Bring the charging port to you:
As electric vehicles gain in popularity, building the infrastructure necessary to charge them all will be a costly endeavor. However, Volkswagen may have a solution. VW Group Components introduced a new mobile robot concept that could autonomously help charge EVs wherever they are located, essentially making any parking spot a charging port.
The robot, which is autonomous, can move what VW calls battery wagons – 25-kilowatt-hour battery packs – to a vehicle where the robot then connects the battery wagon to the vehicle. Summoning the robot happens either via a mobile app or vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications. The robot uses various cameras, laser scanners, and ultrasonic sensors to operate autonomously, including recognizing and reacting to obstacles.
VW says the robot and battery wagons could help charge vehicles in areas where installing sufficient EV charging infrastructure could be costly – like an underground parking structure or other difficult-to-renovate locations. Drivers looking for a parking spot in a parking structure could park anywhere, regardless of whether there are any open charge ports, and have VW's mobile robot wheel a battery wagon over to begin charging the vehicle.
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(Score: 4, Insightful) by Bot on Sunday December 29 2019, @01:18PM (2 children)
isn't that a solved problem?
make batteries replaceable.
solar panels or night shift charging, delivery to stations, 3 mins of swapping (bacause they are heavy some kind of cart is needed), pay only for the actual amount of charge you got delivered.
the 25 miles from my place http://estrima.com [estrima.com] is already doing that.
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(Score: 4, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Sunday December 29 2019, @05:36PM (1 child)
> isn't that a solved problem?
Nope!
> make batteries replaceable.
I wish. But that only hands off the problem of lengthy recharge times from travelers to changing/charging stations. Could need hundreds of battery packs on hand to buffer demand, and that takes lots of space. Might need 10x as many battery packs in existence as compared to a system in which batteries can recharge quickly.
This battery wagon idea is new to me, but it just doesn't seem feasible. The biggest problem with electric vehicles is long recharge times, with short ranges being a close 2nd.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday December 30 2019, @06:08AM
> But that only hands off the problem of lengthy recharge times from travelers to changing/charging stations
Which does yield some advantages.
1. batteries can be used as buffers for the grid and for UPS
2. batteries don't take up the space of vehicle + maneuvring
3. people don't meet other people charging their vehicles and cut their cords in road rages
4. you can take the battery to the charger instead of hi voltage cables to the vehicle
the disadvantages (for the car manufacturers)
1. need to standardize
2. less ways to plan obsolescence.
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 29 2019, @01:32PM (3 children)
I'm trying to visualize what NY City traffic would look like with these battery robots double-parked all over the city...in addition to all the delivery vehicles (etc) that already double park and snarl up traffic.
If, as tfa suggests, these robots only service cars in parking garages that isn't much better, the robots will be stopping behind the car to be charged and blocking the aisle for anyone wanting to enter or exit.
And then there is the loss of efficiency of charging/discharging another battery...it all sounds like a pipe dream. And, maybe a hacker's dream too, seems like there is all kinds of fun to be had with a robot like this.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Sunday December 29 2019, @07:30PM (2 children)
NYC would be an easy problem to solve: simply ban all on-street parking in Manhattan. People don't need personal cars there, and if they're rich, they can pay $$$$ to park in an expensive private lot per-hour. Works fine in Tokyo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 29 2019, @08:16PM (1 child)
Good luck banning personal car parking in Manhattan...but on the very slim chance that some "king for a day" could actually pull this off, then there would be no need for the robot battery chargers either.
Any expensive private-lot/parking-structure will need electric car charging built in, to stay in business.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 30 2019, @03:20AM
This is where it is heading in Melbourne. A tax is levied on personal car spaces for, yes, you guessed it, to reduce congestion.
The idea being that people will forgo a car space in Melbourne city so as not to pay the extra tax.
Guess how effective it is? Right. People now rent out their car spaces to make money. Go figure.
(Score: 2) by Mojibake Tengu on Sunday December 29 2019, @04:45PM
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The edge of 太玄 cannot be defined, for it is beyond every aspect of design
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 30 2019, @12:07AM
Yeah, pretty absurd to charge batteries to charge other batteries, when overhead cables would do fine, or even replaceable batteries (at least part of the system... bonus: city driving can be done with fixed part only, meaning lighter car and a bit more of range than proportional deduction). But it's Volkswagen group, they even managed to make an electric vehicle that emits CO2. [carscoops.com] They have a serious case of "stupid". Or in famous Jurassic Park words: "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should."