Owning an electric vehicle offers many advantages over a vehicle with an internal combustion engine, but for the most part the charging experience isn’t one of them. Beyond the hours it takes to charge using a home outlet, it’s no fun walking around in the trunk looking for a charging cable in the dark or in bad weather.Ram is his man of the year debuted its electric truck at CES, and to go along with it, the automaker brought in an inductive charging robot. It sounds sci-fi, but it’s real and it’s coming in the next two years.
Yes, real robots, but we’re not talking fancy humanoid machines. The Ram charger looks more like a Roomba than a RoboCop, but with a funky design on purpose. Inductive charging, be it a smartphone or an EV, requires near-perfect alignment between the charger and what needs to be charged. The slim rolling robot solves that problem, making charging in crowded parking lots and garages much easier because it won’t block like traditional his EV chargers.
Ram CEO Mike Koval said: green car report Brand customers care as much about the charging experience as they do about range. Stellantis is one of the few automakers not selling EVs, but that will change when the Ram 1500 Revolution and new electric Jeep models arrive in 2024. green car report Stellantis noted that it has made the leap from having no EVs on the market to developing a highly advanced inductive charging robot that is remarkable in its own right.
The automaker worked with EFI Automotive to develop the component, which it says took five years to flesh out. We call it wireless charging, but there is a cable that powers the robot, and the wireless part is the “connection” between the vehicle and the charger.
We don’t know how fast an inductive charger can charge an EV, but EFI says it could reach 97% efficiency because the robot makes contact with the vehicle instead of making a gap. The bot has his 32.8 foot cable and uses artificial intelligence to position itself. Once in place, the robot’s charging pad lifts and makes contact with the vehicle.
EFI’s demo at CES used a 7 kW charger, and the company said the system could extend EV battery life by 15%. Production will begin in 2025 along with Ram’s extended range of Revolution pickups.
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