A screenshot of the charging mat from Tesla’s website.
- Tesla announced pre-orders were open for a $300 wireless charging mat.
- The mat can charge up to three devices simultaneously.
- In 2019, Apple canceled AirPower, its own version of a wireless charging mat.
Tesla has unveiled the Wireless Charging Platform, a $300 mat that can be used to charge up to three devices simultaneously. The mat can provide up to 15W of charging power per Qi-enabled wireless device, like an iPhone, Android, or pair of AirPods.
According to Tesla’s website, pre-orders for the mat are now open, and shipping will begin in February 2023.
A charging mat could seem like a tangential offering from Tesla, but it’s likely part of the company’s larger product strategy, which in the past has included products as varied as tequila and a phone charger. The design of the mat is inspired by Tesla’s forthcoming Cybertruck, Tesla said.
Back in 2019, Apple scrapped plans for a similar product called AirPower because Apple said it failed to meet the company’s standards.
Like Tesla’s charging mat, AirPower was designed to charge three products at once— including wearables, which aren’t usually compatible with Qi, an inductive method for wireless charging. Tesla’s Wireless Charging Platform isn’t compatible with the Apple Watch, for instance, the Verge reported.
Apple’s AirPower mat was scrapped in 2019.
Apple
Dan Riccio, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering, said in a statement to Insider in 2019: “We continue to believe that the future is wireless and are committed to push the wireless experience forward.”
While Apple has delayed the release of products that aren’t up to its standards, a full-on cancellation is a rare occurrence in its history.
At the time, Insider reported that well-connected Apple blogger John Gruber speculated that the device’s multi-coil design was becoming “too hot.” TechCrunch reported that the coils were likely overheating because they were too close to one another and “required very, very cautious power management.”
Tesla’s mat features a whopping 30 Qi charging coils engineered by FreePower, which produced the technology behind another AirPower competitor back in 2020.
Meanwhile, the closest thing Apple has released to its original vision is the MagSafe charger. It uses magnets to charge phones, from the iPhone 12 and up.
