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Whatever you think of it, the Cybercab is Tesla’s next vehicle. The first production car has now been produced, and the model will apparently go on sale to customers this year — presumably fairly soon. Considering that the model doesn’t have a steering wheel or pedals, it would be weird if it relied on humans to get charged up. Indeed, it is supposed to rely on wireless charging, and we have news on that today.
The wireless charging system the Cybercab is supposed to use relies on Ultra-Wideband (UWB) radio technology, but you need a waiver from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in order to use that on fixed outdoor infrastructure. The news is that Tesla has now been granted that waiver.
Here’s more from Tesla on how the wireless charging technology works:
“The Tesla positioning system is an impulse UWB radio system that enables peer-to-peer communications between a UWB transceiver installed on an electric vehicle (EV) and a second UWB transceiver installed on a ground-level pad, which could be located outdoors, to achieve optimal positioning for the EV to charge wirelessly. […]
“Prior to the UWB operation, the vehicular system uses Bluetooth technology for the vehicle to discover the location of the ground pad and engage in data exchange activities (which is not subject to the waiver). […]
“When the vehicle approaches the ground pad, the UWB transceivers will operate to track the position of the vehicle to determine when the optimal position has been achieved over the pad before enabling wireless power charging.”
Of course, the Cybercab will also be able to charge at normal Tesla Superchargers and normal Level 2 charging stations.
Also, note that inductive wireless charging systems like Tesla’s have been around for over a decade. We used to cover these quite routinely, but they never really took off as a preferred charging option for passenger electric cars.
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