Hello and welcome to your daily Charge Smart blog! On today's piece, we will be talking about Volkswagen's new charging robots that will move around and recharge your EV.
If you’re a fellow EV driver like myself then you’ll know the struggle of turning up at the mall and seeing both the charging spaces taken, just when you were planning on getting a quick charge in while you recharge yourself with a coffee. Then there’s the other issue where some absent-minded person has gone and parked their car in that space, the space that says for EVs specifically. If you’ve ever had to deal with either of those problems then you’ll be relieved to hear that Volkswagen have solved both of them at once.
How so, you may ask? Well, the German giant have created a prototype charging robot which can navigate itself to find your car in a parking lot. The robot charger attaches itself to a battery on wheels, a battery which allows it to deliver a charge of 50kW! Sure, that isn’t nearly enough for a full charge on most modern EVs but it is still more than enough to get your EV home or to finish the last leg of that road trip. The robot makes use of cameras, scanners and sensors to navigate through parking spots and find your car. The idea is that many of these robots will work together in a single parking lot to charge up the EVs parked there.
Above: The EV robot chargers at work
The new technology saves EV owners the trouble of finding a parking spot by a charger or waiting in a line to use the charger. VW haven’t confirmed an exact release date for this new robot as they still have to work out a few details. Like the robot’s ability to recognize different charging ports, the bots wouldn’t be that great if they are only compatible with VW cars, right?!
These robots could be a huge breakthrough in public EV charging infrastructure because as the number of EVs on roads keep rising, the competition for those rare charging stations at the mall will heat up. So, a mobile robot that charges your car while you’re parked could be far more useful.
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