This Giant Charging Pad Lets You Charge Your Hybrid Car Without Plugging It in

BMW has designed a wireless charging pad for its 530e iPerformance plug-in hybrid. You simply drive over the pad and it can charge the car in 3.5 hours.
Jessica Miley

BMW is set to revolutionize the way we think about electric car charging with the launch of this wireless charge pad. The new device can charge your car simply when you park over the top of it. It has a bunch of inbuilt sensors that connect to the display inside your car so you can perfectly park for optimal charging each time. Once parked, the pad is engaged and it will start charging your car wirelessly. It only takes 3.5 hours for the car to reach full charge. This is pretty close to the number you’d get if you were charging your car the traditional way.

The pad has been designed for the 530E iPerformance hybrid but if it's successful it could be applied to other cars in the BMW range. The pad gets released into the European market early in 2018 but will need to meet a range of other governmental requirements before it can get released in the U.S.

Wireless charging has become quite a buzz word for new devices this year. There hasn’t been a huge uptake of the technology into the broader domestic market but its use in commercial applications has been happening for some time. Wireless inductive charging provides an even and stable charge to devices without the need for directly connecting the devices to a power source. Wireless charging generally uses electromagnetic fields to transfer power from the transmitting source to the device whether it is a car or a phone.