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Tesla filed a wi-fi EV charging patent earlier this 12 months that was simply printed by the World Mental Property Group (WIPO) on September 6. This was noticed by SETI Park on X (previously generally known as Twitter), and whereas the overall idea is absolutely nothing new, it implies that a part of what Tesla is engaged on for robotaxis and will reveal at its upcoming robotaxi occasion on October 10 is a wi-fi charging resolution for them.
After I say the overall idea is absolutely nothing new, that’s as a result of that is nonetheless an inductive charging system (the commonest kind) and only a primary continuation of wi-fi EV charging, which I’ve been protecting for greater than a decade and has certainly been round for for much longer than that. Additionally, Tesla bought a wireless EV charging firm about a year agowhich I wrote about just before it happenedand we had lined that firm for years previous to the acquisition. The system is just like what one other firm offered for Chevy Volt drivers a decade in the past. I feel I first covered the company in 2011a mere 13 years in the past.
So, once more, whereas Tesla simply filed a patent that innovates on the thought in some delicate manner, the takeaway right here is much less concerning the patent than about Tesla’s robotaxi ambitions. However, to start out with, if you wish to discover the patent, it’s right here. That is the summary: “The present disclosure relates to systems and methods for estimating one or more parameters associated with a converter to configure wireless charging settings for a wireless charging system. In some embodiments, a method includes: perturbing a first coil that is inductively coupled with a second coil; estimating one or more circuit parameters of a converter that comprises the first coil and the second coil based on the perturbing; and configuring one or more wireless charging settings of a wireless charging system based on the one or more circuit parameters, where the wireless charging system is configured to charge a battery pack of a vehicle based on wireless transfer of power between the first coil and the second coil.” Once more, nothing breakthrough right here, nevertheless it exhibits that Tesla continues to work on wi-fi charging.
A number of years in the past, Tesla was engaged on a “snake charger” that Elon Musk tweeted (this was lengthy earlier than he purchased Twitter). It was thought for a very long time after that, and had seemingly been the plan, that Tesla would roll out these type of robotic chargers to cost vehicles, significantly robotaxis. Nonetheless, it appears that evidently concept has been useless for some time, and wi-fi EV charging actually looks like the simplest, most dependable, most sturdy, and most reasonable option to cost up self-driving robotaxis.
The important factor, nonetheless, is whether or not Tesla can enhance its FSD (Full Self Driving) tech sufficient to deploy robotaxis. There are two key parts to this. The {hardware} and software program have to be at a stage the place 1) Tesla can be assured sufficient with it to take legal responsibility out of the fingers of Tesla homeowners and settle for the legal responsibility itself, and a pair of) regulators would really feel comfy approving utterly self-driven robotaxis on the roads these regulators are in control of (whether or not that be the streets of California, Texas, Florida, Abu Dhabi, Singapore, China, or Mars).
Nobody is aware of when Tesla will get to these milestones. Tesla FSD has improved massively prior to now 6 months, after not enhancing a lot in any respect for a number of years. Nonetheless, I’m nonetheless not sure how a lot Tesla can get previous “The Seesaw Problem,” which I first wrote about in 2012. Perhaps it could, possibly it could’t. Current updates to FSD have once more been rolling out rather more slowly than Elon Musk had forecasted earlier this 12 months or perhaps a few months in the past. After about 8 years of huge overestimates of how briskly the corporate will obtain robotaxi functionality, it’s not possible to know when Elon Musk and Tesla is perhaps on the house stretch versus treading water. We’ll see. Within the meantime, you may watch a video of my latest testing of FSD version 12.5 with David Havasi here:
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