Infiniti has plans for a Nissan LEAF-based luxury electric vehicle of its own but is holding off until inductive charging becomes more prevalent.
We’re sorry, but this seems a bit silly.
Inductive charging is great – don’t get us wrong. In fact we love the idea of magnetic waves to send energy wirelessly from one source to another. In fact, we wouldn’t be surprised if most of our high-end electronics utilize the technology within a few years.
Waiting for inductive charging to take hold before you release your luxury EV, to us, is like saying, “I’m going to wait until my hair grows back to go to the gym.”
“The whole concept of not having to couple up cables to a plug socket, dragging them on the ground and on you as you go, is in keeping with luxury motoring,” said Infiniti Executive Vice President Andy Palmer in an Autocar interview.
We get it. But if Infiniti’s parent company, Nissan, is so serious about propagating all-electric vehicles, it should be eager to jump in headfirst and either drag inductive charging with it or wait to introduce induction on it second-generation luxury EV.
Tesla has clearly proved there’s a market for luxury EVs even with those blasted cables – even from an upstart automaker. One would think that a known entity like Infiniti would have no trouble selling a higher-end EV.
We think Infiniti is using the inductive charging issue as an excuse. We think Infiniti just doesn’t have a product capable of competing with the Tesla and rather than push something that might flop, it’s going to place a far-off benchmark so that it doesn’t embarrass itself – and gives them time to catch up.
