Ford Is Testing Robot EV Chargers to Help Disabled Drivers
Maybe the most annoying part of driving an electric car is having to charge it. Public chargers are regularly broken or malfunctioning, and many of them have weirdly sized or placed parking spots. Plus, the charging cables themselves can be heavy and annoying to carry around and maneuver. All of that inconvenience is magnified for disabled or elderly drivers, many of whom are unable to plug in an EV at all. To help remedy this, Ford is starting trials on a new robot charging station that can be operated from inside your car.
The driver pulls up to the specially designated station and initiates the charging process using the FordPass smartphone app. The car's charge door pops open, and a robot arm emerges from the station and precisely plugs itself into the car using a small camera to position itself. Ford's video also shows another version of the robot that drops down from the ceiling of a parking garage to plug in. When it's finished, the arm retracts back into the charging station.
Ford says the robot charger has passed its initial lab testing phase and is now going through real-world trials, and the setup could be used in disabled parking spots, private homes or parking lots. In addition to being a major help for disabled drivers, this new robot tech could provide easier charging of large company fleets, and it could also charge cars more powerfully and in less time than traditional chargers. In the future, Ford envisions the process could be fully automated, with drivers sending the car to the charging station by itself.
The robot was developed in partnership with Dortmund University in Germany, and Ford said the research project will be followed up by working with charging network Ionity to further improve the system. This tech could also be applied in combination with automated valet parking, which Ford first showed off at the Munich Auto Show last year.
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