Review on Stationary CPT Technologies and Coil Designs for EVs

Abstract

In the recent decade, the driving range of pure EVs with zero emission target has become a popular topic as the massive battery requirement for longer distance travels means higher vehicle cost and longer time of recharging periods. Stationary CPT charging solutions could be an alternative to reduce EVs weight, size and energy storage unit costs. Fortunately, with progressive success of low-power CPT charging applications proposed to be commercially produced in the past decade, hundreds of kilowatts level high-power CPT charging techniques for EVs are more and more expected to be an optimally suitable solution for recharging EV batteries, providing higher propulsion and delivering continuously longer driving range in the next generations of the EVs. The idea of deploying inductive coupling for EVs has acquired a lot of attentions in the last decade due to the contributions and advancements of power electronics, switching power supply, semiconductors, microprocessors, electrochemistry, material sciences, control technologies, electromagnetics and so on, despite many challenges to be addressed including EV manufacturing integration with CPT system under the chassis, infrastructure difficulties, system maintenance on both vehicle and transmitting ground sides, actual CPT performance with real-time coupling on real-world road. In order to ensure the realization and enhance the sustainability in transportation sector with the emerging CPT ideas, currently the stationary CPT charging solutions based on inductive power transfer (IPT) have been developed from laboratory level as a first step to the practical tests of commercial realizations. In a few industrial fields nowadays, some of the proposed CPT technologies with specific coupler coil designs have been expected for real-world applications. This article presents a state of the art of the CPT technologies and focuses on reviewing current coil designs for high-power contactless energy transfer for EVs in the literature.