The round file is the trash can, and it’s hard to believe National Geographic would be touting this idea without providing some discussion of the inefficiency (read: waste) of wireless power transmission. As their article says, quoting the CEO of a firm selling this approach for charging electric cars:

“The electric-car industry has figured out that people aren’t going to use electric vehicles if they have to constantly plug them in,” Giler says. “We are trying to make charging your car as convenient as fueling it at the pump.”

Really? Constantly? Once a day or so? I’d like to know what true energy losses are. Wireless charging sounds convenient, but what is the true cost? The equivalent amount of excess carbon dioxide generated?

Some of the comments following to the article are on the mark, such as:

But this is a bad idea, and it has been known to be a bad idea for over 100 years. Magnetic resonance can only be effective over the distance of a few meters, and it wastes a bloody hel (sic) of a lot of energy. Two of the four equations attributed to James Maxwell explain why …

I need to dust off my old physics textbook to get back and review  Maxwell’s equations. Elegant and worth a look.