Volkswagen presented its future vision of electric mobility. The German manufacturer imagines a system of autonomous robots capable of recharging cars in a parking lot with a simple click of a smartphone.
Hydrogen car: a hybrid service station tested in Switzerland Like other nations, Switzerland is preparing for the massive arrival of electric and hydrogen vehicles for which an energy distribution network will have to be developed. It is in this perspective that the Federal Polytechnic of Lausanne undertook to test a concept of service station capable of recharging cars with electricity or hydrogen produced on site and without carbon dioxide emissions.
Charging your electric car can be a real headache when there is no charging station nearby. To avoid future drivers ofelectric cars , Volkswagen has developed a new concept of mobile robot. When the driver parks in a parking lot, an autonomous robot will be able to find his car thanks to numerous sensors and to recharge the battery during a race, without any human intervention.
This means that any conventional car park can be transformed into a charging station for an electric vehicle ! Charging is controlled using a V2X mobile application and the autonomous robot will be charged with the rest!
A futuristic prototype soon to be real?
While a car is charging, the robot can move again and bring another portable charging station to another vehicle with the empty batteries. Once recharged, the robot collects the charger which it reconnects to its base while waiting for the next vehicles running out of juice.
Volkswagen believes that this technology ” will trigger a revolution in material charging in different parking infrastructure, such as parking on several levels”. Indeed, these autonomous robots could reduce the need for infrastructure dedicated solely to recharging electric vehicles.
Rest areas or stadium parking lots, both outdoors and underground, could also benefit from the help of its charging robots in the near future. Even though this technology is currently still in the prototype stage, Volkswagen believes that it could become reality ” fairly quickly “.