One of the concerns lots of potential customers of electric vehicles (EVs) have is where they are going to charge it in public places - so finding a charging point or bay becomes something of a stress. Thankfully Volkswagen, gearing up for the introduction of its all-electric ID range of machines, has the answer: a charging point that comes to you. This is a mobile charging robot; now, how 21st century is that?!
Friendly-faced charging machine
Volkswagen says you can start the charging robot up via an app on your smartphone or through vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications. It will then autonomously drive itself to the car that needs charging, communicating with it upon arrival so that everything - from opening the charging socket flap to connecting the plug to decoupling once the battery is full up - is handling by the robot itself.
And if you're wondering what the cheerful little charging robot's trailer is in the images, then that's the mobile energy storage device. This means that the robot can bring this to the car, plug it in, then head off and take other mobile energy storage devices to multiple EVs in the same car park/vicinity in the meantime, rather than tying itself up to one vehicle for hours on end. Once the car in question is charged, the robot takes the mobile energy storage device back to a main charging station, so that it can be charged up to replenish other EVs' battery packs.
EV-charging train
Mark Möller, the head of development at Volkswagen Group components, said: "The mobile charging robot will spark a revolution when it comes to charging in different parking facilities, such as multi-storey car parks, parking spaces and underground car parks because we bring the charging infrastructure to the car and not the other way around. With this, we are making almost every car park electric, without any complex individual infrastructural measures. It's a visionary prototype, which can be made into reality quite quickly, if the general conditions are right."
The prototype robot hauls its mobile energy storage devices, or battery wagons, around and each of these can store 25kWh of power each. The robot can even move several battery wagons at the same time, making it a weird autonomous EV-charging train, and the charging rate to the car requiring replenishment is up to 50kW on a DC quick-charging connection. Cameras, lasers and ultrasonic sensors on the robot allow it to navigate around car-parking areas to where it needs to be, and more than one robot can patrol a car park to ensure adequate charging coverage in the event of many EVs parking there at once.