Grayson Brulte:

Hello, I'm your host, Grayson Brulte. Welcome to another episode of SAE Tomorrow Today, a show about emerging technology and trends and mobility with leaders and innovators who make it all happen. If the future mobility is important to you, join an SAE committee. They need the engagement and it's a great way to get involved in Shape the Future.

If you're interested to see the show notes for exclusive content on sae.org and ways to get involved, we hope you enjoy this episode. On today's episode, we're absolutely honored to be joined by Jesse Schneider, Director of Logistics Innovation, ZEV Station. On this episode, Jesse will share insights from the SAE standards about wireless power transfer of electric vehicles. Jesse, welcome to podcast. 

Jesse Schneider:

Thank you very much very honor to be here, and I very much appreciate the invite.

Grayson Brulte:

We're excited to have you here because wireless charging is the future, and as you eloquently say, it's what comes after the plug. That's a brilliant way to look at this and wireless chargers is expanding from passenger car to heavy duty.

I'm really curious, Jesse. How will heavy duty wireless charging work? 

Jesse Schneider:

Just want to take a step back. The J2954 task force covers light duty and heavy duty. The standard is out and published for light duty, and we've just published a TIR for heavy duty, the J2954-2, which is the first level.

Wireless charging has like a transformer without an iron core. It has a primary or ground assembly, and a secondary coil or a vehicle assembly. And that is tuned with a capacitor to a specific frequency. And as long as the coil is either the same to apology as an SAE 2954 or proven out in a performance way, it can actually transfer power over an air gap with high efficiency.

Grayson Brulte:

You mentioned the standard I'd say I have a class six truck, a class eight truck, and something in between a b a box truck, for example. When you have the standard that will work across all of those. So an individual operating a industrial logistics arm doesn't have to put three different versions of wireless charging in place.

Jesse Schneider:

Let me say that we're planning for application use like so for trucks. They'll have one type of coil and for buses may have another type of coil. So for each application, we're planning to have an interoperable coil, very much like light duty with light duty. Whether it's a small vehicle or a sport utility vehicle, there, there's an opportunity to charge.

Grayson Brulte:

Wow. Where will a power come to charge? Will these individuals in the industrial environment or a bus depot, will they have to put in microgrids? Will they have to get a bigger line from the transformer? How, where will the power come from? 

Jesse Schneider:

So wireless power transfer is just that, or wireless charging?

It's charging over an air gap. So it's the same the power source is exactly the same as dc fast charging, but a general rule for DC fast charging. As soon as you get over hundreds of kilowatts, you're gonna start, you're gonna have to start thinking about some storage or if you can capture as well as renewables and things like that.

Grayson Brulte:

How will it be deployed in the field, will be built into the roads, will be built in on the depot, will be built into the ground of the depot where the vehicles go. How do you see it being actively deployed differently? 

Jesse Schneider:

The interesting thing is that there's a lot of demonstrations already around the world for heavy duty buses and in every instance for heavy duty, it's always either flush to the ground or slightly below the ground.

And this emerging technology dynamic. That's actually usually buried below the ground. A few, few centimeters. 

Grayson Brulte:

Will this go in new construction? Will this be retrofitted, or how will it be eventually be installed? 

Jesse Schneider:

In terms of construction, certain of vehicles, these are mainly targeted towards, new vehicles. But keep in mind that the light duty standard is very evolved. And the TIR for heavy duty, not everything is written, which means that, it's anticipated that the automakers that are participating at the truck maker, I should say, that are participating, are gonna put them into their new trucks.

And this, we're making a standard on how to transfer power. So that's up to the automaker.

Grayson Brulte:

Do you eventually see perhaps a dedicated lane on the highway in HOV Lane could become a charging lane if you use, let's give you an example here, the Port of Long Beach San Pedro in Los Angeles to Fontana, which is a very known drayage route today.

Perhaps there's an HOV lane that has charging there so you can meet the California goals for decarbonization.

Jesse Schneider:

That's being planned in a few locations for demonstration today. So State of Michigan just announced they're doing a demonstration. There's something over in Oslo, so it's absolutely possible to do that.

And there is discussion right now under an inland port in Utah to do exactly that. And it's up to, California certainly there. There is a great opportunity For any sort of a repeated route for heavy duty vehicles, as you mentioned, like a port to put in the lane.

Grayson Brulte:

Michigan, Norway and Utah have a lot of things common. One thing they have, it's snows. They get snow there. True. What impact does the snow, is it wowsers? We can't go today because there's snow on the ground. What's the impact? 

Jesse Schneider:

There's issues with conductive charging with icing and things like that. But one thing that's really cool about wireless charging a wireless prairie transfer is that snow and water don't affect.

It's the power transfer, so you can, it can be buried underneath foot of snow and the vehicle could pull over and it'll transfer power. So that's another opportunity for autonomous vehicles and the like. And also human normal vehicles under all-weather to build transfer power.

Grayson Brulte:

How about lightning? Lightning is scary and lightning doesn't really get along with this stuff. What's the impact? 

Jesse Schneider:

We can't help you with that. Certainly lightning is but, light lightning in, in any other, you wanna make sure that you're in a safe environment.

But no, it's, these things are ground, they're grounded on the ground assembly side, and vehicles are grounded as they are. 

Grayson Brulte:

From a high level technical standpoint, how can the energy go through the water through the snow, which is basically water? What how is that work without causing any harm to the vehicle or any harm to the passengers in that vehicle?

Jesse Schneider:

So there's been a lot of work done on safety from our task force and how it's done is magnetic fields. So it's the very, it's the similar, theory of inducted basically. When you take two calls together, whether it be in a transformer or wireless power transfer, you have two, two vehicle, two, two fields that are generating.

One of them is from the power and the other one is from the induced power. And how it's done safely is There's actually been a lot of work done to make sure that the magnetic field stays within and underneath the vehicle. So the passengers don't see it. And there's also measurements and requirements that are done in the standard that make sure that either during charging or anything else there, that it never goes above.

The levels of safety, which are in there and there's also something interesting as well. We have detection, we have foreign object detection, meaning if there appears some keys on the ground or something metal, and we actually have living op detection, meaning if there's any, if there's any motion underneath the vehicle, that sort of thing. There's options to detect and shut things down. 

Grayson Brulte:

We don't have to worry about our little friendly, the squirrel getting electrocuted then. 

Jesse Schneider:

So certainly we're not, the objective is there's detection, promotion. We don't have a squirrel test. But, the, I the idea is we've done that. But one thing it, there's an essay technical report done a few years ago that we tested with the FDA inside their laboratory.

Wireless power transfer with pacemakers. Certainly not in a person, pacemakers to make sure that not only healthy people or should I say, people without medical devices, but also people with medical devices are safe. So what, there's a lot of work done to make sure that driving up and parking are safe even in, in the car. That there's that everything is perfectly safe.

Grayson Brulte:

All this standard work happens in committees, individuals such as yourself you volunteer your time to come together to work on a standard. When you're forming the committee, the early days, even before you get to day one of the official meeting, what are some of those early conversations like? Is a colleague of yours coming with one idea? You're coming with another idea, and then the, as you as chair, you have to try and massage it all together into a nice pizza. Is that how that process starts? 

Jesse Schneider:

So sometimes it's holistic, sometimes it's much more dynamic, but, start the early days of wireless power transfer.

There are a lot of, there was a lot of competing technologies and a lot of competing ideas with between automakers and the suppliers. And it's more than cat herding. It took a lot of debate. And not only that, we actually did testing inside of National Laboratories, Idaho National Laboratory, TDK Laboratory, to prove out that the technology will meet the criteria and interoperable.

So to answer your question, it's not as easy as saying in a simple way that we just debated things. We actually had to go out. Find designs, test them and prove to the committee that it works.

Grayson Brulte:

Do all the members of the committees work on the technical aspects of it, or are there other individuals that aren't necessarily technical but have a vision that are participating in it?

Jesse Schneider:

SAE is free to all and we have, it is a technical committee, but we have folks that are involved that do str, that are involved in strategy of power trains. We also have, sometimes we have, as I mentioned, regulators that show up and wanna know what's going on.

But mainly it's a technical discussion with the objective of, safe, fast charging over wire, wireless gap.

Grayson Brulte:

Will the SAE J2954 standard play any role as you start to scale this technology since that standard has been scaled and widely adopted across the globe? 

Jesse Schneider:

Glad you asked. J2954-1 or by itself is the light duty standard. And it's been reaffirmed last year. There's a new update from 2022 and there are already commercial applications. The Hyundai has the GV 60 few years ago there was a demonstration from p w and E five 30, and Tesla just announced actually that they're doing a wireless power transfer vehicle as well.

So there's a lot of buzz around that light duty standard. And the heavy duty is what's being worked on right now. It's a guideline, and we're planning to do a testing trial with that J2954-2, the heavy duty. 

Grayson Brulte:

In the coming year, if you look at history, when Tesla first shipped the Model S it really, in my opinion, ushered in the electric vehicle's industry of where we are today.

They single handedly drove it, make consumers that this is a cool vehicle, this is really cool. I want to drive electric. And that's what Tesla did. And they're a game changer when they introduce wireless charging based on the SAE J2954 standard, does that change the game? Obviously you have Hyundai with the GV 60, but does that start to usher in all the other automakers where they don't want to be viewed from market sector playing catch up with Tesla?

Oh, Tesla's doing this. We have to go in and does that accelerate the adoption?

Jesse Schneider:

So certainly in standards we have, my role with standards is to the agnostic of the automakers, but absolutely Tesla really changed the game for the auto world. And people are in company countries excuse me, companies are still playing catch, if you see, but I think that, we'd be excited.

So the GV 60 right now is released in Korea, South Korea. We understand that it's gonna be coming to the states at some point, but yeah, absolutely. When. Tesla did a teaser at their investor days about wireless charging. And certainly when that comes out, it'll be a big motivator for us all to get into the technology.

Grayson Brulte:

Yeah, and if, I know you can't answer this, but I'm gonna say it's from a marketing perspective, if and when Tesla opens their drive-in movie theater that they're advertising in the Los Angeles, oh yeah. Put wireless charging in there. That's a great marketing way to drive the adoption of the standard.

Jesse Schneider:

Absolutely. So if you're sticking around for an hour or two, that's plenty of time to charge your vehicle. But that's a great abs great opportunity. 

Grayson Brulte:

Yeah. Out outside of Tesla from a standards perspective, will all vehicles be able to use the wireless charging system if the vehicle they own or driving is in, has the technology incorporated into it. That’s the intent?

Jesse Schneider:
 

Absolutely. So one thing that's cool, so conductive. A world has a number of standards. With charging. There's chato, there's Tesla, there's SAE. When we spent a long time working with other standards organizations from ISO, IEC, and GB to make sure that there's one standard. So that means if you pull up to a ground assembly for light duty, ground assembly, whatever, as long as you’re SAE you'll be compatible and you’ll transfer power.

Grayson Brulte:

Standards, all off scalability. If you have three or four or 500 standards it's not gonna be scalable. And then you're gonna have a very mad consumer why won't this work? It says, I have inductive charging. Why doesn't this work? And so hopefully that drives it to one standard. So you have the individual that's buying the vehicle, the GV 60, for example, or if the Tesla does the wireless charging, at some point they're coming from the factory.

They're built with the wireless charging into 'em. How about the individual? That has an older vehicle or perhaps a model year 22, 23 says, this is really great. I bought an electric vehicle. At some point, will they be able to retrofit their vehicles and if so, will it meet the standard? 

Jesse Schneider:

Yeah, so you know, we don't design for aftermarket, we just designed the wireless charging. But I can tell you that there is already a company that is in fact a few examples of electric vehicles like the Machi or the Tesla that have been retrofitted. So it is ab absolutely possible. And as long as they follow the standard, everything should work. 

Grayson Brulte:

When the individual that they're on their way home from work and they're pulling into their garage, or they're pulling into their parking spot at their residence, are they gonna have to neatly maneuver?

Okay, we've gotta be right there. And then perhaps when they're in the garage they hang a tennis ball to make sure they put some paint down to make sure they're in the right area. Or is there gonna be okay, you can just pull in your garage and away we charge. Similar to today. 

Jesse Schneider:

Yeah to answer your question, certainly there's an alignment tolerance. It's much better than pure inductance but the SAE allows for four inches each direction and gives you also communications to your vehicle. On alignment direction. So you're gonna get feedback while you're driving. And also there's at least one development where you can actually get automated driving integrated as well.

Grayson Brulte:

How great's that you pull into your garage and say, okay, car park, and then it does it for you. That seems that's where we're going. And if you look at on the other side of autonomy, Now sudden, now you're scalable. You can eliminate which cruise GM has the robotic arms. You can allow autonomy to scale with wireless charging.

Do you see autonomous vehicles being one of the key drivers of this technology?

Jesse Schneider:

The only way to really charge vehicles autonomously under all weather is with wireless charging. So certainly you can have a robotic arm, but you still have the same shortfalls of conductive charging with regards to ice and snow, things like that.

But we think that it will help, and already is talked between automakers as well with, driverless taxis and things like that, that you can just put a pad and a place that, that it can charge. And come back to every night. 

Grayson Brulte:

And the beauty about this is if you have the depot manager on the commercial side, and perhaps somebody calls and sick, you don't have to worry about plugging in it.

But on the personal vehicle own side, oh, we're going on a road trip. Oh, I forgot to plug the car in last night. You don't have to, you don't have to worry about that. That becomes. A game changer.  

Jesse Schneider:

There it is. So in terms of, we think of if you think of wireless charging as changing the game it does because all you have to do is look for the green light when you park.

Make sure you're, things are charging and walk away and it's transparent. And then when you know that you could bring that to workforce charging and other places. But yeah the idea is It automates the process completely. All you have to do is make sure that the process is started.

Grayson Brulte:

Can it support two-way power? Perhaps you can run your coffee maker off it, or if you had a hurricane or you lost power, need to you need to let's just say gotta do laundry. Everybody has to do it. Perhaps you can run your laundry machine. 

Jesse Schneider:

There's V two X it, sorry, V two grid V2 G is something that is in the conductive world. And we intend to add that also to wireless charging. There's already been some demonstrations from Honda on doing that. It's very possible. So that would be added to the future standard? Yes. I'm not, I don't think it's specifically for a appliance like a coffee maker, but it's for the, it's actually, v to g vehicle to grid.

Grayson Brulte:

Just trying to give practical, real world examples. You mentioned add to a Future standard is a standard, a living, breathing document where if there's a new breakthrough of technology, the committee gets together in say add 0.2 or if you wanna use the ABC acronym, is it a little breathing document that updates it?

Jesse Schneider:

It definitely is. So we're to A standard level in light duty interventions and guideline for heavy duty moving to recommended practice. But, so there's new things that are coming in. One of them is new alignment, stand alignment methodologies, for instance and those will be added to the standard in the year.

So absolutely, as new technologies come in the standards adapt. 

Grayson Brulte:

I play video games, so I'll have to ask the, put it in the, in this tense. Is it backwards compatible? If I have a vehicle that meets, let's say standard one, and then standard two comes, am I still backwards compatible there, or do I have to upgrade?

Jesse Schneider:

The document we called it forwards compatible. But the doc, the document that we put out in as a standard for 2054 is worldwide, meant to be compatible since there's not a production vehicle out, since the production vehicles are coming now you can't speak about backwards compatibility, but the good news for automakers, it gives that confidence that when you say the word standard, it can be adopted into a local code and turned into law.

And how do you so that's, it's really a powerful tool. That helps start commercialization to give that confidence of what's coming down the pipeline. 

Grayson Brulte:

Commercialization is good for the economy. It makes the world run rounds. We're commercializing the tech. We have the standard that, that's looking to the future in adapting as technology changes.

What does the maintenance look like? How is this going to be able to be kept up in charge of, do you have to have somebody inspected every day from a commercial aspect or in your home you look at it? Or how, what does the maintenance look like? 

Jesse Schneider:

There is no maintenance plant. It's solid state. So there's standards for that are, that have been done on the safety side from the UL standpoint, from the SAE standpoint, to make sure that it meets all the requirements of any sort of a appliance or device.

But there is, there’s no maintenance planned for it. Certainly if there's some damage to it, it needs to be repaired maybe, but there's no. It's not a schedule. 

Grayson Brulte:

Yeah. Your current business, you’re CEO and CTO of ZEV Sstation, you got a big focus on electric charging and hydrogen fueling stations.

Way to go in the hydrogen. That's gonna play a very large role here. Do you see wireless charging as the natural expansion of the Zev business of where you're going? 

Jesse Schneider:

Sure. May I just put my other hat on, in terms of the startup that, that I lead? So ZEV Station, a small startup.

We have an office in Palm Springs, California, and we have also some DC charging that's going on right now and a fleet with FedEx the ground ISPs. And, we plan to expand to hydrogen as well. And we've made some announcements with Chart Industries. You may have heard that the largest industrial supplier for the for equipment for natural gas and also hydrogen.

So wireless charging is because it's not yet mainstream, but we see it as definitely for an opportunity, especially when you think about truck stops where you have not necessarily. Fast charging, but when you have trucks that are staying overnight, for instance, there's a really great opportunity or parking for dinner and that sort of thing to expand that.

Ha you can imagine trucks pulling up to a to a certainly they can do fast charging in DC fast charging, but, there's a real big, gap for electrification. What happens with trucks that have refrigerator trucks in the back that run all the time. And also what happens with trucks that stay overnight?

Are you gonna charge go when you come in and then charge again when you go out? And how do you bring those big cords out to a parking lot with trucks? So that's the answer to that is that's where we believe things are gonna be heading. But that's, the play after the next play.

Grayson Brulte:

If you look at a truck stop, think about the amount of carbon that we saved. If they have the, and wireless charging from idle time. These individuals that are sleeping in their truck and they're running 'em just to stay warmer, to power their appliances, this is a really great solution.

They're not gonna lose range. They're gonna be able to do their job really well. And they're gonna cut down a car. And this seems as almost the perfect solution. You don't have the cords running all around the yard.

Jesse Schneider: 

Exactly. We think we see that as being an opportunity. Another market, so to speak. Certainly there will be high power charging and there's, there's megawatt charging, things like that's planned. But, wireless charging is something where you can place in a specific spot. Especially where those an, there are actually laws that are anti idling is what you mentioned.

So there're, it's a really big opportunity to help in that market as well.

Grayson Brulte:

The one thing about trucking, there's a lot of divide, is it can be electric trucks or hydrogen trucks. The bottom line is, in my opinion, hydrogen's gonna play alar a very large role, especially long haul over the road covenant, the expeditors going cross country Zev has a hydrogen strategy. What is your hydrogen strategy? 

Jesse Schneider:

If you think about, gasoline and diesel, we see charging really being taken over from take, taking over the gasoline. And there's This Friday, this last Friday the California Air Resources Board just approved the ZEV mandate for trucking, really saying the expiration date as well.

For heavy duty, we have light duty that was also is also a law. But what we see right now is so light duty, medium duty going charging, and heavy duty split between the long haul and the short haul. And the long haul we think is gonna go hydrogen because it's seven tons more battery.

And it's simple math in terms of the, between the two technologies. One shift operation for heavy duty can certainly stay charging, but there's an intersection between an electric truck and a H truck, and that is where they park at night. And so that's where I see as the technology we're talking about today.

Wireless charging, being an assistance to both of those tech, both of those markets. 

Grayson Brulte:

At the end of the day, they compliment each other. I could see electrification working on drayage runs and long haul over the road working in hydrogen. When we have long haul over the road working on hydrogen, we're gonna need fueling stations.

ZEVs is working on that. How are you planning to deploy hydrogen fueling solutions?

Jesse Schneider:

Our intent is to make, so certainly have a first station for charging. We're looking to expand upon that and our intention is to be off the highway in rural charging and capture. Cars and trucks off major interstate trucking rounds and we've pulled up next to a large fleet owner FedEx for instance.

And we, we think that having a location next to a fleet is, makes a lot of sense off the highway as well to get the public traffic. 

Grayson Brulte:

You want that? Will you partner with a hydrogen provider? Will you create, were you stored or are you gonna build the technology or what role were you gonna play in this?

Jesse Schneider:

No. So this discussion was about se but certainly I'll mention that ZEV Station is planning as I mentioned, the equipment from chart industries. And we are, we already have a relationship with a large liquid hydrogen supplier. That's not yet public. But certainly the idea is if you're gonna do a rollout of stations with a lot of hydrogen on board really liquid hydrogen is the way to go.

Certainly for smaller stations inside the city, you can do gashes hydrogen, but as soon as you go with trucking, there's no other way. Of doing things because it's a lot of, it's many tons of hydrogen.

Grayson Brulte:

You're clearly down the road, no pun intended, you're working on the s SAE committee, on wireless charging.

Your business is working to commercialize wireless charging, and you have a hydrogen strategy. To complimenting it. What role do you see Zev playing in this? Do you end up become the, no pun intended, the de facto standard in how fleets and individuals decarbonize? Is that where you're ultimately trying to go?

Jesse Schneider: 

We are a startup. We wanna be part of the equation. And our objective is, I worked as in the automotive industry, over 25 years and I came to realization everyone is building a Z vehicle, but who's building the ZEV Station? And that question ringed for many years, and that was the purpose.

So we are a B corporation. We're environmentally motivated. And our objective is to have zero carbon sourced fuel for all the Zs on the highway. So we would like to be part of the reason why we're meeting, gonna meet, net zero. And that's a pure play and certainly others will be retrofitting gas stations or that sort of thing.

And that's part of it. But the idea for us right now is to, is really to help with this new electrification push. I mentioned the Z mandate that's coming. We see this as. Other side of the equation that needs to happen. It's a bold plan.

Grayson Brulte:

It's a bold move and you're backing up with a B Corp. You're a B Corp, you're putting your money where your mouth is.

Yes, you're developing this, you're rolling up your sleeves. Wireless charging is merely just, I'm gonna use the baseball analogy. It's merely in the first inning of where this technology is gonna go in and get adopted in scale. In your opinion, Jesse, what is the future of wireless charging? 

Jesse Schneider:

It's multifaceted, so it's, and this is to keep in mind there, there's many different use cases, but I think that there's an opportunity for taxis and airport taxis and things like that to, to do wireless charging and as they're creeping to waiting for customers and things like that, there's an opportunity to charge as they come back. There's an opportunity for single shift, operations of trucks, for instance, or you mentioned drainage or somewhere where there's a route that they constantly go to.

And certainly this overnight charging it, it can't be avoided. I really think that it's not addressed now, but I really think that's coming down the pipeline to real help decarbonize really all zero emission vehicles.  

Grayson Brulte:

If an individual's sitting here listening to this podcast and says, wireless charging's, cool. I work at an auto company, I wanna roll my sleeves up, can they get involved in the SAE J2954 committee? And if so, what do they have to do? Did they send you a note? How does it work? 

Jesse Schneider:

So Dante Rahdar is the SAE representative for the committee or for the task force, I should say. And definitely contact him with the email provided.

And it's free and it's open for all. And we really would encourage some, especially if you're in the automotive industry also in the supplier industry, in the infrastructure industry, and you'd like to get involved in this disc in this technology. Join the team, join the J2954 Task Force, roll up your sleeves.

Grayson Brulte:

For the listeners we'll put a link in the show notes and if you don't remember the link, you can always go to sae.org and search it. Jesse, this has been a fascinating conversation around the future of wireless charging and the role standards are playing and we can't forget about the important role that hydrogen's gonna play in decarbonizing as well.

And as we look to wrap up this conversation, what would you like our listeners to take away with them today? 

Jesse Schneider:

I wanna very much appreciate the invitation. And I'd like to mention that, wireless charging is really a technology that's coming. And, if we are to meet our objectives, to get to net zero, it's a cliche, it's not a silver bullet.

There'll be applications where there's gonna be conductive charging there's gonna be applications where there's gonna be hydrogen, but there's also a look in applications, especially with autonomous vehicles that wireless charging is gonna play. That's really where I'd like to leave as a message.

Grayson Brulte:

As Jesse said there, and he said throughout this podcast, wireless charging will play a very big role in the future. Today is tomorrow. Tomorrow is today. The future is wireless charging. Jesse, thank you so much for coming on SAE Tomorrow today. 

Jesse Schneider:

Thank you very much. 

Grayson Brulte:

Thank you for listening to SAE Tomorrow Today. If you've enjoyed this episode and would like to hear more, please kindly rate. Review and let us know what topics you'd like for us to explore next.

Be sure to join us next week as we speak with Nexar’s co-founder and CEO, who will share the company's computer vision solution to the dilemma of real-time mapping. 

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