Contactless charging and communication system for electric vehicles

A system to charge batteries in electric vehicles is proposed. The contactless charging plug (CCP) is the key component of the system. Energy transmission and information transmission with one robust unit is possible by employing the CCP. A three-phase rectifier with power factor improvement and only one active switch is used to control the charging process and to reduce the total harmonic distortion of the line current. The charging process is monitored and controlled by an on-board charge meter, which can communicate with the converter outside of the vehicle via the signal transmission included in the inductive coupler. A laboratory set-up able to transfer up to 5 kW was built to demonstrate the performance of the system. The efficiency of the overall system including all filters, converters, and rectifiers is, at a power level of 5 kW, better than 92%. A special feature is the very low weight of the electric vehicle electronic components (2 kg at 5 kW)