Whenever a car company teams up with a tech giant such as Qualcomm, you should expect several enhancements in vehicle mobile technologies, in-car experiences and in this case wireless charging technologies.
In case you’re not familiar with Qualcomm, all you have to do is look down at your Android mobile device and odds are, it’s powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset. The company is based in San Diego, California and they’re also responsible for the CDMA/WCDMA chipsets we’re using for our mobile wireless transfers.
Daimler is going to work along side Qualcomm Technologies (a subsidiary of Qualcomm Inc) on a Wireless Power Transfer 2.0 high performance program for electric vehicles. What’s really fascinating about that is that the Qualcomm Halo WEVC technology could allow Mercedes customers to charge their EVs and plug-in hybrid EVs without having to plug them in.
Of course, Qualcomm is already a sponsor for the Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 team and according to QCOM President Derek Aberle, the car has become “an extension of always-on connectivity, and as such, we’re continuously utilizing our expertise in wireless mobility to deliver in-car experiences comparable to the ease and convenience of smartphones.”
The partnership will also focus on enhancing 3G/4G connectivity inside the vehicles, and we all know how important that can be. Even if we don’t realize it yet, the way advancements in technology work is that by the time you know what “hit you”, you’ll start to wonder how you ever managed to do without this gadget or that feature and so on.
As for charging your electric vehicles without ever having to plug it in anywhere can lead to amazing new technologies. You can already charge your mobile phone via a wireless charging pad so maybe we’ll see something similar for automobiles in the future. Perhaps even an entire highway that charges your car as you drive along.
Now that would be cool.
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