I bought my 2015 Nissan Leaf used back in 2017. When I bought it the people at the dealership knew basically nothing about it, and in the trunk I found a wireless/plugless charger from this company: https://pluglesspower.com
I’ve never used it, because it requires a 240 volt outlet and my garage doesn’t have that. Instead I just plug in and trickle charge every night, which works just fine. Now we are moving to a new house and having some other electrical work done and I found this thing sitting in my basement and wondered to myself whether I should install it and use it.
The cost would be whatever it costs for my electrician to put a 240V outlet in my garage (I don’t have a quote on that yet). The only benefit would be saving me the minor hassle of having to plug my car in every night. I also worry about it being less efficient than the trickle charger that came with my Leaf, but I’ve seen conflicting info on that. Also (please tell me if this is crazy) I have some fears about a giant magnetic field in my attached garage giving me cancer, like living under a high tension power line.
Anyway, I’d love to hear your thoughts!
I don’t think I’d use a wireless EV charger simply due to the efficiency loss, especially from a company with so few technical specs (easily accessible) on their site.
Both from a financial perspective, but also that any energy lost to inefficiency is lost as heat.
I mean, they mention their efficiency as:
“Plugless is ~12% less efficient than corded L2 30amp 240V charging systems and ~7% less efficient than corded Level 1 charging systems.”
What does that mean?
12% higher losses? eg. 88.88% efficiency Versus a 90% baseline?
12% reduction in efficiency? eg. 79.2% efficiency versus a 90% baseline?
12 percentage point reduction? eg. 78% efficiency versus a 90% baseline?
Or something else entirely.