EVs Could Jump-Start New Types of Wireless Charging, Says Powercast CEO

Electric vehicles will help propel wireless power to a household term, Powercast CEO Charles Goetz told Consumer Electronics Daily. The coming transition to electric and autonomous vehicles will make wireless charging pervasive, but “there’s so much more that can be done and will be done with wireless power,” said Goetz.

The executive has his sights set on lower-power applications for Powercast’s role in wireless charging, an industry that Goetz positions as “one or two batters into the first inning.” Apple elevated Qi wireless charging to widespread use when it adopted the contact-based wireless charging technology for the iPhone 8 series in 2017, joining Samsung, which already was using Qi wireless charging in charging bases and cases. Then Apple took it further when it announced a wireless charging case for the AirPods. “As Apple goes, the world goes,” said Goetz, and AirPods set in motion “a whole different narrative in every C-suite in America” for other companies to discuss their own wireless charging strategies, he said.

That included Powercast, whose products were mostly in the IoT space. The company began to pivot to the CE category for its over-the-air low-power applications, eyeing computer peripherals, game controllers, headphones and wearables, Goetz said: “That conversation was much easier to have once Apple kicked in the door by making people think about it and talk about it."

Goetz pegged keyboards, mice, headsets and game controllers as “perfect” devices for wireless charging because of limited power thresholds. Powercast's PowerSpot transmitter charges a grip for a Nintendo Switch game controller from 6 feet away. PowerSpot uses Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) for “intelligent” wireless charging, sending power only as needed. The Grip requests power from the transmitter when its batteries are low and tells it to stop when charged.

Goetz envisions wireless charging use cases in smart apparel. A challenge for smart apparel today is the integrated battery pack that has to be removed before washing. “Unless you’re an elite athlete, most of us don’t want to be bothered with assembling or plugging in our workout gear.” A Powercast solution that doesn’t require a plug-in port allows a battery compartment to be hermetically sealed, so it doesn’t have to be removed for laundering. A fitness enthusiast could have half a dozen smart shirts in a drawer, all being trickle-charged over time by a single transmitter 5 to 7 feet away, he said.

Powercast was in the midst of two vertical projects in the hospitality and airline segments a year ago. Both came to a “screeching halt” due to COVID-19, forcing the company to switch gears. It’s hoping to benefit from the new no- or low-touch world. In airports, for instance, that could be with electronic luggage tags. It also pitches its charging tech for RFID tags used in shipping containers. Smart wearables using Powercast technology are expected to reach market in the next few months, Goetz said. On the near horizon is a wristband that hotel chains can use to interact with guests, offering deals or alerting them to an activity on the property.

Electronic shelf labels (ESL) are powered by batteries, and Goetz sees wireless charging as a potential replacement for the coin batteries that power them. Batteries eventually have to be replaced on ESLs, a “full-time” job for a store such as Kohl’s with about 50,000 SKUs, he said. The Bluetooth transmitter can also send the price change to the label via BLE. RF wireless charging is a “greener” way to charge the ESL, he said.

One Powercast transmitter can charge multiple devices, such as wearables, smart clothing, sensors or RFID tags. Software advances will result in smart devices knowing “where they are and what power is available to them”; their operating systems will begin charging devices when they’re in the vicinity of the appropriate platform, said Goetz. The charging scenario will be “seamless” and “invisible to the user,” he said. At some point, “devices will finally take care of their users, as opposed to their users always having to take care of their devices.”

Goetz acknowledged some consumer enthusiasm for wireless charging but also managed expectations. When Apple pulled the plug on the AirPower project, a prototype wireless charging pad that never made it to market, it left behind a small cult of disappointed believers. “People want to declutter their desktops and counter spaces,” said Goetz on AirPower’s allure. Not having to “babysit” devices by monitoring their charging constantly “has an enormous amount of appeal."

Goetz limits the scope of what Powercast’s RF charging can accomplish, careful of what he called “irrational exuberance” over the reach of wireless charging in general. A smartphone using a 3,000 mAh battery could be charged via RF, but due to FCC permissioning, “it would be a very unsatisfactory experience,” taking “the better part of a day to charge a phone at 5 or 6 feet.” On whether Powercast technology will ever be able to power a smartphone, Goetz said, “You’d need a significant change in how the regulators permit transmission to occur, and I don’t think that will happen anytime soon.”

But advances in hardware and smartphone operating systems are always moving toward more efficient designs, he said. The phone market will eventually have candidates for wireless charging, made possible by efficiencies in hardware, software and battery designs. Those efficiencies “will bring those devices into the RF fold,” he said, “as opposed to moving our technology materially.”