Elon confirms metal snake supercharger

[gabeincal]

yup, i bet human will become very lazy from now on. No need to drive, no need to walk out of the car to charge.

The American dream!!

 

[svp6]

For the snake charger to me it really comes down to two things.
A.) I don't want to be limited to eating at the restaurants nearby the supercharger. Instead I want the car to drop me off where I want to eat, and then go charge itself.
B.) I want to sleep while on a road trip. Why do I want to be woken up at 3am in the morning when the car stops to charge?
Tesla tends to implement things for tomorrow. They seem silly today, but tomorrow you depend on them.

I see your point, and in the long run it may be OK. For me, faster supercharging, better navigation, better appointed interiors would be much stronger arguments to replace my model S with another Tesla when lease runs out. What I am trying to say is that there are more pressing items to be solved....

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

I see your point, and in the long run it may be OK. For me, faster supercharging, better navigation, better appointed interiors would be much stronger arguments to replace my model S with another Tesla when lease runs out. What I am trying to say is that there are more pressing items to be solved....

They're definitely going to have to improve the navigation because who knows where you'd end up with the current nav plus autonomous driving. My car would end up perpetually circling back to the supercharger it just came from (a trip planner bug which hopefully has been fixed for good).

So I'm hoping to see some significant navigation improvements over the next year or so. Hopefully the new one doesn't have a completely different nav system which I don't believe it does, but it could potentially if they changed out the infotainment system.

I'd love to see some improvements to the interior to reduce road noise, rattles, and squeaks. But, I don't expect to these materialize by the time I can't stand not having the new AP (probably sometime between May 2017 and May 2018). I went with the resale guarantee (I got it well before they stopped it), and the end date for it is May 2018 so hopefully I make it.

Even with my current AP 1.0 car I believe the snake chargers will work so at least there is some excitement, and I would definitely do a small road trip just to try it out.

 

[Ulmo]

Talking about hubris.... This was the least of my concerns. If anything, I liked the battery swap idea better. We all know how that worked.

I loved this too. But, there's like half a dozen types of batteries, and coolant systems, and they are not compatible. I'd attempt to remedy that in a battery swap system, but Tesla just said it wasn't popular and didn't hold themselves to easy compatibility of that.

 

[RDoc]

This seems to me to be a snake in search of a problem.

 

[henderrj]

If there is only 1 snake per SC location how could Tesla keep it available for the autonomous vehicles? And how might one fund the rollout of all these machines? Is it possible the new hidden charge (finance) fields might be used for this? No one ever promised free automated charging for life.

(PS I think they should redesign the entire charging connectivity system so the car can plug itself in, but then I have a vested interest.)

 

[David99]

Does anybody besides me think this thing is ridiculously over complicated? You don't need to have that many parts to achieve 3 axis movement. I mean, there are soda machines that do it now. They have a mechanism the moves up/down, left/right, and the arm reaches in for a bottle. Replace bottle retriever with charge cable and you're done.

The guy who made this arm has a history in robotics. There is a YouTube video of him talking about his history and his work at Tesla. He describes how he created complex articulations on robots with very simple joints that can bend in only one axis. I agree there might be simpler version to get this job done.

 

[bonaire]

There is an easier way than a robotic articulating snake. The current style of cabling unit can be made into an automated plug with limited joints and servos. It just needs to be positioned like the ones at the new large norway supercharger lot where you pull up next to them. Along with the car's intelligence it could be made to be quite simple integrating car placement with the charger device. The arm looking like a snake looks failure prone and if it fails, wrecks the capability of an autonomous car to continue on without intervention.

 

[HankLloydRight]

I think instead of a overly-complex snake, Tesla should embed large conductors in the blacktop of each stall, which rise up to meet contacts on the underside of the battery. You pull into a stall, the charging contacts rise up and find the conductors, and you start to charge. It's a lot simpler than the robotic snake.

Here's an example of this technology in action (jump to 1:10):

 

[Hugh Mannity]

Hmm...still need to get out to go to the bathroom. Hope he's not trying to solve that problem too.

The solution all "depends"

 

[Skotty]

I think instead of a overly-complex snake, Tesla should embed large conductors in the blacktop of each stall, which rise up to meet contacts on the underside of the battery. You pull into a stall, the charging contacts rise up and find the conductors, and you start to charge. It's a lot simpler than the robotic snake.

Here's an example of this technology in action (jump to 1:10):

I think the snake solves -- or should I say avoids -- a lot of possible problems. Weather, snow, debris, and road grime on the car are examples of things that could be problematic for anything embedded in the blacktop. None of those problems exist with the snake. Further, if there were hardware embedded in the blacktop, it would be a lot more complicated to do lot work, and Tesla would probably be responsible for maintaining the road surface around the superchargers. With the snake, the lot can continue to be serviced and resurfaced by regular road crews.

 

[Matteo]

Hi. The following video provides a little more background where the snake charger came from. It is based on modular micro-robotics. Start watching at 18:11. Here is a direct link to the correct moment.

 

[henderrj]

I think instead of a overly-complex snake, Tesla should embed large conductors in the blacktop of each stall, which rise up to meet contacts on the underside of the battery. You pull into a stall, the charging contacts rise up and find the conductors, and you start to charge. It's a lot simpler than the robotic snake.

Here's an example of this technology in action (jump to 1:10):

There are, of course, other ways to make things simpler as well. We are working on one ourselves. But a greater issue is that Tesla's current system is current (sorry couldn't help myself) limited. Probably voltage limited too. That's something they have to correct if they want faster charging yet. As I've said, they really need to go to a completely new system and use adapters for backwards compatibility.

 

[AdrianG]

This is going to be great. I'll never need to pay charge my car at home again. I'll just tell it to drive the 60 miles North, charge to 100% on Tesla's dime and then drive itself back.

That's only 31k miles extra year, I'm sure I'll come out ahead... ;p

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

This is going to be great. I'll never need to pay charge my car at home again. I'll just tell it to drive the 60 miles North, charge to 100% on Tesla's dime and then drive itself back.

That's only 31k miles extra year, I'm sure I'll come out ahead... ;p

It does beg the question of what does the car do if you don't feed it electrons. With AP 1.0 there wasn't any of this fancy AI stuff. But, now that it has smarts is it seriously supposed to just sit there and run out? Or does it go out and seek electrons? How much survivor instinct do they plan on putting into it?

Additionally it's going to need an external speaker because you can't exactly have a self driving car without telling people, and a moose or two to get out of the way. So maybe it will just ask some random homeless person to jump in to plug it in at the nearest non-snake charger if the snake charger is too far away.

 

[gabeincal]

Hi. The following video provides a little more background where the snake charger came from. It is based on modular micro-robotics. Start watching at 18:11. Here is a direct link to the correct moment.

And what better way to show respect as a major university to your presenter, by misspelling his company's name

 

[RogerHScott]

And what better way to show respect as a major university to your presenter, by misspelling his company's name

Hey, that's how my next-door neighbor consistently pronounces the brand of my car.

 

[RobertF]

The snake just looks too easy to be vandalized or accidentally hit knocking that charger out of commission. One of those under the car chargers seems more appropriate in public spaces.

 

[M0DEL³]

I wanna see one of these work in the winter.

Inside a waterproof sheath with imbedded heat tape (Just warm enough to keep it above freezing), and winter weather should be a non-issue.