MIAMI—Electric vehicles (EVs) have come a long way over the course of the previous few years. It’s no longer a hair-shirt decision to drive an EV, but range continues to be an issue for a society accustomed to the convenience of refueling cars in minutes. Any improvements that make it easier to recharge EVs are therefore welcomed.

Coincidently, we learned that Qualcomm had something interesting to show off during our Formula E weekend. The company brought along Qualcomm Halo, its wireless charging system for EVs, and demonstrated the tech on a pair of lightly modified BMW i8 hybrid sports cars. The i8s are traveling the world with the Formula E racing series, where they have the important job of being the safety car (driving ahead of the field of racing cars to control speeds if there is an incident on track). The Miami ePrix in the middle of March was the first US appearance for the wirelessly charging BMWs, and so we found ourselves in the pit lane on the morning of the event, eagerly poring over the cars in all their carbon fiber glory.

Graeme Davison, VP at Qualcomm Halo, told Ars that the company’s interest in inductive charging was originally centered on personal electronics applications. "We decided to look at disruptive technologies and found out that high-power inductive charging was being developed by a Qualcomm research team in Switzerland, but the researchers didn’t have a use for it," he said. Halo's next question was whether the technology—originally conceived for smartphones—would scale up and work with a vehicle. The answer certainly looked more futuristic than the 40 Spark-Renault SRT_01E race cars with which it shared a pit lane.

Video: Drayson Racing engineer Will Stannard talks us through the wireless charging system

Wireless Charging System

Qualcomm Halo’s inductive charging system is actually a relatively straightforward idea. To picture how it works, first imagine a transformer: it’s a coil of wires around one piece of ferrite and another coil around a second piece of ferrite. Usually, these are joined together. AC current in the first coil gets converted to a magnetic field, which the second coil then converts to a DC current. What Qualcomm Halo did was break the transformer ferrite in half and move it away, separating the two coils and optimizing the system to get maximum power transmission across an air gap.

As the video shows, recharging is child’s play (or would be, if we let children drive stripped-out BMW i8s). The car merely drives over the charging mat, getting into position with the help of a smartphone app. Once everything is aligned, the power begins to flow... and that's it. The process is dead simple for end users. The system will even automatically suspend charging if a foreign object happens to find itself between car and mat.

You can be forgiven for thinking this convenience ought to come with a drawback, like longer charging times. But surprisingly, inductive charging turns out to be about as efficient as its tethered counterpart. "Because of things like AC to DC conversion, inefficiencies with connectors, and so on, traditional chargers have about 95 percent efficiency," Davison told us. "Wireless charging is currently around 90 percent." The rate limiter is actually how much energy the car will accept, but the system works with both 3.3 kW (13 amp, 220v) and 6.6 kW (20 amp, 220v) supplies.

In order to charge with Halo, the BMW i8s needed slight modifications—but the changes necessary to become safety cars were actually more noticeable. For one thing, most of the interior is gone. The dash remains, but the carpets have been removed, along with the back seats and the car’s leather interior. The interior is now bare carbon fiber, a steel roll cage, and a pair of racing seats with six-point harnesses. Getting into the car is actually quite easy despite the roll cage, thanks to the large scissor doors that lift up and out of your way (in the normal i8, these allow entry to both the front and back seats).

A smartphone on the console between the front seats is the only indication that the car’s fitted with the Qualcomm Halo wireless charger until you open the rear hatch. There, you find a metal box about the size of a large cable box mounted to a bulkhead, fed with several orange wires (orange is used to signify high voltage wiring on vehicles now). Underneath the car is other half of the induction charger.

According to Bruno Correia, the racing driver who’s job it is to drive the Formula E safety car, there’s no noticeable effect of the system on the car’s handling. Bruno demonstrated this to good effect when we were lucky enough to go for a hot lap around the Miami track. A stock BMW i8 weighs 3,274 lbs (1490 kg); we’re not sure what the safety car weighs but it’s unlikely to be any heavier, despite having a steel roll cage, the Qualcomm Halo system, a light bar, and some communications equipment (car interiors are surprisingly heavy). With 357 hp on tap, the car felt extremely quick accelerating on the straights, particularly once the 3-cylinder engine kicked in after a couple of corners (the engine also supplied a lovely soundtrack to the lap, at least inside the car).

Why Motorsport?

When we spoke with Davison, we asked why Qualcomm Halo chose motorsport as the right venue to demonstrate its wireless charging technology. "The good thing about motorsport is it’s a way to develop engineers," he told us, echoing what we’ve heard from other companies who choose to spend some of their R&D budgets at the track. "It’s an exciting use of technology." Davison added that this new arena forces Qualcomm out of its comfort zone—which is handsets, tablets, and IT. Applying its technology to motorsport applications means being asked to solve new engineering problems.

Davison also points to the fact that the auto industry looks to motorsport to see who the leaders are. "McLaren and Williams are supplying motors and batteries in Formula E," he said. "Qualcomm being in Motorsport showcases that, it exposes us to the rest of the industry and vice-versa." The project has meant working closely with other companies, particularly Drayson Racing and BMW (Will Stannard, the engineer in the video, works for Drayson Racing).

Lord Paul Drayson is a former UK government minister who also has a passion for racing (and spent several years campaigning here in the US in the American Le Mans Series). More recently, he converted his Lola racing car from a conventional internal combustion engine (supplied by Judd) to all-electric, and he then used the car to set a new land speed record for EVs that weigh less than 2,204 lbs (1000 kg). That car, the Drayson B12 69/EV, now charges wirelessly with Qualcomm Halo’s technology, and it was Lord Drayson who introduced Qualcomm to Formula E. "The series’ vision with regards to sustainability aligned well with Qualcomm’s values," Davison said.

Elle Cayabyab Gitlin

Elle Cayabyab Gitlin

Elle Cayabyab Gitlin

For Qualcomm and Formula, it’s not just the wireless charging either. The company has been a technology partner with the new racing series since its inception, providing expertise with wireless technology to help with the in-car telemetry and video feeds. "It was a question of 'How do we solve this technical problem—processing data on a car that brings together 14 telemetry feeds, two video feeds, before sending it out as a single telemetry feed?" Davison said. "Oh, and we’ve got four weeks and we have to supply it to a grid of 20 cars." The partnership has pushed the company into a very different development path and timeline when compared to what it’s used to operating in (which in some ways parallels what the tech industry is doing to the auto industry, which is now having to adapt to consumer demand that follows 12-18 month product cycles rather than 5-8 year cycles).

At this point in the interview, we could no longer resist the urge to bring up F-Zero. In the old SNES classic, you recharge your hover vehicle by driving it through the pit lane where energy is beamed into it. Would the system ever be rapid enough to recharge cars during the race? According to Davison, Formula E asked the same thing. For now, the answer is "not yet, although that’s where we want to get to."

The inductive charging can work on a moving vehicle, and it has previously been used in factories to charge robots and carts. Qualcomm Halo is now working on semi-dynamic charging, Davison told us, at speeds up to 30 mph. He sees taxis as a potentially perfect target for the technology, with inductive charging taxi ranks powering up fleets of EVs while they wait for new passengers. "The vision is that it will get faster and faster," he said. "Although at some point we’ll get back to battery technology being the rate limiting step; there’s only so much energy you can push into one before overheating and other problems crop up."

Formula E hoped to have the grid of SRT_01Es fitted with wireless chargers for this year, but there wasn’t enough time to make that happen. Hence, only the safety car has been fitted this year. Davison tells us that next year wireless charging should be in the cards for all. The series' technical regulations are going to be relaxed, allowing teams to start innovating their powertrains (and batteries in 2017). "We’re discussing with the FIA how that will work with the rules and how to excite the teams about using the technology," he said. As Formula E continues on as a testbed for EV innovation, Davison expects the technology to ripple throughout motorsport at large.