Robotic EV Charging Is Being Tested in Texas

Dallas Fort Worth International Airport will host the world’s first mobile, robotic EV charging demonstration this summer for passengers and employees alike with electric vehicles.

The robot performing the charging is named ZiGGY, and it is to come to your car parked in a DFW Airport parking lot when summoned, charge your car and then drive itself back to its base.

ZiGGY is the creation of Los Angeles-based EV Safe Charge, a privately held company that specializes in flexible EV charging technologies. It creates and implements temporary charging solutions for its large-scale commercial customers, including Jaguar, Porsche, Stellantis, Nissan, Audi, Daimler and Harley-Davidson, among others.

The company was chosen by DFW Airport to participate in a program to demonstrate a series of cutting-edge EV charging stations, DFW Airport said. The demonstration program is scheduled to run from May through August.

In the above YouTube video, ZiGGY is booked by a driver well away from the parking lot where ZiGGY resides. The robot then finds an open parking space, saves it by parking itself there and then notifies the driver what space it has reserved. Once the car arrives, ZiGGY moves out of the way, goes behind the vehicle and starts the charging process. When it’s time to leave, ZiGGY automatically goes back to its station to recharge itself.

“In evaluating potential technologies for their demonstration, DFW chose to display the tech offered by ZiGGY due to its innovative flexibility to reach every car in a parking lot, not just a few spaces,” Caradoc Ehrenhalt, founder and CEO of EV Safe Charge said in a statement.

Once mobile charging becomes commonplace, it could go a long way towards solving the annoying issue of ICEing, when a vehicle powered by an internal combustion engine takes the parking space in front of a charger.