The trial — due to start this autumn — will be centred around east London’s ‘Tech City’ and will see Qualcomm’s Halo technology initially fitted on up to 10 electric vehicles (EVs).
Trials will be carried out on specially adapted E4 coupés developed by Delta Motorsport and six Citroen C1s.
Delta, an automotive and motorsport engineering consultancy, said it had become involved in the project to learn more about the innovation and that it plans to fit the charging technology to two of the five cars in its E4 coupé fleet.
‘When we started work on the E4 coupé five years ago, we realised that it would be a great opportunity to demonstrate EV technologies and to understand some of the broader issues associated with EVs,’ said Delta’s technical director Nick Carpenter. ‘We believe Qualcomm has a fantastically innovative solution.’
A second round of trials involving French car manufacturer Renault will follow in 2013.
‘Our role in the trial will be to provide the vehicles so that new prototypes can be designed,’ said Florent Grisaud Verrier, assistant brand manager for EVs at Renault.
The trial will see charging pads placed at Qualcomm’s west London office, in the east of the city near the Silicon Roundabout tech hub and at the premises of taxi company Addison Lee, which has said that it may use the technology on its fleet of support vehicles.
In the process known as inductive charging, energy is transferred between two objects through an electric field.
Qualcomm claims that energy losses are small and as a result the charging method’s efficiency of 90 per cent is comparable to conventional charging with a cable. The idea is that charging will be carried out little and often when drivers park their cars at home, work or a public car park.
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