Robotaxi wireless charging

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The video shows the car rolling on top of the charger at 35% and 1 hour to being done charging at 25kW. Thoughts on battery capacity?

Why didn't they show this at the event!?

If the Cybercab is 50 kWh that is about a 1.5 hr 10-80% charge.. not bad!

There was at least one, possibly two, medical incidents prior to the show starting. Tesla likely only rented the place for a few hours, and it took an hour to clear one of the medical episodes. They probably condensed the pre-show for time. Neither Franz, nor Elon, seemed to have their A-game on that night, and I suspect it related to having to make sure those folks were taken care of.

Well that's certainly a take

gut feeling says 40kWh, they are aiming for 6 miles per kWh, 40 \* 6 is 240 miles, tracks with their target range, 25kW for an hour is 25kWh (such slow speed shouldn't see much if any slow down at high SOC), considering it's LFP they probably charge to 100%, 25/(100%-35%) \~= 38kWh, so also tracks

This is nothing new…and this particular solution is just idiotic. There are entire taxi stops/lanes to be covered with induction plates so that the cars waiting for a ride can charge while waiting. Teslas solution makes it useless as a taxi.

Because this is an animation

Yeah, love hearing it from this dude and not an official announcement explaining why the announcement was shite

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What a waste of energy... Is what musk said a few years back when they showcased the automatic charging snake type plug. But I guess the vaporware salesman himself already forgot that

https://youtu.be/uMM0lRfX6YI?si=hDZ_GQWJGlPnWEkc

Is it wrong to change one’s opinions?? Wireless charging for robotaxi eliminates labour needs at the charging station, so it makes sense for robotaxi to have wireless charging instead of what we have now at the supercharger stations

Exactly. Or just go a couple hours over and pay whatever extra charges there are. It's not like the cops are going to drag Elon off stage if he's an hour over their timeline

I'm also sure they could have made a plug that would move up into a port under the car for the same size as that pad.

It looks like charging completed at 80% based on the battery fill level graphic. If it was doing 25kw for the full hour that's only 45% charge for 25kwh, for a 55kwh pack.

we don't know if that second screen of it leaving correlates to the first screen when it started at all, also possible that we are completely reading too much into this but based on tesla's own statement they are confident they will get at least 5.5 miles per kwh, assuming it's 55kWh, that would represent over 300 miles range as a base case, which contradicts their range predictions of "close to 200 miles"

We don't know the efficiency of the wireless charger. Wired will always be more efficient in a vacuum, physics says so, but if the wireless efficiency is in the 80-95 range, then that is more than good enough for an application like this. The [SAE Standard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAE_J2954) already has efficiency rates of up to 94% for grid to battery. It would seem logical that Tesla's is in the same ballpark even if they are not using the SAE Standard.

Depends on the terms they have with Warner Brothers, as it was on their turf. It's entirely possible that Warner Brothers wasn't going to let them continue to borrow the lot for a couple of hours more because they had their own production deadlines to meet. Sometimes timings just don't work out due to circumstances outside your control. You'd *hope* that Warner Brothers would be understanding, but they've got Zaslav running the place, he might've been trying to toss out Tesla's event as a tax write off...

Couldn’t there be «wireless» charging without using induction? Exposed connectors behind a cover that could slide open.

A few different organizations are chugging along with Wireless charging of EVs. The Cybertruck has a port to connect a wireless charger to it for a future retrofit. In Florida they're building a test road, known as SR516, which is supposed to charge cars wirelessly that drive on them.

BMW did it first, interestingly. Germany had these for their PHEVs [as far back as 2018](https://www.press.bmwgroup.com/usa/article/detail/T0304927EN_US/bmw-530e-inductive-charging-pilot-program-named-green-car-journal%E2%80%99s-2020-green-car-technology-of-the-year?language=en_US)

I feel like we should just make the exact same thing, but with a cable that gets inserted underneath and some type of system that identifies and moves the cable around just below it

Is the cyber cab and robotaxi the exact same thing ? Asking for a friend

So, while I can understand people's desires to have a cable that can supply more power faster, the reality is that a charge port is another part that can fail. If you think of phones and laptops, for example, as you unplug, and plug in, the device repeatedly, over time, the cable starts to not fit securely into the device, resulting in the need to either replace the cable, or replace the charge port. Given the number of charge cycles a Cybercab will likely endure in comparison to a "day to day" personally driven Tesla, it's likely that charge port, or cable, failure will occur more often. Wireless charging, while not quite as efficient as plugging in, will assist in the vehicle's longevity, and lower its maintenance needs, because you're not going to be plugging in a cable, not to mention simplifying the whole rig by not needing to figure out how to automate plugging it in. In the long run, wireless charging is just the natural evolution of EV charging. In my eyes anyways...

The event went on for a while in-person after the livestream ended, so it's obviously not that.

I completely support this idea regardless whether the tech is ready or not today. Throw the idea out there and it will improve. What would the world be like if ten years ago Elon did not push for EVs then? The same people mocked, do they now?

So, the terms are currently used interchangeably. That said, Cybercab is the official name of Tesla's "Robotaxi model". Realistically speaking, any vehicle that is capable of driving on its own, without a human in command, to deliver a human elsewhere, is considered a "Robotaxi". So, if a Model 3/Y can achieve Unsupervised FSD, then they'd be considered robotaxis as well.

Wtf are you even talking about? You think Tesla booked the space like a kid's birthday party? You mean to say that Tesla couldn't make it worth WB's while to stay for a few more hours??? I'm sorry to say but this is the most delusional post I've seen on Reddit for a long while.

Have you ever used wireless chargers? They charge extremely slow, make the system very hot, and are pretty useless unless you have tons of time. And exactly to your point, if it’s gonna be a cab, the lines for charging would be ridiculous. it would honestly be charging for longer than it would be driving around making you money.

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Imagine changing your opinion.. The notion nowadays is that one needs to stick to their initial idea no matter what, even when you know it's not true anymore.

I’ve watched a lot of Tesla events and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen Elon have an “A-game” on. He’s always winging it, skipping over info, and mostly enjoying the party. It seems to work for them, but I don’t go into Tesla events expecting to have all of the information presented.

I appreciate the explanation. Thank you

Bless everyone on this comment thread for the level of detective work.

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Also, if you’re going to point out, the Chargeport can fail, you’re telling me the wireless charging unit and the internals for wireless charging are not gonna be susceptible to issues, especially when they get super hot and are used constantly?

Exactly lol. Tesla was on site at WB for weeks prior to the event and I can almost guarantee that they were still there the following day or even days to tear down the event

It really depends on the device and wireless charger though. The tesla ones can charge up to 15W but if two phones are on it I think it splits to 7.5W each. That's so slow. That isn't representative of the technology though. The Oneplus phones can charge up to 50W wirelessly. https://www.oneplus.com/ca_en/product/oneplus-airvooc-50w-wireless-charger#:~:text=With%2050W%20Max%20high%2Dpower,is%20placed%20horizontally%20or%20vertically They also have better cooling. There was a paper someone shared (I'll see if I can find it) that actually looked at plugging in to charge an Ev vs an induction pad and they said the difference in efficiency actually isn't that different. Plug in chargers aren't perfectly efficient.

Plugging-in Labour... What a 1st world problem.

If you're familiar with the terms of how they rented the space, feel free to loop me in. Otherwise, I'm just giving my view on how these things are typically managed.

You're right we're soo lazy. Let's hire an attendant to stand at every charger to manually plug in every robocab instead so we don't look so lazy to this redditor!!

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I have! I charge my phone exclusively via wireless charging, except in times of need, because cables wear out over time, resulting in a need to replace the phone sooner, or the cables. In terms of charging lines, we don't know the logistics of what that looks like yet. It's more likely that the charging will need to be maintained by the entity that is putting the Cybercab to use, so in theory, if I bought a Cybercab, I'd need to look into a place to deploy a charger, and that charger would be "mine". Charging, at the moment, looks like it would see the car with about 2-3 hours of downtime to charge, which *to me* doesn't seem unreasonable, assuming it can get to a charger. That said, there's a lot of unknowns at the moment.

I have no proof, it's pure speculation. Except for the medical thing. [That's a known incident](https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1844567949144883345) Also, I see what you did with the boot, and as a moderator, I'm going to handle that with a different [boot](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZljpTx_tJ78) as we consider what you're trying to do as toxic behavior.

We don't know what the heat is going to look like just yet. There's still a lot of unknowns, I'm just giving my view on things. Tesla knows what they're doing, so I've no reason to think that they won't have already considered these things.

Will stock go up now?

I own stock and two Teslas for 4 years now, and honestly after seeing that event, I feel like this was all just a show of what they’re planning and nothing is really done at this point to be honest. There’s a reason the event was done on a closed street to make sure it’s perfect. There’s also a reason why there is very little detail given about anything they showed. I’m sure they could do it with time, but this really just seems like the first time they unveiled the model S and they had to glue the hood on because they just needed to get it together to look good. That was from Elon’s book.

That'll be cool when it's released in a couple decades

I'd just assume the video put random numbers on there and none of those are accurate

It’s odd that Tesla doesn’t think their Optimus bots can handle overseeing the much more efficient wired charging process. Wireless charging is inefficient and wasteful. Use a bot to manually plug in the cars to charge them and send them off. It’s still “automated”. Do they not have faith in the AI technology they are showing off?

This is cool. I hope it gets added to the lineup moving forward. I like having USB-C AND wireless charging on my phone, so why not have both on my AI-driven robot car?

Surely those robots can handle this simple task

You can’t pump your own gas in the state of New Jersey.

What purpose would that serve?

25kW isn't terrible. Not adequate for road trips, but if the car is doing it autonomously and the owner can do other things then that's fine.

That’s the same efficiency as wired AC charging. There are losses getting to the DC battery voltage.

Wireless charging is too complex and inefficient. Why can’t we just have a MagSafe-like charging dock that automatically snaps into place when you drive over it.

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Aim is 6 miles per kw. This means roughly 240 miles per charge. At 60 mph that’s a charge every 4 hours (if it will be constantly driving). The math is 4+1.5 =5.5 + 4 + 1.5 = 11 + 4 + 1.5 = 16.5 + 4 + 1.5 = 22 hours So that’s 6 hours spent charging. And Elon said we won’t need those parking lots? Seems like we’ll need way more since it will need these charging spots all over it can’t drive back 100 miles to charge. To be clear I dont have anything against RoboTaxi... just more of a thought experiment on my part in regards of practicality.

…wireless charging without the loss due to induction? Think of how a roomba charges. That’s how charge the automated lifts at my logistics facility charge themselves.

Perhaps, but Tesla is known to put interesting info in the videos, so I'm more inclined to believe the video.

The robots would likely get damaged repeatedly People are assholes. Not to mention that means deploying a $20,000-30,000 asset where a $1,000 pad on the ground might do fine.

> I have! I charge my phone exclusively via wireless charging, except in times of need, because cables wear out over time, resulting in a need to replace the phone sooner, or the cables. And relying too much on wireless charging causes the battery to wear out faster over time due to the generated heat, resulting in a need to replace the phone sooner, or the battery. Or the wireless charger. A cable is a lot cheaper than a battery or a wireless charger. And I’m pretty sure that every single cable I’ve owned has outlived the device that it charged. > Charging, at the moment, looks like it would see the car with about 2-3 hours of downtime to charge, which to me doesn’t seem unreasonable, assuming it can get to a charger. But wired charging can charge a car in 30 minutes.

"The best part is not part", adding a charge port increases the cost and complexity of the vehicle.

I don't perceive this being used for road trips, it's going to be for local/home charging. Pretty sure the Cybercab isn't meant to go between cities, let alone road trips.

* This is not a phone charger and comparing it to that isn't that informative. * It's comparably efficient to wired charging. SAE testing demonstrated up to 94% grid-to-pack efficiency which is comparable to a wired L2 charger \[for SAE J2954 at 11 kW; Tesla shows 25 kW but should be similarly efficient given HEVO claims up to 95% grid-to-pack for 50kW and IIRC InductEV up to 93% for 50-75kW\] * Coil-to-coil efficiency is up to 99% so at \~25kW passively cooling the primary and secondary coils should be fine. Tesla already actively manages battery temperatures, so heat shouldn't be a concern. * 25 kW seems fine for opportunistic charging between fares and off-peak and more than fine off-hours, Robotaxis won't have 24 hour 100% utilization so charging shouldn't impact revenues; If the pack is 40kWh with a target >5.5 kw/Mi that's a solid >220 mi of range. * Robotaxis should be able to optimize trips and charge levels to keep the taxi fleet busy, it's not like you have to charge to 100% in the middle of the day, just opportunistically bump up the charge when demand is lower.

You might argue it's cheaper to have a wireless induction pad than a robot arm to plug in a connector (including maintenance). If they truly believe the at-scale complete redesign of cities that robot taxis will apparently bring about, then there's no question the energy lost to inductive charging will eclipse the cost of robot arms

Exactly this

This isn't a phone charger. Tesla actively manages the battery pack temperature so heat shouldn't be a concern \[and at 25kW passively cooling the primary and secondary coil should be fine\] 25kW (if the max) is already over 2.3x as fast as AC charging, should be fine for opportunistic, off-peak and off-hours charging.

The degradation wouldn’t be a problem for the car, no, but the generation of heat shows you how immensely inefficient it is. You’re immediately losing 20-30% of all energy to heat, and then some more to the cooling system. It’s a waste of energy.

I think this is a great question but I wonder about the "safety" of the bots. We get cable cutters, I'm sure there are people that would want to steal/damage Optimus bot, not to mention it would be and expensive generalised bot for a specific task. Wireless would of course eliminate wire theft as well. That being said everything were are talking about is likely vaporware.

SAE testing demonstrated 11 kW wireless power transfer grid-to-pack efficiencies up to 94%, comparable to wired L2 chargers. HEVO claims 91-95% grid-to-pack efficiency at 50kW and InductiveEV up to 93%,  Wiferion, the company Tesla acquired IIRC claimed 93%. This is not a phone charger, efficiency seems fine.

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Moving parts and a port under a car \[that seems less than ideal anywhere with snow/salt/ice\] doesn't seem better than a weather sealed wireless pad with no moving parts.

If they built our cars capable of spitting out the charger it would just take a little bit of hanging apparatuses to cover 2/3s of the process (plug in, wait/monitor, unplug) . They'd just need someone to plug in, but that could be handled often by giving someone else there 20 free miles to get out and plug them in, or paying the Culvers it's at $1 a time to watch a screen and send someone out and plug in stall 2D. Plugging in could be solved a number of ways, it's the waiting and then unplugging at the right time that makes it a chore and monitoring issue. A car is literally stuck until someone helps. Also even at home you could install an eyelet and a little cord to suspend your cable from the ceiling. I've often found it funny that there might come a day where we have to call our neighbors and be like "hey Jim, can you unplug my car? I'm 6 states away and need it.....no it will drive all the way here fine, it just can't leave the garage on its own."

"The best part is no part". Yes, they could engineer something that could pop the charger out, or having a mindless idiot plug the cars in, etc, etc. At the end of the day, all of those solutions are, *technically*, more complex than just using wireless charging.

I wish cyberbeast had induction charging, then maybe my wife would end up charging it occasionally.

Not correct. In Oslo Norway We have wireless chargers since 2022 charging at about 50kw with 93% efficiency. Don’t think Tesla is doing any worse if they want to. They will likely just find the sweet spot between speed, efficiency and usability. Probably much lower charging speeds than capable of.

[Should be a retrofittable option down the line](https://insideevs.com/news/713486/cybertruck-inductive-charging-equipped-manual/)

Because the politicians and citizens responsible for that law are economically inept.

The people who mock now will not give him credit when the idea is successful in the future. But they certainly will blame him if it fails.

The robotaxi will never come out anyway so not to worry.

They literally did. This was in the slideshow.

Hell Yeah Brother!

Did you really call Elon vaporware? lol

Wireless charging tech wasn’t at >90% efficiency when he said that. It is now after several breakthroughs. But I guess you’re just choosing to ignore that part.

Elon Musk is very much a fool, there is ample evidence of this already.

So you’d be willing to invest in my Time Machine idea?

Just make a giant roomba dock instead. Faster charging and less energy waste by doing it wirelessly.

😂😂😂

You mean the guy who’s behind the only company in the world that created reusable rocket boosters?

Wireless charging requires parts though. Parts vehicles could drive over 50 times a day and parts under objects doing 80 mph down roads.

I’m sorry, are you suggesting that because of this, it discounts the ample evidence that he is a fool? What a ridiculous take. As an aside, What do you know about the history of reusable rocket boosters? Particularly the economics of it?

They should learn from cell phones, wireless charging is bad as of current day technology

You're not wrong, however, despite the risks to those components, it's still going to be more cost effective than having a charge port and plugging in.

I've been charging my cellphone exclusively via wireless for years now. Kept having issues with the charge ports. Either the cables gets worn out and needs to be replaced, or I have to replace the phone to start damaging a new charge port.

If Optimus can perform simple tasks then it would be easier to build in the ability for a supercharger to plug itself into a car’s charge port. It’s a very simple tasks and this would also allow people who buy these cars to charge with plugs.

In your case it’s the only option, but I really hate the phone being too hot

Might be the lesser of two "evils"... can't really say it's completely autonomous when you have to manually plug it in.

They have the tech in Optimus, it would be easy to use a piece of that tech in superchargers to allow a plug to be automatically plugged in and unplugged. And obviously robotaxis will be using private chargers, not public ones otherwise they’re never going to get charged. The public damaging them is of no concern. You don’t need to have an Optimus robot at every supercharger, you just need to put able to use self driving software and a tiny piece of the tech within Optimus to hit a fixed, target that’s always in a small zone. If they have faith in Optimus at all, this is easy.

If only there were a way to play an animation on the giant 3 screens behind Elon

Going to circle back to the argument of "Best part is no part". Wireless charging is the epitome of that.

So, you don't do ultra fast charging, unless needed. I have an S24 Ultra, battery lasts all day, and I turned off fast charging at night.

They definitely did not

"Best part is no part"

Optimus is not capable of automation right now and likely will not be for the foreseeable future. It can barely pour a beer even with human puppeteering.

Very few taxis drive 60mph in average. It’s stop and go in city, average speeds probably closer to 30mph.

When the entire existence of robotaxi is to be cheap and inductive charging results in a 60-70% loss over plugging in when perfectly aligned, how is that going to be viable? When it takes 3-4 times as long to charge, how is that viable? When people purchase a robotaxi, they don’t have the ability to charge at home? They can’t use solar to charge it? It literally goes against every missions statement of the company as far as efficiency and sustainability. For a company that can build a robot that it claims will be your personal butler and revolutionize the landscape of labor, they can’t build in a system that can take a plug and hit a fixed target that’s in the same place more or less every time? The entire point is the inconsistencies of it all. And if you think adding inductive charging is adding no parts, you’re sadly uninformed. It will require an overhaul to the charging system which is much more expensive than utilizing a system and parts that are tried, trusted, and already being mass manufactured.

Not in California, street speeds are usually 40 or 45 mph unless its a school zone, and freeway (which are everywhere and used almost on every drive anywhere) speed limit is usually 65 mph but no one goes slower than 80 mph. Anyhow, it wouldnt help. Going slower (and increasing time between charges) simply mean fewer/slower rides, means congesting streets, lower benefit. What I mean by that is that the cars are out on the roads for longer time for each drive instead of getting it over quickly so that the street can be less congested.

I’ll refer you to my response on your other comment but to summarize, you’re misinformed if you believe inductive charging doesn’t require new parts.

The lack of a charge port is such a miss. Can't have a beach day with this thing

> When the entire existence of robotaxi is to be cheap and inductive charging results in a 60-70% loss over plugging in when perfectly aligned, how is that going to be viable? My understanding of the [J2954 standard](https://www.sae.org/news/2020/10/new-sae-wireless-charging-standard-is-ev-game-changer) is that wireless charging can be 94% efficient. My understanding is that this isn't just inductive charging, but a slightly different method of wireless charging. > When it takes 3-4 times as long to charge, how is that viable? The battery will be smaller, as demonstrated in the video, they're quoting an hour to go from 35% to, presumably, 100% at 25kW, so at max from 0-100% we're probably looking at 90-120 minutes. Considering this is mostly going to be puttering around town, I don't think the downtime will be that bad. > When people purchase a robotaxi, they don’t have the ability to charge at home? Presumably you're not buying one of these if you don't have a means of charging it. If you don't have charging at home, then you'd probably just use the app to use someone else's taxi. > They can’t use solar to charge it? Solar has, time and time again, proven to add a lot of cost and not a lot of benefit. On average you end up with like 30mi a day, it's not worth the added cost. > they can’t build in a system that can take a plug and hit a fixed target that’s in the same place more or less every time? I'm sure they can, but again, "The best part is no part". Charge ports can fail over time, wireless is more beneficial in the long run. > It will require an overhaul to the charging system You know the Cybertruck has a plug in for wireless charging right? So there's a pretty simply retrofit plan in place there. If it was complicated, and required an overhaul, I would expect the Cybertruck to not have a simply plug for it... I think there's a fair bit of misunderstanding the technology because there's not a lot of what's been announced about it. I'm citing J2954, however, this could be a newer standard as well. Tesla has weighed the options, benefits, and pit falls, and decided this is the optimum route. Typically their chosen path has panned out to be the optimal path.

I'll refer you to my [response](https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/1g6lbmn/robotaxi_wireless_charging/lskms0c/) in the other thread.

25kw is too much for domestic, that exceeds a 100a 240v service

"The best part is no part". Charge ports fail. Need a solution that doesn't need someone to babysit it. Remember in 2018-2019 when the tips of charge ports were breaking off in chargers? Or the Superchargers themselves, how the pins can get wrecked, requiring cable replacement? Wireless *should* be more durable than that...

You're right, this is likely whatever will be a Cybercab "supercharger" of sorts.

Been wirelessly charging for a couple years overnight to 100%, no problems

Not in cars. Efficiency is actually very high with the tests that have been done in the wireless car charging world.

Oh yes they did: https://www.youtube.com/live/6v6dbxPlsXs?t=982 (at 16:22)

Why not have a little hydraulic lift under it with magnets and pogo pins or something? Wouldn’t that be far more efficient?

This is the future. We will all install wireless charging pads for our driveways and we just park and forget it.

KISS (keep it simple, stupid)

Why do you say that

They may have showed it to the people present but not on the stream. The stream showed a corner of it, the rest was hidden.

Also, for a taxi, 240 miles at an average of 25 mph (city driving, starts and stops, picking people up) would give an effective service capacity of 9-10 hours. That seems reasonable.

Roadster

He also previously said electric planes weren’t feasible and has since changed tune on that due to technology breakthroughs We’re supposed to change/update our thoughts on things as the situation and parameters change

[SAE Standard J2954](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAE_J2954) already has efficiency rates of up to 94% for grid to battery. If Tesla's is in the same ballpark (no idea if they will use their own standard or SAE's) then it should easily have parity with wired charging. J9254 uses resonant inductive coupling which has a longer range and is more efficient than the small magnetic fields generated with normal inductive charging used for smaller devices like phones and headphones. Wireless charging for smaller devices is often inefficient in real world scenarios because the coils are misaligned when a user just places their phone casually on the charging pad. RIC in a nutshell aligns the frequencies or resonance of the transmitter and the receiver to increase efficiency significantly. Given the video shows a greater distance between the car and the charging pad, and how the car is automated and can line itself up perfectly on the charging pad, it's reasonable to assume that Tesla is using this newer technology, or is planning to for their wireless charger.

Additional points of failure. "Best part is no part", having a hydraulic lift means having the hydraulic lift. If wireless charging gets the job done, then it doesn't matter.

Doesn't inductive charging have significant heat leaching? Not an issue for a small device like a phone but for a whole car losing even 20% of power from charging to heat will rack up the energy bills quick. Really buzzare that it has no options for a manual cable charge. Anyone who wants to run a fleet of these from a warehouse might want to be able to save some cash by using a super charger that can charge faster and cheaper.

Assuming Tesla is going to leverage the [J2954 standard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAE_J2954), then we're looking at 85-94% efficiency in power use, which as I understand it is the same, or better, than using a wired cable. Wireless charging will end up being the right call, especially when you have places like Florida testing the idea of wireless charging while on the road with their SR516 road construction.

Why is everyone so obsessed with the Roadster all of a sudden? Is this all y’all have left?

Better than a cable I'll 100% doubt. Better than the 80% I'm guessing? That's a maybe and I guess we'll see when it comes out and gets tested.

I guess…the whole show was basically an animation so it would make sense

So they did show it at the event, which is the opposite of what you said. It's true that the livestream director switched to showing the slideshow kinda late, so the slide was only slightly visible on the stream, but Elon talked about it on the stream and it was indeed shown.

They had a robot snake charger. Don’t know what happened to it.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMM0lRfX6YI

Got replaced with the wireless charger. That snake is complicated as hell and would likely brake often from misuse. "Best part is not part"...

Correct. Also, keep in mind that Tesla doesn't typically just jump into things blindly. There's a fair degree of research efforts and such that end up proving that their approach is going to be the optimal one.

What do you mean “all y’all have left”? You think this is the only Elon vapourware example?

Because it’s Elon Musk. It was already supposed to be out 4 years ago making owners $30K a year. The Boring Tunnel fiasco. The Hyperloop(LOL). His narcissistic reactionary brain(as evidenced by his tweets). Multiple examples(including last week’s event) of where he tried to make out the Optimus Robot’s are performing tasks autonomously when they are not. The Cyber Truck promised price vs. actual. Full self driving being solved by 2018. The roadster. Landing on Mars to begin mining by 2022. The financial disaster that is his purchase of Twitter.

I think reasonable skepticism is fair. I’m not out here just hating, I think it’s cool and hope wireless charging and Robotaxi delivers, but there’s plenty of plain realistic evidence to show that these will either be delayed heavily from the original ETD or never actually arrive in its true form entirely.

Wireless charging is the way to go whether it is efficient or not. The tech will improve overtime.

It was not shown on the livestream which is essentially the show. A couple thousand people attended, that's not the same thing at all. There's a reason this is just NOW circulating, getting upvoted, Sawyer tweeting about it, etc. The communication from the show to the livestream was poor and a lot of details like this were not conveyed unless you were at the show. Not a single mention of wireless charging speed has been mentioned in the media until now - don't you think that's a fairly massive piece of information?

Its literally just a math question of average cost of repairs/maintenance on a mechanical system vs the cost of wasted power. As long as somebody did that math I have no problem with it, I just hope they are not doing it just for the cool factor of wireless charging...

Not gonna work, at least not as simple and safe as a wireless inductive charging.

Sounds like you'd need to charge them all in the middle of the day then if you wanted to use them for both giving morning commute rides and evening rides.

You asked why they didn't show this at the event. They did, but the livestream director switched to showing the slideshow a little late so it was cut off. So the answer to your question is the livestream director made a bit of a mistake. Happy now? Elon clearly talked about the Robotaxi having wireless charging on the stream. That information was not missing from the stream. The exact speed wasn't clearly shown, but are you really going to freak out over that? They could've easily withheld that information completely until much closer to the release of the car. Not every detail is disclosed at reveal events for cars. You must be new to this.

prove it pls sounds like a lie

why not? he is talking about a roomba that plugs like an apple watch charger

>Tesla doesn't typically just jump into things blindly. No, but they do promote things blindly. "We do these things not because they are easy, but because we thought they were going to be easy!"

So... It initially felt like the “cyber cab” was the specific 2-seat vehicle at the demo and “robo taxi ” was the app / service that may include other models (3, Y, S? and X?), as well as the “robovan” thing. Any vehicle capable of robotaxiing folks about. I also saw Tesla was trademarking "robobus" at one point. However, now that I'm looking around, there's nothing on the Tesla we-robot site that mentions "cyber cab" and the image assets refer to the 2-seat vehicle as Robotaxi so … well, there you have it lol

I’ll think about it. Ask me again yesterday.

The roomba, at least the one I have, charge using metal contacts touching each others on the roomba and the docking station. These will overtime get worn or debris build up causing the contacts to lose properly connectivity. As far as I know, the apple watch uses similar wireless charging method as to what the Cybercab will use.

You have a prototype showing it is working or almost working?

Polly want a cracker.

25kW through inductive charging? Wow that’s faster than my wired charger.

What are you even saying? It was not shown on the live stream, therefore the event did not highlight the wireless charging. No, a small edge of the demo that is not visible except for in the background without any meaningful information does not count.. End of story.

I mean they can rotate in and out by need right? Rotating in and out at staggering stages of charge until each are close to 80% by 4pm

Never arrive because of the roadster? FSD has had lots of progress over the years. What else haven’t they eventually delivered on?

Don’t read too much into it. Remember cybertruck had 600 mile range on a demo screen.

It's a robo fleet, I'm sure if battery is low enough, chargers are available, they're near by and pick ups aren't backed up they will opportunistically charge anytime.

In a few years mid-day charging while solar output is at the peak is going to be the cheapest time to charge. Charging in the middle of the night, when demand is exceptionally low and wind/hydro/geothermal/nuclear is producing will also be rather cheap.

In a few years, due to the low cost of solar power it will be cheap to charge during the middle of the day. Also cheap to charge in the middle of the night due to wind/hydro/geothermal/nuclear. Also the wireless chargers can be installed in a row so that parking areas can be converted to have almost no "driving area". Just long queues of cars like a rental car return lines. Cars low on charge enter at the rear and fully charge cars drive out from the front of the line. Cars slowly move forward from one charging pad to another as cars leave the line. This minimizes wasted space in parking areas which is an expense for any company operating a fleet of vehicles.

Battery capacity would be: 25kw * 1hour = 25kw/h to full charge for 35% 25kw/h = 0.65 * full charge Full charge = 38kw/h 5.5 miles per kw/h would give this 209 miles of range. Compared to model 3 rwd with 57.5kw/h pack and 272 miles of range, this is a battery size reduction of 34%, but a range reduction of only 23%. I think it's a good efficiency trade off. Model 3 gets roughly 4.7 miles per kw/h

good luck fighting physics

This looks super cool. But, given the lack of details or specs from the We Robot event, I’m worried this isn’t a video of an actually working demo and is just a video of what they want to achieve.

Heat, ac, not letting the battery get below 5-10%. Would be closer to 5-8 hours, but not bad if it’s part of a fleet that can cycle the cars needing charge

I want this at home. I’ll be buying a new car in 2026. I’m choosing between Tesla, Rivian or Porsche more than likely. If this exists, it will be a big reason I buy one brand over another.

There’s no way a normal wire connector wastes 5% of the power. That would be a *tremendous* amount of heat at the wattages they’re doing, like way more than an oven coil.

oh true , my bad. I was thinking that the charger will go and plug itself up like an apple watch charger

That's not really plugging itself up, that's just magnets. I mean that could work but then you are introducing wear and tear by constantly disconnecting and reconnecting.

I could see someday installing a wireless charging pad in my driveway, allowing robotaxies to charge on days I'm at work. Billable kwh at current utilities rate plus a small profit margin to the owner could work throughout a city if the software existed.

I'm amazed at how few people in the US bother to look beyond their borders. Wireless charging in Oslo for Taxis is pretty normal btw https://youtu.be/ezBpIVYLYNs?si=iCnqzi2-NxsfBJ1Z

It would be so cool if we could retrofit our teslas with this

The amount of credulity some of you give tesla’s claims is just incredible.

The Cybertruck has a port to be able to retrofit this into them.

Interesting, that one hits 50kW. Unfortunately, people in the US, won't treat these things with respect like in Europe.

That is a good question. Is FSD almost working?

I feel like it would be better if the charger moved to the car.

4:20 charge to 69%?

How efficient is wireless? At California prices ($0.50-60/kwh) I would hate to have significant added loss due to wireless delivery.

J2954 wireless charging EV standard says 80-95% efficient, which seems desirable.

Is that realistic? Isn’t 95% optimistic even for direct wired DCFC?

You can look up the J2954 standard. It's not some mythalical Tesla secret

I’m just skeptical, that’s all.

That's a fine stance to have, I'm just letting you know that, as far as I'm aware, this isn't some secret Tesla thing. Wireless charging is used in Europe and gets up to 50kW through a fairly thick chunk of ice on top of the charger. And the standard is well documented as it's been around for a bit now

Gotcha, thanks.

It’s kWh not kW/h, as it is by definition the amount of power drawn used during *one* hour. (Or conversely, the amount of hours you are drawing 1kW.) Else makes sense what you say.

The snake charger seemed easy to do, but I guess too expensive?

Likely easy to break, and tedious to repair often. Best part is no part

Yeah I think that is totally fine for a taxi. There is no human that needs to wait for the charge anyways. So even if it could be used 24/7 this would an equipment effectiveness of around 80-90%.

Why not? Do you live with 100 miles of the beach? With a \~200 mi range you likely wouldn't need to charge for the round trip. \[If you live further, then request a Model 3/Y based robotaxi/rental for your roadtrip\] If it's compatible with the [J2954 WPT standard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAE_J2954) then beaches could install any number of charging pads in parking spots \[which could be used by any vehicle with wireless charging added\], no different than installing destination chargers. If the beach doesn't have charging, then autonomously send it to a nearby charging location for it to charge up while you are doing your thing \[or as a robotaxi, it'll just continue handling other fares for the rest of the day and you'll book another for your trip home\]

Wireless charging usually causes a lot of heat right? Would that be the case here?

Unknown. Tesla just posted on X that they've got over 90% efficiency when MKBHD challenged them on the heat and efficiency, so it seems like Tesla did their homework

Or... they have a new wireless charging standard that is plenty efficient. An official Tesla account has already confirmed it's well over 90% efficient.

Can't a smart bot defend itself from being damaged from weak inferior humans? Hmm

Yes, unfortunately almost working doesn't matter and is worth nothing.

What is the brand so I can research it?

Pareto principle hits hard here. Looks like 80% self driving is easy while reaching even only 98% is impossible and always 5y in the future.

Tesla is trying to not create Skynet

Exactly. They need 99.99999999999999999999999999999% accuracy for regulators to even consider it. It's not happening.

Couldn't the robot just fight those people? The cars are twenty to thirty times safer than humans, surely the robots are equally good at fighting...

Are you sure?

Can also charge between trips

This would be cool if it wasn't so dumb.

The red brown fox.

The red brown fox.

Whether on the ground or car it's added complexity vs fixed in place coils, including engineering for snow and ice. Snow, water and ice doesn't impact wireless power transfer. People repeatedly assume wired chargers are 100% efficient when grid-to-pack there are grid transformers, power electronics in cabinets converting AC-DC and regulating voltage, liquid cooled cables for supercharging, voltage drop over cables, onboard AC-DC conversion for destination/home charging \[plus Tesla managing battery temps and running computers\]... wired charging has losses yet no one is complaining at the supercharger about "needless waste" or getting worked up about their home charger being ≤ 95% efficient. The coil-to-coil efficiency of wireless is purportedly up to 99%; HEVO is a bit more nuanced stating "average **coil-to-coil** efficiency is 97.5% at varying z air gap and xy misalignment following SAE requirements" with their 50kW solution claiming 91-95% **grid-to-pack** efficiency. It's comparable to wired \[and robotaxis and self-parking should be well suited for optimizing coil alignment\] Tesla tweeted their \[grid-to-pack\] efficiency is "well above 90%". Wiferion, the company Tesla acquired, stated 93% efficiency. Elon tweeted "there is no meaningful efficiency difference between inductive and conductive charging if the system is designed right". They unveiled the robotaxi as wireless only, even the Cybertruck launched with a port to add WPT... *but you expect them to engineer and deploy an entirely different solution*

Thanks for this

The biggest miss here is that robotaxis will have down time which means if they could also put power into the grid they could make money.

Depending on WPT (Wireless Power Transfer) type, it could be used in such way, that power would be delivered to a single point. Depending on configuration of WPT, 1 meter distance difference could be not as better as one might assume. That is, if the product works as intended and this is not "advertise something good and try to solve it later" kind of approach, like we saw Tesla do multiple times.

Wireless systems can work through a couple of inches of snow or rain-wet. And no moving parts...