Check out the interior of the self-driving car in Spielberg’s Minority Report that whisks Tom Cruise’s character toward jail: There are only two seats.

Perhaps taking a page from that sleekly designed sci-fi, Lucid Motors revealed the Lunar, a hyperefficient robotaxi concept, at its recent Investor Day in New York City. With its two side-by-side seats, compact size, and a cabin freed from a steering wheel, pedals, and garrulous cabbie, the Lunar defies more than a century of taxi tradition.

Lucid, which has partnered with Uber to deploy up to 20,000 of its seven-passenger Gravity SUVs as robotaxis, says that as many as 90 percent of taxi trips involve one or two passengers. Since passengers almost never sit up front in a human-driven taxi, having two rows of seats in this energy-saving model makes little sense, says Zach Walker, Lucid’s chief of advanced product creation. “People already view the front seat of a taxi as a no-go land,” he declares.

The Lunar is a scaled-down version of Lucid’s forthcoming midsize Cosmos and Earth SUV’s. Walker explains that for the project his team was freed for a “technical moonshot” that could make this car among the world’s most energy-efficient production EVs. That kind of efficiency could be critical for a fledgling robotaxi business that seeks to squeeze every kilowatt and penny from cars that could might be cruising up to 20 hours a day, seven days a week.

The Cosmos, a Tesla Model Y competitor, is no slouch, at up to 7.24 kilometers (4.5 miles) of driving range for every kilowatt-hour of battery energy, thanks to its new Atlas power train and a class-best 0.22 coefficient of drag. The Lunar advances the company’s goal of “radical efficiency” by further shrinking its battery size, to about 55 kilowatt-hours, down from 69 kWh in the Cosmos. Walker says the Lunar could deliver up to 9.7 kilometers (6 miles) of driving range for every kilowatt-hour of battery—nearly double the efficiency of a typical four-seat electric SUV. A quick calculation suggests that would be enough to travel more than 500 kilometers (310 miles) on a charge, despite the Lunar’s relatively pint-size battery.

Downsizing Can Be a Virtuous Circle

Downsizing batteries is a design tactic expounded by Lucid founder and former CEO Peter Rawlinson. He believed it sets off a virtuous circle or “convergent series” of efficiency gains, allowing less nonactive battery-pack material, supporting structures, and downsized brakes and suspension components. In other words, each weight reduction means that slightly less battery can deliver the same driving range. Up to a point, anyway.

Sam Abuelsamid, an engineer and vice-president of market research for Telemetry, agrees the weight of a power train or battery can lead to a virtuous—or vicious—circle in engineering. “A Hummer EV is the worst example on the electric side, carrying almost 3,000 pounds of battery, but also all the structure (and associated components) to support it,” he notes.

Taxis have traditionally been big, lumbering, and fuel-thirsty. Consider the iconic yellow cabs that Checker Motors built in Michigan from 1922 to 1982, or London’s tall-roofed hackney cabs, originally designed to provide head room for men’s top hats and bowlers. But today, Abuelsamid says, two-passenger robotaxis make obvious sense for urban areas where they are most likely to proliferate.

“They have a smaller footprint, use less energy, and reduce congestion in cities,” Abuelsamid says. “You just wouldn’t want them for your entire fleet.”

Efficiency gains can pay special dividends in robotaxis, which some industry leaders envision logging up to 100,000 miles a year. For every 1 kWh reduction in battery size, Walker calculates, that robotaxi workhorse would save up to $1,000 a year in operating costs. Lucid says the Lunar could reduce operating costs by 40 percent versus larger robotaxis retrofitted from passenger cars, such as Waymo’s Jaguar iPace models.

Regarding charging, the larger Cosmos can already add 200 miles of range in 14 minutes on a DC fast charger. With its superior per-kilometer efficiency, the Lunar could likely add 200 miles in closer to 10 minutes, reducing service downtime that’s another critical calculation for taxi operators.

At Investor Day in New York City, Lucid’s interim CEO March Winterhoff and Uber President Andrew Macdonald sat inside a Lunar concept car, which was shown with no doors—the better to flaunt its 36-inch display screen and spacious cabin. The Lunar integrates a large array of sensors to create a bird’s-eye view of its environment, including lidar, cameras, and radar. It’s powered by Nvidia’s new Drive Thor system-on-a-chip, designed to support Level-4 or Level-5 autonomy with 1,000 teraflops of compute performance for critical inference processing.

Dispensing With the Giggle Factor

Where Lucid’s Air and Gravity models are known for blistering acceleration and sporty handling, a utilitarian robotaxi has no need for “the giggle factor,” as Walker dubs it. That creates more opportunities for savings, and passenger comfort. A chassis can be optimized for a comfy ride and low NVH (noise, vibration, and harshness). Meanwhile, driver pedals, a steering wheel and complex linkages, and electrified assists are all eliminated. Dynamic steering, beefed-up body control or massive wheels and tires to boost cornering? No need. After all, there’s no human driver to experience those sensations. And a taxi passenger’s worst nightmare is a driver who thinks he’s Max Verstappen.

Of course, robotaxis bring their own set of tech challenges. According to Walker, a current robotaxi might use up to 24 kWh of energy over 20 hours to sense its environment and operate safely. Most of that goes to processors and onboard sensors, with lidar an especial energy hog.

Though the Lunar remains a concept for now, it’s no sci-fi fantasy. The Lunar was designed to use the same components front and rear as other midsize Lucids, differing only in its downsized battery and center passenger section. No complex, costly reengineering is required, and the Lunar could share a production line with those showroom SUVs. For all those reasons, Walker says the Lunar is fundamentally sound and ready to scale. All Lucid needs are customers.

“We still have our day jobs, but this was like our midnight project that we were all obsessed with making,” Walker says. “We think the [robotaxi] industry is primed for a really cool takeoff.”

Charging an EV at home doesn’t seem like an inconvenience—until you find yourself dragging a cord around a garage or down a rainy driveway, then unplugging and coiling it back up every time you drive the kids to school or run an errand. For elderly or disabled drivers, those bulky cords can be a physical challenge.

As it was for smartphones years ago, wireless EV charging has been the dream. But there’s a difference of nearly four orders of magnitude between the roughly 14 watt-hours of a typical smartphone battery and that of a large EV. That’s what makes the wireless charging on the 108-kilowatt-hour pack in the forthcoming Porsche Cayenne Electric so notable.

To offer the first inductive charger on a production car, Porsche had to overcome both technical and practical challenges—such as how to protect a beloved housecat prowling below your car. The German automaker demonstrated the system at September’s IAA Mobility show in Munich.

With its 800-volt architecture, the Cayenne Electric can charge at up to 400 kW at a public DC station, enough to fill its pack from 10 to 80 percent in about 16 minutes. The wireless system delivers about 11 kW for Level 2 charging at home, where Porsche says three out of four of its customers do nearly all their fill-ups. Pull the Cayenne into a garage and align it over a floor-mounted plate, and the SUV will charge from 10 to 80 percent in about 7.5 hours. No plugs, tangled cords, or dirty hands. Porsche will offer a single-phase, 48-ampere version for the United States after buyers see their first Cayennes in mid-2026, and a three-phase, 16-A system in Europe.

Porsche’s Wireless Charging is Based on an Old Concept

The concept of inductive charging has been around for more than a century. Two coils of copper wire are positioned near one another. A current flowing through one coil creates a magnetic field, which induces voltage in the second coil.

In the Porsche system, the floor-mounted pad, 78 centimeters wide, plugs into the home’s electrical panel. Inside the pad, which weighs 50 kilograms, grid electricity (at 60 hertz in the United States, 50 Hz in most of the rest of the world) is converted to DC and then to high-frequency AC at 2,000 V.The resulting 85-kilohertz magnetic field extends from the pad to the Cayenne, where it is converted again to DC voltage.

The waterproof pad can also be placed outdoors, and the company says it’s unaffected by leaves, snow, and the like. In fact, the air-cooled pad can get warm enough to melt any snow, reaching temperatures as high as 50 °C.

The Cayenne’s onboard charging hardware mounts between its front electric motor and battery. The 15-kg induction unit wires directly into the battery.

In most EVs, plug-in (conductive) AC charging tops out at around 95 percent efficiency. Porsche says its wireless system delivers 90 percent efficiency, despite an air gap of roughly 12 to 18 cm between the pad and vehicle.

Last year, Oak Ridge National Laboratory transferred an impressive 270 kilowatts to a Porsche Taycan with 95 percent efficiency.

“We’re super proud that we’re just below conductive AC in charging efficiency,” says Simon Schulze, Porsche’s product manager for charging hardware. Porsche also beats inductive phone chargers, which typically max out at about 70 percent efficiency, Schulze says.

When the car gets within 7.5 meters of the charging pad, the Cayenne’s screen-based parking-assist system turns on automatically. Then comes a kind of video game that requires the driver to align a pair of green circles on-screen, one representing the car, the other the pad. It’s like a digital version of the tennis ball some people hang in their garage to gauge parking distance. There’s ample wiggle room, with tolerances of 20 cm left to right, and 15 cm fore and aft. “You can’t miss it,” according to Schulze.

Induction loops detect any objects between the charging plate and the vehicle; such objects, if they’re metal, could heat up dangerously. Radar sensors detect any living things near the pad, and will halt the charging if necessary. People can walk near the car or hop aboard without affecting a charging session.

Christian Holler, Porsche’s head of charging systems, says the system conforms to International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection standards for electromagnetic radiation. The field remains below 15 microteslas, so it’s safe for people with pacemakers, Porsche insists. And the aforementioned cat wouldn’t be harmed even if it strayed into the magnetic field, though “its metal collar might get warm,” Schulze says.

The Porsche system’s 90 percent efficiency is impressive but not record-setting. Last year, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) transferred 270 kW to a Porsche Taycan with 95 percent efficiency, boosting its state of charge by 50 percent in 10 minutes. That world-record wireless rate relied on polyphase windings for coils, part of a U.S. Department of Energy project that was backed by Volkswagen, Porsche’s parent company.

That effort, Holler says, spawned a Ph.D. paper from VW engineer Andrew Foote. Yet the project had different goals from the one that led to the Cayenne charging system. ORNL was focused on maximum power transfer, regardless of cost, production feasibility, or reliability, he says.

By contrast, designing a system for showroom cars “requires a completely different level of quality and processes,” Holler says.

High Cost Could Limit Adoption

Cayenne buyers in Europe will pay around €7,000 (roughly US $8,100) for the optional charger. Porsche has yet to price it for the United States.

Loren McDonald, chief executive of Chargeonomics, an EV-charging analysis firm, said wireless charging “is clearly the future,” with use cases such as driverless robotaxis, curbside charging, or at any site “where charging cables might be an annoyance or even a safety issue.”

But for now, inductive charging’s costly, low-volume status will limit it to niche models and high-income adopters, McDonald says. Public adoption will be critical “so that drivers can convenience-charge throughout their driving day—which then increases the benefits of spending more money on the system.”

Porsche acknowledges that issue; the system conforms to wireless standards set by the Society of Automotive Engineers so that other automakers might help popularize the technology.

“We didn’t want this to be proprietary, a Porsche-only solution,” Schulze says. “We only benefit if other brands use it.”

As a young SpaceX engineer, Quincy Lee led a rollout of hundreds of terrestrial antennas for Elon Musk’s Starlink Internet service. The project covered three continents, took just 24 months, and turned out to be great preparation for Lee’s next chapter.

Lee, now the founder and CEO of Electric Era, wants to make EV charging faster, ubiquitous, and more affordable for drivers and for retailers looking to lure customers and still turn a profit on electricity. As part of that, the company today announced its second-generation RetailEdge chargers. The sleek DC chargers can deliver up to 400 kilowatts, on par with the most powerful public chargers in the United States. But for the Seattle-based company, the real innovation is stationary power storage, something you won’t find at any charger from top players such as Tesla, Electrify America, or Ionna.

The RetailEdge stations can amass 370 kilowatt-hours of storage for a station with eight customer stalls. Taking a page from Starlink satellites, the chargers include software to let chargers self-identify and fix faults remotely. Backed by a box full of prismatic LFP batteries, sourced from China, the company’s chargers can deliver roughly four times as much power as what’s actually being supplied by the grid itself. Lee calls that a potential game changer for an aging, overmatched electrical grid that was not built for a world in which millions of drivers would demand access to industrial-level juice.

“A simple way to think about it is, a typical charging station consumes 1,000 homes’ worth of power on a city block. We can take that down to about 300 homes,” Lee says, while still delivering charging speeds that rival the industry’s best.

Efficient EV Charging Transformers

EV drivers have seen the hulking green transformer boxes that supply stations, including ones with roughly 1,000 kilovolt-amperes, the unit that describes a system’s total electrical power. In contrast, Electric Era stations use smaller, circular transformers—think the ones hung from telephone poles in residential neighborhoods—that can cost as little as US $16,000 (those beefier units can cost up to $100,000). That makes for faster permitting and grid upgrades, a potential end run around construction snafus that can delay DC projects, with some taking more than two years to complete

“The transformers are cheaper, easier to source, and take up less space,” Lee says. “We can swap larger pieces of power-conversion equipment for smaller ones, and still serve up to 140 charging sessions a day for our midsized stations.”

With nearly 120 of its first-generation, 200-kW DC chargers currently in the ground for customers including Costco and Shell, Electric Era says it can decrease installation times and costs by roughly a factor of four. Projects are moving from contract to completion in six to nine months on average, and some in as little as two to three months.

For its midsize stations with four charging stalls, the company needs only 370 kVA of installed capacity, about one-third that of some typical DC stations. (The kVa figure describes total apparent power, the product of a circuit’s maximum voltage and current.) The rest is supplied by 220 kWh of stationary battery storage, barely more than the 205 kWh found in a Cadillac Escalade IQ or GMC Hummer EV.

As drivers plug in, the system automatically balances power between grid and battery supplies. EVs get all the juice they can handle, with stations able to operate 24/7 without any significant curtailment of power.

“Most EVs are only accepting peak power for a few minutes, so we can then use intelligent load management to service another car, and power all the cars at the right time,” Lee says.

Electricity becomes dramatically cheaper as well. Utility customers pay for both electricity they actually use, and the infrastructure wiring that guarantees a ready supply at peak demand. The latter results in “demand charges” that are a notorious obstacle to a profitable, sustainable EV charging business. The higher the ultimate capacity, the higher the charges, even when no car is actually filling up.

“That makes the economics much easier to pencil,” Lee says. “Our customers’ electricity charges are about 50 percent lower, because of demand-charge savings.”

AI-Driven Cost Savings for EV Stations

The company says its system, backed by an AI platform and an intuitive, voice-based screen assistant that can operate in multiple languages, can reduce retail operator costs by up to 70 percent. And that can translate to more reasonable prices for drivers, Lee says. A 2024 Harvard Business School study of EV charging that analyzed 1 million consumer reviews of charging experiences around the United States showed that “Wild West” pricing, and a lack of pricing transparency, are major sources of frustration for drivers.

Or don’t ask Harvard: At many Electrify America stations, such as one near me in Providence, R.I., drivers pay up to 64 cents per kilowatt-hour. The cost of convenience is daunting: According to an EV calculator, at those prices, a driver would spend roughly $3,000 a year for enough juice to cover 15,000 miles in a Hyundai Ioniq 5 SUV. At current prices for regular unleaded, a driver would spend only $1,600 to drive the same distance in a model that gets 30 miles per gallon (about 13 kilometers per liter).

At Electric Era stations, where retailers set their own prices, customers pay about 45 cents per kilowatt-hour on average, about one-third less than many EA stations.

As EVs proliferate, more retailers are seeing the long-predicted upside of luring customers with electricity. A captive charging audience will hopefully spend money at the business, whether it’s a gas station, convenience store, restaurant, or shopping mall.

“For years, that didn’t work, because there were too few EVs on the road,” Lee says. “But the calculus is shifting, and retailers are putting real estate aside (for chargers).”

The company claims a 99.8 percent uptime, and a 93 percent reliability rate, meaning 7 percent of people who plug in fail to get a charge for any reason, from payment glitches to user error. The same Harvard study posted a troubling 78 percent reliability score for public charging, meaning about one in five charging attempts ended in failure.

As Lee says, “One of the things we learned at SpaceX is that you can’t send a repair truck to space, and we’ve adopted the same methodology.”