With the proliferation of screens and an increasing emphasis on digital experience, it’s becoming very common to hear new cars getting compared to smartphones – and not in a good way. The upcoming Porsche Cayenne EV, though, will be like a phone in a slightly different way, because, as well as plugging it in, you’ll be able to charge it wirelessly.
That’s thanks to it marking the debut of Porsche’s wireless home charging system, an optional extra coming to the car that’ll allow owners to have a wireless charging plate installed in their garages or on their drives. It’s fully weatherproofed, and you can even drive over it without massively breaking it.
Porsche Cayenne wireless charging – front
Park the car over the pad, and a receiver installed on the underbody begins juicing the car up using a magnetic field and lots of other sciencey stuff we didn’t pay enough attention to in GCSE physics to wrap our heads around. It’ll charge the Cayenne at up to 11kW, the same rate as a typical wired home charger.
If all this sounds excellent but you’re worried about your cat getting zapped if it decides the underneath of your Cayenne looks like a lovely spot for a snooze, then you can breathe easy: the system will automatically shut off if it detects a living creature, as well as any errant metal objects. Mind you, how you’ll feel if you head outside to find you’ve only got 20 per cent charge because Tiddles decided to go for a nap is up to you.
Porsche Cayenne wireless charging – parking view
The system is integrated with Porsche’s app, meaning you can track your charge and link it up with several different cars, if you’ve for some reason decided to get a fleet of Cayennes. It’s also equipped with WLAN and LTE modules to allow it to receive over-the-air updates, while a special view in the Cayenne’s surround-view parking system will allow you to position it in the perfect spot for max charging efficiency.
The system will launch in Europe next year, before being rolled out worldwide later on. Though it sounds rather new and flashy, Porsche’s not actually the first company to get here – way back in 2018, a similar system was launched to charge up the battery in the plug-in hybrid BMW 530e, although it was only a pilot programme that hasn’t yet become a regular option.
Porsche Cayenne wireless charging – side
Outside of home charging, Porsche says the new Cayenne can receive juice at a rate of up to 400kW, although chargers of this power are few and far between in the UK at the moment.
Pretty much all that remains to see of the Cayenne EV, which will go on sale alongside the existing combustion model rather than replacing it outright, is the actual, undisguised car. We’ll have to wait a while longer for that, with a reveal earmarked for near the end of the year, but in the meantime, the not-so-subtly-disguised prototype will be on display at the Munich Motor Show next week.
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