Volkswagen has revealed a brief demo video of its highly anticipated autonomous EV charging robot, giving us a basic idea of its functionality.
This mobile charging robot is still in development and the company hasn’t provided any details about a release timeline.
VW has previously said that each battery wagon will come with a 25 kWh battery pack with support for 50 kW DC fast charging.

After years of showing off concepts for autonomous electric vehicle charging robots, Volkswagen has formally shown off a working prototype. The revelation was made in a short video by the company, revealing how the function would work.

Here’s how the company explains this mobile charging robot:

The charging robot—started via an app or Car-to-X communication—operates totally autonomously. It independently steers to the vehicle to be charged and communicates with it: from opening the charging socket flap to connecting the plug and decoupling it. The entire charging process takes place without any human involvement whatsoever. To charge several vehicles at the same time, the mobile robot moves a mobile energy storage unit to the vehicle, connects it, and then uses this energy storage unit to charge the vehicle and repeats the process to charge other vehicles. Once the vehicle is fully charged, the robot independently collects the mobile energy storage unit and takes it back to the central charging station.”

A setup like this could be ideal for parking lots and would save the trouble of having to install individual charging points at every parking spot. Volkswagen says that the robot can carry several battery wagons at the same time, thus providing enough juice to charge multiple vehicles nearby.

The company has said that it is currently evaluating the possibility of bringing this to the market based on its development. Since it’s still a prototype, we figure the company would make a few changes before bringing it to the market.

Though there isn’t a lot of additional information on this autonomous EV charging robot, Volkswagen had previously said that each wagon will have a 25 kWh battery pack inside with the ability to charge an EV at 50 kW via DC fast-charging.

What do you think about this autonomous charging robot?

Via: Electrek