Tesla's Wireless Charger Looks Mighty Cool When Stripped Apart

Don’t get your hopes up – this is not a wireless charger for cars. It’s nothing like what BMW showed us five years ago, when the plug-in hybrid 5 Series was shown replenishing its energy storage unit by just being parked over a neat-looking pad, which was an induction plate.

BMW’s solution had a price tag of around $3,700, while Tesla’s smaller wireless charger currently costs $300. Just this spread indicates there’s no way the American EV maker could have given everyone the solution to ditch cords. But an impressive thing this wireless charging pad can do is send energy into three Qi-compatible devices (like some recent phones and earbuds) simultaneously without you having to position them in any particular way on the velvety surface.

The device also comes with a magnetic detachable stand, and the fact that it looks like something you would find on a Tesla makes it even more appealing.

But the fun starts when the disassembling begins! Looking at what’s inside this accessory reveals a neat piece of innovation and may even fascinate some of us. To reach into the guts of the wireless charger, the first thing you need to do is remove the two rubber bands found on the back of the device. Then, the six screws that keep this assembly from falling apart need to be removed as well. As YouTuber JerryRigEverything showed, this is all you have to do if you want to take a sneak peek at all the fancy-looking copper discs that hide inside.

Technically-inclined readers may rush to correct us by underlining that what you’re looking at when you disassemble the Tesla wireless charger are copper coils, not just some shiny discs. They would be right, and that’s because copper allows electrons to flow through it better than other moderately priced metals like aluminum, can be shaped easier into a spiral or series of circles, and has corrosion and wear resistance. But the most impressive thing about sending electricity through the air is that it happens through a harmless magnetic field formed between the coil and the device needing electricity. This is only possible when the receiver also has a similar but often smaller copper coil inside.

Finally, wireless charging is not as efficient or fast as just plugging in the device. It is, however, an elegant solution to replenishing the energy storage units of some devices. Tesla says its pad is capable of delivering “15W of fast charging power per device,” meaning an iPhone 14 Pro Max needs around 30 hours to go from 5% to 100% state of charge.