This autonomous robot saves you a parking spot and charges your EV
Ziggy, the crawling EV charger, will first be installed at the Dallas airport.
When we think of an electric vehicle (EV) charger, we think of a string of fixed charging stations installed on highways or outside a retail corporation like Walmart. But with the U.S. recording a sale of approximately 225,000 EVs in 2023’s first quarter alone, the growing demand for EVs has to be met with equally advanced charging technology.
Ziggy, the portable robotic EV charger that Interesting Engineering reported on last year, will soon be installed at a U.S. airport in a bid to meet the growing demand for travelers owning EVs – so they can easily charge them while they fly.
Ziggy is set to be first installed at the Dallas Fort Worth (DFW) International Airport in Texas in a first-of-its-kind demonstration to assess cutting-edge EV-charging approaches. DFW, in partnership with EV Safe Charge, the company behind Ziggy, will host a series of EV charging demonstrations from May through August.
We had reported earlier that electric vehicle charging will be changed forever with Ziggy’s launch early this year. The autonomous robot can be deployed anywhere, which means that the existing parking facilities don’t need to be overhauled to accommodate the portable EV chargers.
“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,” said Caradoc Ehrenhalt, founder and CEO of EV Safe Charge, in a press release.
As part of its ongoing commitment to innovation and sustainability, DFW Executive Vice President of Innovation, Paul Puopolo, said in a press release.“Finding the right technology solutions to meet DFW’s future challenges is a major focus for our team. We know that electric vehicles will be a big part of the future of transportation, and we are leaning into emerging technology now so that we are prepared to meet the needs of the airport community well into the future.”
How Ziggy works
To use Ziggy, a user books a charge from the Ziggy app on their mobile phone. The app will guide the user to their selected parking facility. Ziggy will also save a parking space for the car and alert the user where to meet it. And once they arrive at the parking spot, Ziggy will roll into action and charge the car.
Big auto companies like Hyundai and NaaS in China have already released their charging robot versions. And the European Parliament announced this year that by 2026, Europe will have an EV charging station every 37 miles. It’s a futuristic move since robotic EV chargers will be key as self-driving cars pick up steam.
Ziggy is not, however, one of a kind. It has a rival autonomous robot. Interesting Engineering reported earlier this month about Autev’s mobile charging robots that can now convert parking spots into autonomous charging spaces.
SHOW COMMENT ()
