Toyota said it has entered a technical cooperation with WiTricity to develop wireless charging systems for electric-vehicle batteries.

The Japanese carmaker said it wants to accelerate the development and eventual implementation of wireless charging for cars. “The charging of a plug-in hybrid or electric vehicle could be as simple and convenient as parking near an embedded charger at a home or in a parking facility,” Toyota said in a press release.

The Massachusetts-based company uses a resonance charging technology, which allows charging without direct contact. WiTricity believes its technology is more efficient than electromagnetic-induction, another wireless technology that is gaining traction in mobile phone charging systems.

WiTricity was founded in 2007 to commercialize a new technology for wireless electricity invented two years earlier at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

A team of physicists developed the theoretical basis for this novel method for wireless electric power transfer in 2005, and validated their theories experimentally in 2007.  The magnetic fields of two properly designed devices with closely matched resonant frequencies can couple into a single continuous magnetic field. The team showed how to use this phenomenon to enable the transfer of power from one device to the other at high efficiency and over a distance range that is useful for real-world applications.

automotiveit.com