Tesla released a teaser video on Friday showing what wireless charging for the company’s electric vehicles could look like in the future. However, if you were hoping for detailed information on what this infrastructure will entail someday, you’re out of luck.
When Elon Musk unveiled the long-awaited Cybercab last week, the Tesla CEO mentioned that the autonomous taxi won’t need to be plugged in to charge its battery.
Musk said on October 10: “What we’re doing as well is inductive charging, and it’s really time to do it.” “So, the autonomous taxi doesn’t have a plug. It just extends to the inductive charger and charges. So, yes. It’s kind of what it should be.”
But that was all he said about wireless charging. There were no details on how it works or how far Tesla has progressed in order to fulfill this promise. But on Friday, Tesla released a 14-second video on Twitter claiming to show what Cybercab will look like during charging.
Wireless charging robo taxi
No hands pic.twitter.com/XL746DkGhb
— Tesla (@Tesla) October 18, 2024
The online community raised many questions about what they saw in the video, including whether the charging time – shown early in the video as 56 minutes remaining – means that what we see is a 100% or 80% battery charge, the maximum allowed at Tesla Superchargers for fast charging at 250 kilowatts.
We can see the first full screen in the conceptual video, which shows a 35% charge using 25 kilowatts…
…but as soon as the fully charged screen appears, it zooms in to show only the remaining time. But viewers can’t know if it’s fully charged.
This ambiguity may be intentional. Musk often teases technology that hasn’t been worked on yet. Remember when the billionaire announced his own robot project in 2021 and it was just a person dancing in a robot suit?
There’s also the issue of efficiency with wireless charging, as inductive charging can be much less efficient. As one electrical engineer joked on X, this kind of charging in a closed garage could lead to creating a “space heater in a few extra steps” due to the amount of energy that can be wasted.
Tesla has teased wireless charging before, like when a mysterious home charger that looked wireless appeared during a presentation in 2023. But the company didn’t actually address the image and what looked like a direct inductive charging unit, and the Tesla device was only revealed later. Head Designer Franz Von Holzhausen confirmed that wireless charging is coming without giving further details.
The Cybercab itself still faces a number of obstacles before becoming a reality. Musk says the product launch is still two to three years away, which may be overly optimistic given all the challenges Tesla faces, not least regulatory approvals from local governments. Perhaps this is why Musk staged his demonstration at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, California, rather than on real streets. They were able to show what self-driving cars look like without actually operating on California roads, all thanks to movie magic. Competitors like Waymo have obtained approval to operate self-driving taxis in California, while Tesla has not started this process yet.
Wireless charging for electric vehicles is already being done by companies like WiTricity, which has a pilot program in Massachusetts and California with electric Ford trucks. Historically, the idea of how to build an inductive charging system for ground transport involved putting the infrastructure on the road itself and charging the car while driving. Even a road in Detroit received a trial version of it in 2023. But there are still major efficiency issues with wireless car charging that make it less than ideal at this stage of the game. And we don’t even know the specifications details yet.
Like all things Musk-related, we need to take this video with a grain of salt. It looks amazing, but it’s nothing more than a concept video at this stage. And given Musk’s track record of making his robots or Optimus look more advanced than they actually are, billionaire claims require more evidence before we can make a call on whether wireless charging for Tesla vehicles, let alone Cybercab itself, is within reach or not.
