Jungheinrich has launched the "Park-Power" inductive wireless charging infrastructure for its EFG 213 series 48V electric reach trucks. In high-throughput 24/7 distribution centers, traditional lead-acid battery swapping requires a dedicated charging room and 15 minutes of changeover time per shift. Plug-in fast charging requires operator discipline to physically insert heavy cables, which often results in damaged connectors and missed charging windows.
The Park-Power system embeds a "3 kW Magnetic Resonance Charging Pad" flush into the warehouse floor at the end of each picking aisle. The engineering core is the "Magnetic Alignment Servo." When the reach truck drives into its home position, the forklift's chassis receiver coil does not need to be perfectly aligned. The system uses a low-frequency pilot signal to detect the receiver's offset. If the truck is parked up to 100 mm off-center, the forklift's steer-by-wire system automatically engages the rear steer motor, micro-shifting the truck laterally until the coils achieve 95% coupling efficiency, initiating high-power transfer automatically without operator input.
The breakthrough innovation is the "WMS-Interlinked Micro-Charging" logic. The warehouse management system tracks the forklift's battery state of charge (SoC) and mission schedule. During a 10-minute operator break or a temporary order queue, the WMS directs the forklift to return to its aisle park position. The system delivers a 40-amp top-up charge for 8 minutes, adding 5% SoC. By capturing these micro-charging windows throughout a 24-hour cycle, the forklift maintains a SoC between 60% and 90% continuously, never requiring a full 8-hour charging cycle. This eliminates the need for a second battery pack per truck, reducing capital expenditure by 20% and removing all charging-related downtime from the operational schedule.
