LAS VEGAS—Toyota is here at CES showing off the wireless charging pads it will be adding to some of its vehicles, starting with the 2013 Avalon high-end sedan. Avalon owners with supported smartphones can power up without clumsy cables.
Wireless charging isn’t a new idea–phones like the failed Palm Pre included the feature back in 2009—but it’s starting to see a resurgence. LG’s Nexus 4, Nokia’s Lumia 920 and HTC’s Windows Phone 8X all have wireless charging capabilities built in. Nokia’s Lumia 820 and variants also support wireless charging with an optional shell.We took a look at the technology here at CES and were reasonably impressed.
Toyota is using the Wireless Power Consortium’s Qi standard, the same one used by the phones listed above.
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