As easy as charging an EV may seem, there are growing concerns about the convenience of charging versus an ICE vehicle. Whether you are in a sketchy part of town (or out of town for that matter), or it is freezing temperatures outside, getting out of the vehicle to plug in the charger is the last thing you want to do. Luckily, Audi recently filed a ground breaking patent for an EV charging parking lot. Whether this patent will come to fruition is beyond me, but we can at least hope it will. So, let’s get into the details.
The patent is defined as a charging parking lot that is “provided for performing an electrical charging process for a vehicle, comprising of at least one inductive charging interface, wherein the charging parking lot has multiple inductive charging zones, and each charging zone is either activatable or deactivatable”. Essentially, once the vehicle is parked on the charging parking lot, the charging process is automatically activated which is situated directly beneath the inductive charging interface of the vehicle. The charging parking lot will also have at least one optical sensor, such as a camera, which is designed to identify which charging zone is activated and which zone is not.
Furthermore, the charging infrastructure may also consist of solar panels that act as a roof. The solar cells can then convert the sun’s light into electrical energy. At the same time, the storage batteries can store the electrical energy of the solar cells and provide it to vehicles when carrying out charging processes.
Wireless EV charging is paving the way for electric vehicles to be more convenient and accessible to a larger number of drivers. With this patent, Audi will simplify the charging process even more, reduce installation costs, and allow for potential applications like automated charging. Will this technology actually happen? With the unpredictability of the current EV market, only time will tell.
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