January 19, 2020
One of the major problems facing the expansion of electric motor vehicles is the matter of developing the necessary infrastructure of charging stations. As of December 2018, there were about 20,000 charging stations with about 57,000 charging outlets for plug-in electric vehicles. In sharp contradistinction, there are about 111,000 gas stations, most of which have more than two gas pumpz.
Volkswagen has come up with a clever solution to get more coverage for electric vehicles. According to this article at motor1.com, VW has created a self-driving robot that can autonomously recharge your car in a parking garage. Since it is not realistic to outfit every parking spot with a charging station, VW’s solution is a bot that you can call over with a smartphone app to give your EV a 50-kilowatt boost. Once it comes to your car, the robot plugs your car in and handles the entire process. When the EV is recharged, the robot automatically returns to its base station. The bots are equipped with “cameras, laser scanners, and ultrasonic sensors” to help them move freely throughout the garage and find each car’s charging port without the need for any human interaction.
Now to find an affordable electric car….