Wirelessly Charging Your Porsche EV Like an iPhone Is a Reality. But Is It the Future?
Wireless EV charging is about to become a thing. Porsche will launch the feature on the 2026 Cayenne Electric, and it’s pretty trick.
While the option has yet to be priced, Porsche engineers are convinced this is the future because it’s easier and even more convenient than grabbing a cord and plugging in after pulling into a garage. That might be code for: People are lazy and this is a solution.
Sajjad Khan, a member of the executive board for Porsche AG Car IT division, said just park the car and it charges automatically. “Want to make the charging as easy as possible for our customers. The driving is fun, so the charging needs to be super simple.” He noted this technology needs to work everywhere, at home, and your destination.
When the Cayenne Electric arrives next year buyers will have three options: order a Cayenne EV without wireless charging and it’ll never have it, order the car with the prep package for an unnamed price but not fully kitted out with the hardware, or order the car with the full hardware package that enables the wireless charging.
Buyers that opt for the prep package will be ready for the future if they choose the wireless charging route later, as the charging plate can then be installed at a dealer, according to Porsche High Voltage lead Dr. Maximilian Müller.
The vehicle-side inductive plate is mounted underneath the front electric motor and cooling systems.
Porsche’s wireless charging engineers said the system is 90% efficient compared to 94% efficiency of plugging into a wired charger. For comparison, a smartphone is about 60% efficient when charging wirelessly due to thermal losses and smaller inductive plates.
Charging wirelessly enables up to 11-kw of current to transfer while the Cayenne Electric is in normal ride height mode. Lifting the Cayenne Electric up on its air suspension would make the system less efficient, and theoretically lowering it would make it more efficient, but Müller said it’s designed to work at the normal ride height to make things easier.
Initially the system will require a one-time wireless pairing between the vehicle and the charging plate, like pairing a set of Bluetooth headphones. Once paired, the system will know and recognize the plate is at the owners garage, place of business, or its home location thanks to GPS.
When pulling into a garage that’s GPS marked two green lines will appear on the 12.25-inch curved touchscreen as part of the front camera view. This will show where the vehicle’s currently lined up and has a green circle on the virtual vehicle where the inductive charging plate is located. The charging page shows up on the screen as separate circle. The driver simply needs to drive over the plate and match the circles like a video game.
Porsche wireless charging engineers told The Drive the inductive charging plates have tolerances of 5.9 inches front to back and 7.87 inches left to right, so it doesn’t have to be perfectly aligned each and every time for the circles to match up.
Once pulled over the pad the system does a check and ramps up to 11 kw within seconds. If any object gets near the plate the system will pause the charging session but not lose the connection. Once the object is no longer detected, like a leg, foot, or cat, underneath the car, the system will resume charging.
Testing the system proved to be as simple as pulling into a garage parking spot and being centered. If this is the future of charging there’s one less excuse for people to not want an EV, because this is just parking a car and then it’s automatically refuled.
