InductEV suggests the convenience and cost savings of inductive charging could make it the obvious choice for commercial fleets. By Megan Lampinen
The charging experience could make or break the success of electric vehicles (EVs). Drivers want a fast and convenient means to repower their battery so they can get back on the road as quickly as possible, or at least as quickly as a traditional gasoline or diesel fuelling process would allow. For commercial fleets, where uptime translates into profit or loss, the charging experience becomes even more important. At the moment, most fleets rely on overnight charging sessions in depots, but these are both time- and energy-intensive. This is where wireless charging could have a role to play.
Wireless charging uses electromagnetic induction to charge EV batteries instead of the usual cabled solutions. Energy is provided to the vehicle from a magnetic resonance system located within a charging pad on the ground. It transmits power to a receiver embedded within a vehicle’s undercarriage. The EV driver simply has to park the vehicle over the pad while on route during natural stopping points, such as a loading dock, and the system automatically charges the battery. “This will be the future of electrification and charging technology,” predicts James Wroe, Managing Director, Europe, Middle East & Asia at InductEV.
The Pennsylvania-based company specialises in high-power inductive charging for fleets. It claims that its wireless solutions, which range from 75kW up to 450kW, can offer a lower cost of ownership and lower operating costs than diesel, gasoline or plug-in charging solutions. The setup is relatively simple, as Wroe explains: “You have a pizza box-sized charging pad that fits on the underside of a vehicle and a corresponding one on the ground. As vehicles arrive in close proximity of these pads, charging begins within two seconds.”
In use today
Wireless charging is potentially suitable for all sorts of vehicles, though InductEV focuses primarily on the commercial transport sector: municipal buses, middle-mile vehicles, airport vans, port and drayage vehicles, etc. It’s a pivotal segment, as road freight vehicles emit more than two billion tons of CO2 a year—more than 6% of the world’s total CO2 emissions. It’s also a particularly attractive fit from a business perspective. “When you combine high power and zero-touch automated solutions that work instantaneously, you start hitting the sweet spot for certain industrial applications,” Wroe tells Automotive World.
Wireless charging for EVs has been around for several decades, though commercial applications remain limited. InductEV hopes to change that and has been actively commercialising its offering over the past couple of years. “This is no longer just an idea on paper,” Wroe emphasises.
Its wireless charging tech is currently powering municipal transit buses in Indianapolis, Martha’s Vineyard, Oregon, and elsewhere. The company recently secured an agreement with Seattle’s Sound Transit to deploy its technology with new Alexander Dennis double-decker electric buses along the city’s busiest routes. By the end of 2026, half of all battery-electric buses in the state of Washington are projected to be charged by InductEV’s en route wireless chargers. “There is quite a lot of traction in public transport in the US and it’s continuing now in Europe,” Wroe points out. “The public transport case is one that almost writes itself. A combination of depot charging and periodically charging en route at a bus stop unlocks some really interesting value cases for transit providers.”
Other applications include electric port tractors, and InductEV is currently charging a fleet at the Maersk Terminal in Port Elizabeth, New Jersey. It’s also supporting taxi fleets, namely electric Volvo SUV taxis in Gothenburg and Oslo. For all OEM installations, the company works closely with vehicle manufacturers on integrating the wireless system, which is installed on the vehicle production line as a factory option. The company has contracts with Volvo, Gillig Phoenix Motor, MAFI, Orange EV, BYD and others, which today are supplying vehicles with InductEV systems.
A good fit
Wireless charging offers the convenience of not having to plug in and greater use of renewable energy, while frequent top-up charging en route means larger vehicles could carry smaller batteries. That said, it has historically attracted criticisms for lower energy efficiency and difficulty in aligning the vehicle with the pad. InductEV claims a 90% grid-to-battery transmission efficiency with the added bonus of extending the life of the battery by up to eightfold. As for alignment issues, Wrote notes: “This is something we need to work on with every customer, but it’s always been a solvable problem.”
The Volvo taxi fleet in Gothenburg has made use of the in-vehicle parking cameras to provide a top-down view of the vehicle and a live view of the pad, helping drivers to see more easily where the charging pads are placed. Another city centre deployment used slightly different coloured brick to indicate the location of the charging pad for the drivers. “The drivers quickly become accustomed to knowing where to go,” he adds.
In Wroe’s view, wireless charging is not necessarily going to replace all traditional cabled charging. Rather, it makes the most sense for high-utilisation operations, where a return on investment comes from increasing vehicle use and reducing maintenance and energy costs. “If a fleet has a lot of downtime, the best solution is to use a range of standard plug-in chargers, but there are many applications where this type of dependence on depot charging will lead to an over-investment in vehicle capacity to compensate for downtime. If you are running 18 hours a day, some sort of automated charging solution opens the door to interesting business cases.”
He estimates that wireless charging could offer a significant difference in 20-40% of charging cases, with a particularly strong argument for the transit market and vehicles that operate on a set route. “In many instances, such as port applications, there’s a safety argument for moving to automated charging. Others might be persuaded by a shortage of labour availability or space,” he suggests. “Generally speaking, if you’re a fleet operator and you’ve been mandated to electrify your fleets, this is an option that should seriously be considered.”
Where next?
InductEV was named as a Time Best Invention for 2024, a list featuring 200 groundbreaking inventions that are “changing how we live, work, play, and think about what’s possible.” The company recently opened one of the world’s first R&D centres specifically for wireless vehicle charging, suggesting there is still plenty of scope for further development.
In the future, wireless charging could become the obvious solution for automated robotaxis and trucks, where there is no human driver to plug in when the battery needs charging. Tesla has been working on a wireless charging system for some time and finally unveiled it at a launch event for its robotaxi concept in October 2024. These upcoming autonomous vehicles are intended to charge exclusively by induction and do not even feature a charging port in their design. This is a notable change to the autonomous future vision Tesla shared back in 2015, featuring a robotic arm to plug in the EV for charging.
“Tesla’s entry into the wireless charging space is exciting and further validates the vision that InductEV has been pursuing since inception,” commented John Rizzo, InductEV’s Chief Executive. Where Tesla leads others tend to follow, and its endorsement of wireless technology points to more widespread interest across the EV spectrum.
