its GV60, pictured above, and GV70. It is hoped the trial will demonstrate how wireless, conductive charging can offer benefits to drivers who would rather not use a cable.

Instead of fitting a cable – either one attached to the charger, or one carried in the trunk – the wireless chargers start working when the driver parks their car above a plate in the ground. Genesis describes the trial as a project to “seek opportunities to improve customers’ EV charging experience,” reports Autocar.

There are clear benefits to be gained here. Drivers using future wireless chargers might not even need to get out of their car, as parking over the charging could be enough to begin the charging process.

The lack of logging into a smartphone app or tapping a credit card on the charger would certainly take a current pain point away from the charging experience. But it’s not a perfect solution just yet. An 11 kW charging speed is only really suitable for a long charge, potentially leaving the vehicle overnight. The two minutes of cable management saved by a wireless charger might not be worth it when the car is going to be parked for several hours.

Genesis isn’t the first to experiment with EV wireless charging. BMW has previously offered a conductive charger for home use, and Volvo began a three-year conductive charging test of its own in 2022. Used by a fleet of Volvo XC40 Recharge cars operating as electric taxis in Gothenburg, Sweden, this system charges batteries at 40 kW, almost twice the power used by the Genesis trial.

There is also the question of efficiency. Just as with your smartphone, conductive chargers work by transferring electricity from a coil in the charger to another attached to the battery, instead of through a cable directly connecting the two. Passing energy across the small gap between coils (and through the case of your smartphone) isn’t as efficient as plugging in.

Both of these trials will aim to discover whether the convenience of a wireless charging system outweighs any efficiency losses.