Electric roads: Chris Bowen checks out wireless charging, says it’s probably not for Australia

Federal energy and climate minister Chris Bowen has checked out one of the world’s first examples of wireless charging for electric vehicles in Detroit, the home of the US car industry, but says that the technology is probably not suitable for widespread deployment in Australia.

Bowen was in the US for the UN climate meeting last month, where Australia presented its new 2035 emissions reduction targets, and he took a side trip to Detroit, where he met Governor Whitmer and local authorities, and checked out the state’s trial on wireless charging.

“As they explained it to me, it’s like when you put your mobile phone on one of those chargers, which you don’t plug in, you just put it on top,” Bowen said in an interview in the latest episode of Energy Insiders, the weekly podcast hosted on The Driven’s sister site Renew Economy.

“When you drive over these chargers, you’ll get a bit of a charge into the car. Now, it’s obviously an expensive way to do it to start with, and it won’t be on every road – far from it.

“But you can conceive that in high traffic routes, particularly where there’s a lot of delivery trucks which will become electric, for example, it playing some sort of a role.

“We’re not proposing it here in Australia, but I just found it was a very interesting innovation in Detroit, the home of the traditional American car industry.”

The wireless charging was launched in Michigan in late 2023, with a quarter-mile stretch of 14th Street equipped with inductive charging coils that wirelessly charge electric vehicles (EVs) as they drive, marking a pivotal step toward electrified, emission-free roads.

(Those are the white markings on the road that Bowen is looking at in the photo above).

It has been using a Ford electric van – dubbed Ellie – that is shuttling to and from a nearby depot. It seeks to do most of its wireless charging in the middle of the day, so that it is powered by solar, and it combines a mix of dynamic charging (while moving) and static charging (while parked).

The most recent report can be found here.