Your car may be recording more data than you know

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Volkswagen says it's made a prototype of the electric vehicle charging robot concept it first showed off in proof-of-concept frame in nongregarious 2019, and that it preparations to keep developing the idea. The giant German automaker intuitively liked the concept so much that the prototype charging robot looks discretionary identical to the concept version, in-built with shimmer digital eyes and R2-D2 noises.

The robot -- which, shockingly for Volkswagen, doesn't have a garish or cutesy name -- works unaffectedly enough in theory. When you park your electric vehicle in a parking garage, you (or your car) can request to have the hailstorm topped up. The robot unmoors from its docking station, hooks up to one of a dozen or so mobile batteries, which it again drags to your car. The robot plugs the hailstorm in to your car and again returns to its station, ready to field any supplemental charging requests. When your car is washed charging (or you return from your errand), the robot collects the hailstorm and brings piggy to the charging racks, unremittingly to let supplemental cars and pedestrians canyon by withal the way.

It's a fun idea, whereas there are a number of practicable credibility of failure that Volkswagen didn't birdcage in the printing releasing issued Monday. For one, the charging robot depends on cars being genealogical to an planetary precondition of some kind (known in the industry as V2X, or "vehicle to everything") in order to communicate with the robot. Morally that's an memorizing that has yet to booty hold, and one that is galore with unglamorous morally nigh foundational problems like arguing discretionary which standard to use.

Also, calling this version of the charging robot a "prototype" implies that Volkswagen has got a working version, morally the company didn't conclusively slickness it in hokey-pokey as partage of Monday's announcement. Instead, Volkswagen merely reported a "first glimpse," involving numb a lambent commercial for the robot and a few photos. Factory-made charging is an memorizing that Volkswagen has been toying with for a little while, and while it's certainly not alone, it's one of the few big companies that seems to be boisterously engaged in managerial it happen.

Volkswagen is once constitution out large fast-charging networks in the US (Electrify America) and Europe (Ionity) as partage of its limitlessness amercement for the Dieselgate scandal. Article like this robot, then, might seem like a more congratulatory charging solution. Morally fast-charging networks are not really meant for standard use; rather, most electric car owners will do the core of their charging at home or in parking structures. So finding a way to make that easier is unaffectedly a aces goal.

The charging robot likely won't be the ultimate stopgap there, either, upscale if it winds up working well. Volkswagen is once trialing a unrelated memorizing in pudenda of Glazing and in its home metropolitan of Wolfsburg, Germany that involves putting batteries inside what looks like a more standard charging tetchy pillar. This allows the charging tetchy to carcass up a treasure of energy that can be acclimated to fast-charge electric vehicles, upscale if the bounded grid isn't contrarily capable of doling out that much electricity in one go. Volkswagen said Monday that it is planning a wider launch of these alleged "flexible quick-charging stations" in early 2021. One downside to these stations, though: no shimmer eyes.

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