Electric car owners could one day ditch the plugs and charge their vehicles wirelessly by parking on a special pad, thanks to a new project set up by a Coventry battery specialist.

Evida, which set up its UK base in the West Midlands just two months ago, employs staff from collapsed local firms such as Modec and LDV to work on its innovative technology which is set to power a new generation of electric vehicles.

On opening it already had a major contract to supply French-German electric vehicle maker Mia Electric with 8kWh battery packs for its three new models.

But now it has announced it will take its battery expertise even further, teaming up with New Zealand firm HaloIPT to explore charging electric vehicles wirelessly, in an agreement worth an estimated 80 million euros.

Evida and HaloIPT envisage the system could eventually be used on the Mia car, for which sales are estimated to reach 70,000 units by 2015, as well as other vehicles.

Evida cofounder and vice-president of business development Jonathan Shine said the experience of parking at a shopping centre could be transformed into a recharging pit stop, without any need to worry about wires or plugs.

“You have a rubber mat underneath the vehicle with copper coils inside and a matching one on the ground or under the ground.

“For example, you go to IKEA, park the car, walk away and the systems know that they have met each other and they start charging.

“There’s no need to plug it in, no wires, and the street furniture doesn’t need to be next to the vehicle.”

Mr Shine, who drives a Nissan Leaf, said his personal experience of owning an electric car gave him hope the vehicles would see large-scale take-up.

“It’s difficult to predict the curve towards mass adoption,” he said.

“There will be some early adopters, but it depends on a number of factors including trends, desirability as well as financial matters, Government policy and also innovation in terms of batteries.

“I’m biased in both directions – I’m a natural sceptic but on the other hand having driven an electric vehicle for some time I can see people adopting them in large numbers. The reaction to my Nissan Leaf is ‘I want one’ in the same way people say the same thing about my iPad.

“Then the question is are they going to fork out the money?”

He said there was still plenty policy-makers could do to incentivise electric car ownership in the UK.

“I don’t think they are doing nearly enough. They haven’t seen the thing through, certainly in this country.

“I think if they really want proliferation of electric vehicles in large numbers they need to crank up the benefits, and they don’t necessarily need to be financial benefits.

“They need to make it an attractive decision. For many years I’ve been lobbying for benefits in terms of parking, use of bus lanes and other financial benefits to push people into saying ‘let’s go for this’.”