VW showed a glimpse of its first mobile charging robot device in action. The “cute” device has a design that makes it look like it has a face, a pair of eyes, and mobility that will enable it to grab a battery and insert it into an electric car, and set itself back to the docking station.
Thanks to pop-culture, for a layman, robots usually fall into one of these two categories: a helpful bodyguard in the form of Terminator or an infallible assassin like T1000.
When Volkswagen showed the video of its mobile charging robot with the background score associated with Terminator, it spooked the tech-enthusiasts, but in a graceful manner, the video then portrayed Volkswagen’s newest creation as an adorable R2D2 like device.
The EV charging robot works autonomously via an app or car-to-x connection. When your electric car is parked in your parking garage, you through the app or your car through the car-to-x connection can request to have the car’s battery charged.
The video showed how this entire ordeal will function. The robot floats away from the docking station, hooks itself up to the mobile batteries available, and then drags them to the electric car. The robot plugs the battery in the car, returns to the docking station while it waits for any more charging requests. When the car is charged, the robot then collects the battery and brings it back to the battery charging rack.
Thanks to the glimpse shown by VW, it gives us an idea of how these types of charging systems can help independent parking garages to have a single charging system without there being a need of having multiple charging stations at a parking lot. The battery packs can be smoothly rolled out to and from the cars and charged at a single place.
Although there is no release date on this adorable robot charger, the press release of Volkswagen states that the mobile charging robot is already on a prototype status and the development will be continued further.
Though, the Volkswagen Group is expanding its electrical vehicle production aggressively. In 2020, it launched two full electric vehicles models called the e-up! and the e-Golf. They are planning to produce and deliver over 80 new electric models and to sell about 1.5 million electric cars by 2025.
Meanwhile Volkswagen has already installed over 1,200 charging points at German sites. Amazing fact is that VW recorded over 50,000 charging operations at those sites in spite of corona this year. With this progress VW is planning to install 750 more charging points in 2021 which includes the first High Power Charging stations with up to 300 kw power.
