Porsche parking over a wireless charging pad Credit: Porsche Porsche has opened orders in Germany and other European markets for an 11 kW wireless charging pad for the Cayenne Electric, at EUR 6,961.49 for the floor pad and the car-side hardware together, with efficiency of up to 90%. The pad must be permanently installed in the ground, and Europe’s rules on installing home charging are weaker than the phrase right to plug suggests. Porsche has opened orders for a wireless charging pad for the Cayenne Electric in Germany and other European markets, the first offered on a car in either Europe or North America, InsideEVs reported. It delivers up to 11 kilowatts at an efficiency Porsche puts at up to 90%, against roughly 94% for a cable.
That is enough to fill the 113 kWh battery overnight, and well ahead of the 70% to 80% a phone manages. In Germany the three-phase floor pad costs EUR 5,116.99 and the car-side hardware EUR 1,844.50, which is EUR 6,961.49 together. Ordering only the pre-installation, for a later retrofit, costs EUR 226.10. The pad weighs about 50 kilograms, is waterproof and takes the weight of the car.
Radar sensors cut the power if they find metal, an animal or a person. Park assist lines the car up over the pad. The receiver is liquid-cooled, the transmitter air-cooled, and the system sends direct current straight to the battery, going around the onboard charger entirely. It also has to be fixed to the ground.
That makes it a building alteration rather than a plug, and Europe’s right to plug is thinner than the phrase suggests. Article 14(8) of the recast buildings directive asks member states to streamline and accelerate installation for tenants and owners alike. Transposition fell due in May, and there is no binding requirement to pre-equip existing blocks. Transport and Environment calls that too weak to count as a right, because a request can be refused on serious and legitimate grounds the directive never defines.
France is the strongest. Co-owners there get three months to object, and only on grounds of technical infeasibility or existing shared infrastructure. Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain have partial rules, typically covering owners but not tenants. Britain has no specific provision at all.
A Cayenne Electric starts at EUR 105,200, so the early buyers will mostly own the floor they are drilling into. The car itself is built at Volkswagen’s plant in Bratislava, where series production began in February. Porsche will take the pad to its other markets in stages, with one exception. China, where inductive charging is already deployed and Xiaomi is about to sell a robotic arm that plugs the cable in for you, is not on the list.
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