In crowded cities and crowded underground garages, finding a charging point for electric vehicles is not easy. Traditional fixed charging piles require complex arrangements to be available. When the number of electric vehicles and the demand for charging are large, flexible mobile charging technology has become an effective supplement. Read more
This is Ziggy, a mobile robot that will charge your battery-powered vehicle while you’re out and about.
Ziggy is basically a battery bank on wheels that you can summon with your mobile phone.
And if that’s not cool enough, it will also find a parking space for you and reserve it until you get there. Read more
ZiGGY is a neat new autonomous robot that will find you a parking spot, wait for you, and recharge your electric vehicle battery while you’re shopping, at work, or running errands. No, seriously. Read more
With almost every carmaker now committed to the complete electrification of their entire lineup in the next few years, companies are developing new technology for the surging number of EVs. Soon, gas stations will become relics of a bygone era as charging stations eventually replace them. Pushing the envelope even further are innovative platforms like the ZiGGY. Read more
Our thanks to Takayuki Yamazaki on Twitter for drawing our attention to ZiGGY, a self-driving electric vehicle (EV) charger.
Aside from looking pretty cool, we think this is exactly the kind of innovation needed to tackle the UK’s notoriously slow rollout of EV charging points.
ZiGGY self-driving EV charger
This clever robotic EV charger will find a parking spot, reserve it for you, then sit behind you to charge your EV, cheerfully displaying ads all the way as another revenue stream for carpark operators. It’s a nifty idea, but we do wonder how Ziggy will cope with the brutally competitive, openly hostile environment of a crowded mall car park on Christmas Eve.
The Ziggy charging robot is a project by EV Safe Charge, aimed at giving parking garages a super-easy, super-flexible and cost-effective way to add EV charge spots without having to hang chargers next to every park.
Optimizing the work performed by electric car chargers to the maximum seems to have become the goal of manufacturers, who are always looking for a way to make this an efficient and versatile element.
In this sense, the company that develops charging solutions for electric cars EV Safe Charge has recently presented Ziggy, a smart robotic loader designed not only to provide charging for your electric car, but also to find you a parking space and show you ads while carrying out the charging process.
Charging your battery-powered vehicle could get a lot easier if EV Safe Charge has anything to say about it.
The company has just unveiled a new mobile charging robot named Ziggy that can top up your EV while you’re out running errands, according to Electrek. Once you’ve booked a charging session, the rolling battery bank will identify a spot in a parking lot for you, reserve it, then charge your battery while you’re off shopping, seeing a movie or grabbing a bite to eat.
You’ll be able to book and summon Ziggy using either a mobile app or your EV’s infotainment system. EV Safe Charge hasn’t revealed the rate at which the robot will be able to charge, but the company told Eletrek that Level 2 charging (12-80 miles per hour) will be available at launch. The company also said it will eventually be capable of Level 3 charging (3-20 miles per minute). When it’s done charging your battery, Ziggy will return to its home base, where it will recharge itself using either the parking lot’s power grid, battery storage solar energy or a mixture of all three.
Ziggy certainly sounds promising, but there are a couple potential downsides. The first is that the robot will be equipped with two large touch screens. They could be used to display relevant information, but EV Safe Charge’s renders of the device also suggests the device could be used as a rolling billboard. The second, which was first pointed out by New Atlas, is the question as to whether or not the machine can function as planned in a crowded parking lot. If you’ve ever shopped a mall during holidays, you know how crazed drivers can be while fighting for a space. It’s hard to imagine holiday-addled shoppers passing over a space because it was reserved by a robot.
Fortunately, we won’t have to wait long to find out if Ziggy works as planned. EV Safe Charge hasn’t announced a firm launch date yet, but plans to put the charging robot into production next year. Sites in San Francisco and Brooklyn have already agreed to give the charging robot a tryout. So, we may soon have our answer.
Ziggy will roll itself into a free parking space to reserve it for you, and once you get there it’ll let you in and sit behind your car to provide EV charging as well as advertising space
This clever robotic EV charger will find a parking spot, reserve it for you, then sit behind you to charge your EV, cheerfully displaying ads all the way as another revenue stream for carpark operators. It’s a nifty idea, but we do wonder how Ziggy will cope with the brutally competitive, openly hostile environment of a crowded mall car park on Christmas Eve. Read more
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