Volkswagen has been working for some time on robots that ensure that parked electric cars are recharged. The ‘tank helpers’ are now almost ready for the real work.
In the coming year, a kind of R2D2-like robots will be set to work in various places to charge electric cars. Volkswagen presented this concept almost to the day of a year ago and has now almost finished the robots. The robots can be a godsend in parking garages where no separate places for electric cars have been set up. A central place in the garage serves as a ‘docking station’ where mobile charging stations wait for a robot to take them to electric cars.
The robots can be ordered to recharge a car through ‘Car-to-X’ communication. In that case, a robot picks up a charging station with sufficient capacity and drives it to the car in question. There the robot can take over control of the car’s charging connection. He opens the cover and then connects the charging cable of the charging station with one arm.
When the car is recharged, the robot will receive another notification and will return to the car to remove the cable. Then the robot will also return the mobile charging station to the central location, so that it can be recharged itself. Although Volkswagen is now silent about the capacity, a year ago they spoke of a capacity of 25 kWh for the charging stations.
According to Volkswagen, various German companies are already testing prototypes of the robots and charging stations. As mentioned, it will be released in the new year. Volkswagen is aiming for early 2021.