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Porsche Will Roll Out Wireless EV Charging in 2026

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In brief

  • Porsche will unveil its 11 kW wireless charging system in Munich next week, the automaker said Thursday.
  • Wireless charging will be offered in Europe from 2026, with global markets to follow.
  • A floor pad transfers power to a receiver under the SUV; efficiency is ~90%, comparable to plug-in charging.

Porsche will unveil its long-anticipated 11 kW wireless charging system for its 2026 Cayenne Electric at the IAA motor show in Munich next week, the company said Thursday.

The wireless charging system was first announced in the spring. Technically, Porsche isn’t the first to go cable-free—it’s the latest to join a growing list of automakers experimenting with inductive charging. BMW briefly offered a wireless option on its 530e plug-in hybrid back in 2018, and Genesis has tested similar systems.

But Porsche is the first automaker planning to bring inductive charging to a fully electric SUV at scale, making it more than just a pilot or niche accessory. Volkswagen, Stellantis, Hyundai, Volvo, and even Tesla have signaled interest through R&D, pilots, or acquisitions, but Porsche’s rollout is the first with firm timing and safety certifications behind it.

Porsche’s move matters because it brings the tech to a mass-market luxury SUV, with the brand emphasizing efficiency and user experience rather than just novelty.



What makes Porsche’s system different

The Cayenne Electric will come with a receiver plate tucked into its underbody. Park over a flat floor pad, and the system uses ultra-wideband tech to line things up automatically. The car then lowers itself within a few inches of the pad, charging begins, and Porsche says it delivers 90% efficiency—on par with plug-in charging.

Safety was a big focus: motion sensors and foreign-object detection cut power if anything slips between pad and car, and the pad itself is weatherproof and TÜV, CE, and UL certified. Drivers can manage sessions through the My Porsche app, and the Surround View parking system offers alignment visuals. It’s designed to feel like magic—park, stop, walk away, and the car charges.

Porsche Cayenne wireless charging. Image: Porsche

The system is reportedly safe for cats, who have been known to favor sleeping under cars in garages. The system can detect when something is on it and shut off until your pet has moved on; it’ll even send a notification to your phone, letting you know that recharging has been temporarily suspended.

Market timing and costs

This won’t hit your local showroom this year. Porsche plans to launch in Europe in 2026, then expand globally. The Cayenne Electric itself will debut by the end of 2025, with the wireless tech as an optional extra. 

Convenience will be priced accordingly. Early estimates put the receiver hardware at about €2,000 ($2,330) and the pad near €5,000 ($5,825), plus installation—squarely a luxury option for those already buying a Cayenne. While pricing hasn’t been set for the EV the 2026 base model is expected to launch at around $100,000.

The U.S. picture: Pilots, pads, and roads

In the United States, wireless charging hasn’t gone mainstream but is steadily moving from concept to pilot:

  • Plugless Power has been selling aftermarket pads for models like the Nissan Leaf since 2014, though at lower wattages.

  • WiTricity, based in Massachusetts, has launched an 11 kW Halo system and recently piloted wireless charging for Ford E-Transit vans at the Port of Long Beach.

  • Detroit’s Corktown district has a quarter-mile wireless road built with Electreon, soon to extend to a full mile.

  • Purdue University and the Indiana DOT plan to test highway-speed charging on a U.S. route segment.

  • Los Angeles is installing inductive coils under a campus road at UCLA ahead of the 2028 Olympics.

These projects show the U.S. is treating wireless charging as both a fleet solution and an infrastructure experiment—though no domestic automaker has yet committed to factory-built consumer models.

Why it matters

With the SAE J2954 international wireless standard finalized in 2024, Porsche’s decision gives the technology a legitimacy boost. If luxury buyers embrace the potentially $8,000+ convenience of skipping cables, other automakers may follow with mass-market options.

For now, Porsche’s Cayenne Electric rollout highlights the gap between what’s technically possible and what most EV drivers can actually afford—making wireless charging both a headline and a harbinger. Best of all, it won’t fry your cat.

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Roblox to roll out "facial age estimation technology" for everyone, after US prosecutor dubbed it "the perfect place for pedophiles"
Game Updates

Roblox to roll out “facial age estimation technology” for everyone, after US prosecutor dubbed it “the perfect place for pedophiles”

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Roblox will roll out selfie-based “facial age estimation technology” as a mandatory requirement for all of its players, as part of efforts to “limit communications” between minors and adults they don’t know.

The corporation behind the massive game filled with smaller games, many of which are made by young people, say they aim to bring in this measure by the end of 2025. The news is part of a “long-term” vision for child safety in the wake of the US state of Louisiana’s lawsuit against Roblox Corporation over child safety concerns, with Louisiana attorney general Liz Murrill accusing the game of being a “overrun with harmful content and child predators”.

Roblox chief safety officer Matt Kaufman wrote in an announcement spotted by PC Gamer that this age estimation tech will be deployed to everyone who uses the game’s built-in communications systems, and will work alongside the likes of ID age verification and parental consent to “provide a more accurate measure of a user’s age than simply relying on what someone types in when they create an account.” On top of that, they promise “new systems” to limit minors’ interactions with adult strangers.

“We’re taking this step as part of our long-term vision as a platform for all ages,” Kaufman added. “We expect that our approach to communication safety will become best practice for other online platforms, whether lawmakers pass laws requiring age verification for all platforms in the future or not.”

Roblox’s facial age estimation works by “analysing a selfie of your face and examining your facial features”, at which point the user’s assigned to one of three groups, under 13, over 13, and over 18. The experience the game offers changes based on which bucket folks land in, and “certain personal data, including your email and phone number, will be removed from Roblox” for those flagged as under 13 years old.

So, it’s a slightly more in-depth iteration of the photo-based age checks you may well have had to do as part of the measures many sites and services have launched in response to the UK’s Online Safety Act, with the likes of credit card and ID checks often being the alternatives. These checks haven’t proven to be totally bulletproof (hello, Norman Reedus’ Death Stranding mug).

In addition to the legal action from Louisiana, Roblox has also faced child safety criticism from politicians like Democrat Ro Khanna. This isn’t the first time the game has made headlines for mistreatment of children, with accusations of exploiting game creators who’re often just kids or teenagers also having been lobbied at it.

Those behind Roblox have annoucned other steps recently to protect kids who are hopping in for a bit of Grow a Garden. That’s included cracking down on “vigilantes” who were impersonating minors in an alleged effort to catch adults behaving inappropriately, something the game’s overseers argued was only confusing matters.



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Product Reviews

Chinese social media platforms roll out labels for AI-generated material

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Major social media platforms in China have started rolling out labels for AI-generated content to comply with a law that took effect on Monday. Users of the likes of WeChat, Douyin, Weibo and RedNote (aka Xiaohongshu) are now seeing such labels on posts. These denote the use of generative AI in text, images, audio, video and other types of material, according to the South China Morning Post. Identifiers such as watermarks have to be included in metadata too.

WeChat has told users they must proactively apply labels to their AI-generated content. They’re also prohibited from removing, tampering with or hiding any AI labels that WeChat applies itself, or to use “AI to produce or spread false information, infringing content or any illegal activities.”

ByteDance’s Douyin — the Chinese version of TikTok — similarly urged users to apply a label to every post of theirs that includes AI-generated material while noting it’s able to use metadata to detect where a piece of content content came from. Weibo, meanwhile, has added the option for users to report “unlabelled AI content” option when they see something that should have such a label.

Four agencies drafted the law — which was issued earlier this year — including the main internet regulator, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC). The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Public Security and the National Radio and Television Administration also helped put together the legislation, which is being enforced to help oversee the tidal wave of genAI content. In April, the CAC started a three-month campaign to regulate AI apps and services.

Mandatory labels for AI content could help folks better understand when they’re seeing AI slop and/or misinformation instead of something authentic. Some US companies that provide genAI tools offer similar labels and are starting to bake such identifiers into hardware. Google’s Pixel 10 devices are the first phones that implement C2PA (Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity) content credentials right inside the camera app.



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The White House Apparently Ordered Federal Workers to Roll Out Grok ‘ASAP’
Product Reviews

The White House Apparently Ordered Federal Workers to Roll Out Grok ‘ASAP’

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The White House appears to have instructed leaders at the General Services Administration (GSA) to add xAI’s Grok chatbot to a list of approved vendors “ASAP,” according to an email sent by agency leadership earlier this week, which WIRED obtained.

“Team: Grok/xAI needs to go back on the schedule ASAP per the WH,” states the email, sent by Josh Gruenbaum, the commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service. “Can someone get with Carahsoft on this immediately and please confirm?” Carahsoft is a major government contractor that resells technology from third-party firms.

“Should be all of their products we had previously (3 & 4),” the email continued, seemingly referring to Grok 3 and Grok 4. The subject line of the email was “xAI add Grok-4.”

Sources say Carahsoft’s contract was modified to include xAI earlier this week. Grok 3 and Grok 4 both currently appear on GSA Advantage (an online marketplace for government agencies to buy products and services) as of Friday morning. Now, following some internal reviews, any government agency can roll Grok out to federal workers.

The White House and GSA did not respond to a request for comment from WIRED.

The email comes after a planned partnership with xAI fell apart earlier this summer following Grok’s widespread praise for Hitler and the spouting of other antisemitic beliefs on X, WIRED previously reported.

In June, employees from xAI met with GSA leadership for a two-hour brainstorming session to discuss how xAI’s Grok chatbot could be used by the government. Federal workers were surprised to see their leaders press for a contract with a company marketing an uncensored chatbot with a history of erratic behavior. In early July, Grok, which is integrated into Elon Musk’s social platform X, seemingly went off the rails and started praising Hitler. GSA leadership took Grok off the Multiple Award Schedule, which is GSA’s long-term government contracting platform, according to sources at the agency. When GSA announced buzzy partnerships with OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google earlier this month, xAI wasn’t mentioned at all.

xAI is Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup. Musk, who also helms the social network X in addition to a number of other companies, played a crucial role in President Donald Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). He stepped back from his public-facing role at DOGE this spring, following a massive fight with the president. A number of his associates continue to work in government pushing DOGE’s cost-cutting and AI-first agenda.



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