Todd Burch
14-Year Member
Actually, think of this option:
Think of a tiny upside-down gantry crane that you lay on your garage floor. Attached to it is the charging cable, and you have a port under the car. You drive into the garage, straddling this device. Through simple communication from the car to device, it recognizes when your car parks, moves in 2 dimensions to find the charging port, then moves up and plugs in. Likewise, when you start the car later to pull out of the garage, it retracts from the car.
This would be a solution that:
1) is simple (2 degree-of-freedom horizontal movement, and a third movement upward to plug in).
2) could be installed easily: simply lay it in the center of your garage floor, perhaps secured with a few masonry screws. If the charge port is located near the center of the underbelly of the car, it could be small enough to avoid concerns about running over it when parking.
3) would also work for supercharging
4) avoids losses that you would get with inductive charging.
5) gives you all the simple benefits of automatic charging (it's automated, you don't have to get out of the car if the weather's bad, etc).
6) should be cheaper than this awesome, but likely expensive and complex snake.
Obviously it doesn't work for the S with no second charge port under the car, but future cars probably ought to have this.
Think of a tiny upside-down gantry crane that you lay on your garage floor. Attached to it is the charging cable, and you have a port under the car. You drive into the garage, straddling this device. Through simple communication from the car to device, it recognizes when your car parks, moves in 2 dimensions to find the charging port, then moves up and plugs in. Likewise, when you start the car later to pull out of the garage, it retracts from the car.
This would be a solution that:
1) is simple (2 degree-of-freedom horizontal movement, and a third movement upward to plug in).
2) could be installed easily: simply lay it in the center of your garage floor, perhaps secured with a few masonry screws. If the charge port is located near the center of the underbelly of the car, it could be small enough to avoid concerns about running over it when parking.
3) would also work for supercharging
4) avoids losses that you would get with inductive charging.
5) gives you all the simple benefits of automatic charging (it's automated, you don't have to get out of the car if the weather's bad, etc).
6) should be cheaper than this awesome, but likely expensive and complex snake.
Obviously it doesn't work for the S with no second charge port under the car, but future cars probably ought to have this.
autopilot to move the port rather than move the charge plug. All you need is a plug that extends out from a bollard. The bollard would contain a camera that sends positioning to the car so it can align itself to the bollard perfectly, then the charge plug extends. You can even be off almost 1 inch and it will still work fine if the arm is flexible.
