It's called a laptop Base station / Docking station. There on a fairly wide range of buissness laptops sadly that's one of the ports that Apple does not seem to support.
> There on a fairly wide range of buissness laptops sadly that's one of the ports that Apple does not seem to support.
I don't think it's any sort of standard - the ones I've seen look specific to individual laptop models - and there are docks for Apple. http://hengedocks.com/
The advantage of a solution like this is that you don't have to find the cable (or in the case of a docking station, the place to put the laptop), the cable finds you. So you could put your laptop down anywhere in the office, and in theory, a cord would eventually wind its way over to you to plug itself in.
In the end they both add convenience not functionality.
You still need to correctly park your car close to the device which is much like connecting a laptop to a docking station. The advantage is simply avoiding dealing with cords and other fiddly bits.
Now connect this with a self driving car and that would be similar to being able to leave your laptop in your bag when you get home.
This is not going to work if you park your car at a friends house. So really the advantage is simply not needing to deal with power connectors and other cables. Day to day a base station can probably save you more time. Consider 1 or more USB, 2 monitors, network cable, power supply, plus finding all the right cables which may fallen off your desk etc.
This was originally mentioned by Elon back in October at the launch of the Dual Motor Model S and Autopilot event. It was in reference to the cars new ability to park itself.
“Something I’d like to do, which I think many of our engineers will be hearing this in real-time, is have the charge connector plug itself in. Like an articulating, like sort of a snake, like Metal Gear Solid or something.”
"like Metal Gear Solid or something". My man-crush on this guy is only getting worse (better?).
Realistically though, why not just have some sort of hard-arm extend? why the flexibility of a snake? with a little bit of OCR and an arm that can extend in length and rotate on an axis, it seems like you could get pretty close
Having the car park inline with a charger is a much easier problem to solve than getting a charger to start from the ground and find it's way up to a car.
They could have the driver pull up into a generalized box/circle, and move the car forward automatically (polling with a laser (or OCR on the side of the charger) until it was in the perfect spot to be reachable.
If cars can parallel park themselves, I think they can manage pulling up a given amount of feet.
Also a little rotation on the car-facing end of the charger would help.
Is there any existing tech that even approaches this? Tesla cars are an evolution and improvement upon tech that previously existed. Ditto Space X. But I'm not aware of anything that even approaches Doc Ock-like articulating cables/hoses that are able to overcome the force of gravity.
This is fundamentally a robotics problem. Typical issues with robotics have to do with sensing, power supply, and actuators (the last two being pretty well coupled). This particular application makes the first two issues make easier - it is a fixed application where installing extra sensors isn't too much of a big deal, and also interacts with a more or less predictable object. Power supply... ya, this thing is plugged into a wall, not an issue. Actuator-wise is just a question of price.
Something that helps to make this seem less 'high-tech' is to imagine not a flexible cable or hose that articulates, but rather a large series of rigid connectors between articulation joints. CMU has a biorobotics lab that is particularly fond of snake bots (http://biorobotics.ri.cmu.edu/projects/modsnake/).
Yes, but unlike a gasoline powered car the typical "penalty" for forgetting to "refill" it is higher.
If you forget to plug the car in on the wrong day, you might be stuck for upwards of 30 min waiting for it to charge. That's compounded with the fact that there are comparatively few charging stations available outside of home.
Contrast this with a car where if I forget to fill it up the night before I lose 5-10 min and can find a gas station at least every few miles.
2 things:
1. Sometimes I'm in a hurry and I think I will plug it in later... and I don't. And that turns out to be a bummer. :)
2. If this thing parks itself, it has to plug itself in, or there is little point to the self parking.
I love my tesla. It's incredible. Best car I've ever owned. I've owned... 20 cars? But it has to be charged daily or it's a liability.
This seems way to complicated why not just have a device under your car that injects the power socket. Like for example park the front wheels on a platter that by the weight of the car injects the socket.
How is this less complicated? In your case you'd need to install something non-standard connected to high voltage power in the floor of your garage and then have to carefully park your car every time. It'd be expensive and tricky to install, and impose a mental burden every single time you park your car. Not to mention that it would have moving parts that are often put under strain (particularly in those instances where you don't park correctly) and it would be prone to damage and wear.
I believe the idea here is that this robotic snake idea should have zero impact on the user, and zero impact on installation, it should be a swap out replacement for the current charger. The only difference being that the user no longer has to plug it in manually. It may be a complex engineering problem but it's a simple, elegant design solution.
I believe you're over-thinking it. You don't need to install it in your floor, you could simply place it on top of your floor.
And it's not that hard to make it easy for people to line up - modern docks use a sort of fuzzy connector that doesn't need to lock in perfectly, just as long as you are within a certain range.
The roomba is the best example that I can think of for this - I can pretty much set my roomba down anywhere roughly on the dock, and it will start charging. I could definitely park my car with the same accuracy.
I honestly have no idea how you don't see this as an awful idea. Not only do I not want to aim my car into the garage in the first place, now I have to aim within some range again? Definitely want to just park and have a snake extend into my car to charge, not some large clunky floor piece carrying the weight of my entire car.
The roomba achieves this through rather large contact pads on the base of the charger, which scaled up to car-size would be about 50cm across. What happens when my cat walks under my car and onto a large metal plate with a few kW of power flowing through it?
"Non-standard"? As opposed to the highly standardized EV chargers and their ports?
The EV industry is just emerging and in huge flux. Charging the cars from the floor would make much more sense, especially if we're going to charge them even without cables, wirelessly, in the future (and yes, once again breaking the several year old "standard" in the name of progress).
If it doesn't work right then it's inconvenient to have to crawl underneath the car to figure out what's going wrong. Also you lie down on the garage floor and it impales you, or it fails to retract and you trip over it and die or...
...plus you'd have to dig up your garage floor or at least put some sort of bolts into it to hold the thing in place. No, a roving tentacle works much better, and I can't believe I wrote that either.
edit: I mean that it would be interesting to see this technology getting used for creative purposes. I hope Tesla will be permissive in people adapting their technology and not - if it is real - put it behind a massive patent and licensing wall before anyone can put their hands on it.
I wonder if the former was a setup for the latter. If this was proposed out of the blue, it would be dismissed as crazy. by discussing a more distant and extreme scenario in n negative terms first, this seems relatively tame, Overton window style. I did find myself immediately thinking of the evil robots in The Matrix, though.
It's nice to have goals, but I can't help thinking that the incremental improvement of this over just plugging in a dumb cable by hand is not going to be as large as some of the other things Tesla could be working on.
It also seems like this sort of thing would be making the business less focused as an electric car company.
So if anything, it should be a cable that emerges from the car to plug into an appropriate power socket, not the other way around.
It's just a step along the way to the endgame of the having on-the-road refueling, with Tesla refueling stations endlessly roaming the highways and plugging into Tesla passenger vehicles without even slowing down.
When the car has a human driver, plugging it in when you park is easy. If the vision is self-driving cars that drop you off and then go park themselves, an autonomous charger becomes a lot more useful.
> Btw, we are actually working on a charger that automatically moves out from the wall & connects like a solid metal snake. For realz.
> This can be used with all existing Model S cars, not just futures ones. [1]
Boy, do the Holiday gifts keep coming. While this won't necessarily solve a ton of problems, it will definitely be interesting to see what he can come up with. This would be super cool to see in action.
This is neat tech, of course. I am not criticizing when I ask: Isn't this a solution without a problem?
How hard is it to get out of the car and plug in the charge cord?
Then there's the question of simple alternatives to a highly complex and potentially dangerous robotic solution. Think children in the garage.
Without thinking too hard the first thing that comes to mind is something like the contact rods that electric trams use. These could come out of the top or bottom of the car and make contact with suitably designed safe power delivery system.
Another option would be something like the jacks used to lift Formula 1 cars during pit stops.
Yet another would be a "docking station" you literally drive into, with contacts that connect through the front of the car. With self-driving Teslas this could be symbiotic.
Finally, something like the rig used to refuel jets in flight (probably too complex but I thought I throw it on the table).
I could also see something like a one meter diameter coil assembly that normally lays flat on the ground. When the car parks on top of it the motorized assembly comes up and couples with a matching coil on the bottom of the car for power transfer without exposed high voltage connectors.
In the end I go back to: how hard is it to plug in a cord? Have we gotten that lazy?
> How hard is it to get out of the car and plug in the charge cord?
For the average person? Not very.
For the self-driving Teslas of the future? Pretty hard. Same thing for disabled folks who might appreciate not having an additional step in getting out of the car.
That's ridiculous. You are reaching in a feeble attempt to win an argument supporting a senselessly complex solution.
OK. I'll play your game.
Charging depot:
Docking station that the car aligns with and drives up against or onto. Contacts come up, down, in out of either the car or the docking station.
It can be as simple as a very inexpensive device on the ground and a compliant wall (to allow for accidents) with alignment markers (high contrast cross, circle, whatever).
One might even be able to design it so that it is a drive through docking station with the car stopping in the middle during the charging process.
Or, how about the famed battery swap system.
Nearby charging station? Well, if cars have 300+ mile range and you charge at home there should be zero need for locating charging stations all over a city. And yet, it can be as simple as a cord in a parking lot at work. No robotics needed.
Return home:
Put simply. I, and I would guess this is true for most people, have exactly zero interest in my auto-drive car returning home, opening the garage and driving in to charge. Why? Well, more than one reason. Let's just say that bedroom communities would be prime for burglaries. All you have to do is wait for auto cars to let you in.
In both cases the whole idea of having your car drop you off and then go back home or to a distant charging station is simply ridiculous. I'll only mention two issues with this, but there are more.
First, you just doubled traffic and congestion. If every car is a self-driver and they all return home, you now created a mess of traffic as every car now has somewhere else to go rather than just being parked for the work day.
You don't have kids, do you? There is no way in the universe that I would leave my kids inside my self-driving car to be delivered to school. That, on the face of it, is also a ridiculous idea. It would be beyond irresponsible to leave kids in a car driving around town given that, well, shit happens.
Second, you are wasting HUGE amounts of energy driving cars around that simply do not need to drive around. The average commuter in the US travels 25 minutes to work. About 1.7 million travel 90 minutes or more each way. About 2.2 million travel 50 miles or more. You are talking about having self-driving cars effectively drive 50 miles to deliver a person, 50 miles back to park and charge, then 50 miles to go pick them up after work and 50 miles to return them home. In other words, you turned a 100 mile round trip into a 200 mile insanely and utterly pointless trip.
Seriously, please, try to reason a bit. If you are in the Tesla cargo cult club, fine, you win. You are right. A complex robot is the only sensible way to charge an electric car. On the other hand, if you are not a Tesla fan boy. THINK. A technologically simple docking station is BY A HUGE MARGIN a far more sensible idea. Please don't try to invent ridiculous scenarios to support an equally ridiculous idea. Sometimes ideas are bad. Nothing wrong with that.
You don't have to agree with me. Just give it 10 or 20 years and you'll see which approach succeeds in the market. Or none of them. After all, my initial point in this sub-thread is still valid: What the heck is wrong with a simple charge cord? Nothing.
> Docking station that the car aligns with and drives up against or onto. Contacts come up, down, in out of either the car or the docking station.
Contacts like the ones on the end of Musk's proposed robot arm, perhaps.
> Put simply. I, and I would guess this is true for most people, have exactly zero interest in my auto-drive car returning home, opening the garage and driving in to charge. Why? Well, more than one reason. Let's just say that bedroom communities would be prime for burglaries. All you have to do is wait for auto cars to let you in.
> First, you just doubled traffic and congestion. If every car is a self-driver and they all return home, you now created a mess of traffic as every car now has somewhere else to go rather than just being parked for the work day.
Frankly, I expect self-driving cars to change the model of car ownership for a lot of people. I hate owning a car. An Uber-style "I need a ride" solution would be much better for how I use cars, and self-driving + self-charging makes that possible.
> You don't have kids, do you? There is no way in the universe that I would leave my kids inside my self-driving car to be delivered to school. That, on the face of it, is also a ridiculous idea. It would be beyond irresponsible to leave kids in a car driving around town given that, well, shit happens.
I've got two five year olds, and I'd be fine with that. I don't see it as significantly different to a school bus, and kids in NYC walk or ride the subway around on their own all the time.
As I said before, I believe the general idea of a docking station is the best approach. I'll extend that to add that, in the interest of consumers the auto industry ought to arrive at a common standard for docking stations. All this Tesla stuff is neat but it does not allow for ideas such as docking stations at mall parking lots (charge while you shop) or even at work.
This is where, again, the humble charge cord wins again: It is far easier to agree on a common connector than to design a docking system that will work with all cars for the next 50 years. In many ways this is not unlike all cars using a refueling port that is compatible with the nozzles at all gas stations.
With a common charge cord and connector design one could imagine a future where malls intall charge stations in a selected number of charging parking spots, even as profit centers. Companies could provide similar benefits to their employees either for free or paid.
Thinking through this argument makes me conclude that electric cars might not truly mature until charging mechanisms are standardize to the extent that they are compatible with any electric car or truck produced.
Tesla can do whatever they want, of course, yet the fact remains that if I buy a BMW and my wife a Tesla we will have two completely different charging systems to contend with rather than one. This, I think, will be an important consideration as the electric car evolves.
It's called J1772. My local malls already have J1772-based charge stations. Local companies to my office have J1772-based charge stations in their parking lots. Looks like your future arrived a few years ago.
One thing has nothing to do with the other. With over thirthy years of hardware and software engineering experience, including being published by ACM robotics I think I can voice opinion about a design concept. The nature and details of the connector have nothing whatsoever to do with the validity of my arguments.
As for the $30K price point for a robotic snake charger. Well, let's just say I have designed and manufactured enough hardware during my career to have an idea. It sure as hell won't be $3,000.
Ah. I just did a bit of research. It seems that while, yes, the SAE J1772 standard does exist and Tesla actually sat on the committee they, and others, decided to do it their own way. Apparently Europe and China diverge from the US and Tesla on this. To me it sounds like there are no standards at this point.
...and with almost absolute predictability anything that even remotely challenges Musk/Tesla is down-voted on HN.
This is a legitimate question. This robotic snake problem is solving a problem that does not exist.
And, please, don't invoke the handicapped card as someone already did. They manage just fine today. Anyone, handicapped or not, who qualifies to drive a car can handle plugging a cord into a socket. A 7 year old kid can do it.
So why throw a $30,000+ robot at a non-existing problem. I'll tell you why:
Musk understands marketing. With oil prices so low and nothing significant coming out of Tesla they all but evaporated from public view. There is/was no news to be had about Tesla. The SUV is tanking. That's a non-story. So, how do we get people talking about Tesla again. We put out outrageous-yet-brilliant-sounding futuristic ideas that are easy to consume by the average Joe and blog writers can parrot liberally. Musk/Tesla sound like geniuses and the general public doesn't even take a millisecond to apply critical thinking to what they just read.
The ONLY way a complex robotic auto-charge system might have a tenuous level of applicability is in the context of self driving cars AND "driven" by people so extremely handicapped that they would not be allowed to drive a car today. In other words, paraplegic, severe Parkinsons or other ailments.
That scenario is decades away. And, even then, a simple drive-on docking station would be far cheaper, reliable and easier to install than some kind of a robotic snake rig.
I love technology as much as anyone on HN and i have been involved in industrial and educational robotics my entire adult life. Yet, I have to be honest with myself and not treat everything like a nail just because I have a hammer.
So Tesla will sell you a $30,000 robotic snake for your $80,000 car while Toyota will probably sell you a $3,000 floor-mounted docking station for their $30,000 car. And so will all other manufacturers. Because it makes sense.
Allowing the car to be charged with no human interaction in paramount to creating a system of driver-less cars. Imagine the car drops you off at work and then parks itself in a charging area a few blocks away where it can plug itself in. (this is just a theoretical example of course but I hope it demonstrates the value of a system like this).
I think the reason you got downvoted is not that you criticized Musk, but the tone of your comment is inappropriate for this forum. Your comment reads as though it were written by a blowhard who is not only too certain of their own perspective, but also not interested in having a discussion to learn more.
They need a really big version of this to refuel a barge landed F9 for a hop back to land so they don't have to waste so much fuel on boost back or risk people out on the autonomous barge.
75 comments
[ 9.4 ms ] story [ 2004 ms ] threadWon't be too long before you can do all three of those with one USB-C cable.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8518/hands-on-with-usb-type-c-...
It's called a laptop Base station / Docking station. There on a fairly wide range of buissness laptops sadly that's one of the ports that Apple does not seem to support.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docking_station
I don't think it's any sort of standard - the ones I've seen look specific to individual laptop models - and there are docks for Apple. http://hengedocks.com/
Is this truly a convenience?
Yes, and stop sleeping at your desk. :)
You still need to correctly park your car close to the device which is much like connecting a laptop to a docking station. The advantage is simply avoiding dealing with cords and other fiddly bits.
Now connect this with a self driving car and that would be similar to being able to leave your laptop in your bag when you get home.
“Something I’d like to do, which I think many of our engineers will be hearing this in real-time, is have the charge connector plug itself in. Like an articulating, like sort of a snake, like Metal Gear Solid or something.”
http://youtu.be/FZ6lZJWL_Xk?t=9m23s
Realistically though, why not just have some sort of hard-arm extend? why the flexibility of a snake? with a little bit of OCR and an arm that can extend in length and rotate on an axis, it seems like you could get pretty close
They could have the driver pull up into a generalized box/circle, and move the car forward automatically (polling with a laser (or OCR on the side of the charger) until it was in the perfect spot to be reachable.
If cars can parallel park themselves, I think they can manage pulling up a given amount of feet.
Also a little rotation on the car-facing end of the charger would help.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/550297471289552898
http://imgur.com/vErhZ5a
Something that helps to make this seem less 'high-tech' is to imagine not a flexible cable or hose that articulates, but rather a large series of rigid connectors between articulation joints. CMU has a biorobotics lab that is particularly fond of snake bots (http://biorobotics.ri.cmu.edu/projects/modsnake/).
I love my tesla. It's incredible. Best car I've ever owned. I've owned... 20 cars? But it has to be charged daily or it's a liability.
I believe the idea here is that this robotic snake idea should have zero impact on the user, and zero impact on installation, it should be a swap out replacement for the current charger. The only difference being that the user no longer has to plug it in manually. It may be a complex engineering problem but it's a simple, elegant design solution.
And it's not that hard to make it easy for people to line up - modern docks use a sort of fuzzy connector that doesn't need to lock in perfectly, just as long as you are within a certain range.
The roomba is the best example that I can think of for this - I can pretty much set my roomba down anywhere roughly on the dock, and it will start charging. I could definitely park my car with the same accuracy.
The EV industry is just emerging and in huge flux. Charging the cars from the floor would make much more sense, especially if we're going to charge them even without cables, wirelessly, in the future (and yes, once again breaking the several year old "standard" in the name of progress).
...plus you'd have to dig up your garage floor or at least put some sort of bolts into it to hold the thing in place. No, a roving tentacle works much better, and I can't believe I wrote that either.
"Well you see officer, I stepped outside the car to see where the robotic charging cable was"
Officer: "that doesn't explain why your trousers were down and you had a power socket tag near your backside".
edit: I mean that it would be interesting to see this technology getting used for creative purposes. I hope Tesla will be permissive in people adapting their technology and not - if it is real - put it behind a massive patent and licensing wall before anyone can put their hands on it.
:)
It also seems like this sort of thing would be making the business less focused as an electric car company.
So if anything, it should be a cable that emerges from the car to plug into an appropriate power socket, not the other way around.
(You can't rule it out, can you? Heh.)
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22129534.900-wireless-...
Boy, do the Holiday gifts keep coming. While this won't necessarily solve a ton of problems, it will definitely be interesting to see what he can come up with. This would be super cool to see in action.
[1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/550297471289552898
How hard is it to get out of the car and plug in the charge cord?
Then there's the question of simple alternatives to a highly complex and potentially dangerous robotic solution. Think children in the garage.
Without thinking too hard the first thing that comes to mind is something like the contact rods that electric trams use. These could come out of the top or bottom of the car and make contact with suitably designed safe power delivery system.
Another option would be something like the jacks used to lift Formula 1 cars during pit stops.
Yet another would be a "docking station" you literally drive into, with contacts that connect through the front of the car. With self-driving Teslas this could be symbiotic.
Finally, something like the rig used to refuel jets in flight (probably too complex but I thought I throw it on the table).
I could also see something like a one meter diameter coil assembly that normally lays flat on the ground. When the car parks on top of it the motorized assembly comes up and couples with a matching coil on the bottom of the car for power transfer without exposed high voltage connectors.
In the end I go back to: how hard is it to plug in a cord? Have we gotten that lazy?
For the average person? Not very.
For the self-driving Teslas of the future? Pretty hard. Same thing for disabled folks who might appreciate not having an additional step in getting out of the car.
Care to explain that? How does a self-driving car make getting out of the car and plugging in a cord "pretty hard".
OK. I'll play your game.
Charging depot:
Docking station that the car aligns with and drives up against or onto. Contacts come up, down, in out of either the car or the docking station.
It can be as simple as a very inexpensive device on the ground and a compliant wall (to allow for accidents) with alignment markers (high contrast cross, circle, whatever).
One might even be able to design it so that it is a drive through docking station with the car stopping in the middle during the charging process.
Or, how about the famed battery swap system.
Nearby charging station? Well, if cars have 300+ mile range and you charge at home there should be zero need for locating charging stations all over a city. And yet, it can be as simple as a cord in a parking lot at work. No robotics needed.
Return home:
Put simply. I, and I would guess this is true for most people, have exactly zero interest in my auto-drive car returning home, opening the garage and driving in to charge. Why? Well, more than one reason. Let's just say that bedroom communities would be prime for burglaries. All you have to do is wait for auto cars to let you in.
In both cases the whole idea of having your car drop you off and then go back home or to a distant charging station is simply ridiculous. I'll only mention two issues with this, but there are more.
First, you just doubled traffic and congestion. If every car is a self-driver and they all return home, you now created a mess of traffic as every car now has somewhere else to go rather than just being parked for the work day.
You don't have kids, do you? There is no way in the universe that I would leave my kids inside my self-driving car to be delivered to school. That, on the face of it, is also a ridiculous idea. It would be beyond irresponsible to leave kids in a car driving around town given that, well, shit happens.
Second, you are wasting HUGE amounts of energy driving cars around that simply do not need to drive around. The average commuter in the US travels 25 minutes to work. About 1.7 million travel 90 minutes or more each way. About 2.2 million travel 50 miles or more. You are talking about having self-driving cars effectively drive 50 miles to deliver a person, 50 miles back to park and charge, then 50 miles to go pick them up after work and 50 miles to return them home. In other words, you turned a 100 mile round trip into a 200 mile insanely and utterly pointless trip.
Seriously, please, try to reason a bit. If you are in the Tesla cargo cult club, fine, you win. You are right. A complex robot is the only sensible way to charge an electric car. On the other hand, if you are not a Tesla fan boy. THINK. A technologically simple docking station is BY A HUGE MARGIN a far more sensible idea. Please don't try to invent ridiculous scenarios to support an equally ridiculous idea. Sometimes ideas are bad. Nothing wrong with that.
You don't have to agree with me. Just give it 10 or 20 years and you'll see which approach succeeds in the market. Or none of them. After all, my initial point in this sub-thread is still valid: What the heck is wrong with a simple charge cord? Nothing.
Contacts like the ones on the end of Musk's proposed robot arm, perhaps.
> Put simply. I, and I would guess this is true for most people, have exactly zero interest in my auto-drive car returning home, opening the garage and driving in to charge. Why? Well, more than one reason. Let's just say that bedroom communities would be prime for burglaries. All you have to do is wait for auto cars to let you in.
> First, you just doubled traffic and congestion. If every car is a self-driver and they all return home, you now created a mess of traffic as every car now has somewhere else to go rather than just being parked for the work day.
Frankly, I expect self-driving cars to change the model of car ownership for a lot of people. I hate owning a car. An Uber-style "I need a ride" solution would be much better for how I use cars, and self-driving + self-charging makes that possible.
> You don't have kids, do you? There is no way in the universe that I would leave my kids inside my self-driving car to be delivered to school. That, on the face of it, is also a ridiculous idea. It would be beyond irresponsible to leave kids in a car driving around town given that, well, shit happens.
I've got two five year olds, and I'd be fine with that. I don't see it as significantly different to a school bus, and kids in NYC walk or ride the subway around on their own all the time.
This is where, again, the humble charge cord wins again: It is far easier to agree on a common connector than to design a docking system that will work with all cars for the next 50 years. In many ways this is not unlike all cars using a refueling port that is compatible with the nozzles at all gas stations.
With a common charge cord and connector design one could imagine a future where malls intall charge stations in a selected number of charging parking spots, even as profit centers. Companies could provide similar benefits to their employees either for free or paid.
Thinking through this argument makes me conclude that electric cars might not truly mature until charging mechanisms are standardize to the extent that they are compatible with any electric car or truck produced.
Tesla can do whatever they want, of course, yet the fact remains that if I buy a BMW and my wife a Tesla we will have two completely different charging systems to contend with rather than one. This, I think, will be an important consideration as the electric car evolves.
Oh, and I'm still hoping you'll post a citation for the $30,000 price for Tesla's snake.
As for the $30K price point for a robotic snake charger. Well, let's just say I have designed and manufactured enough hardware during my career to have an idea. It sure as hell won't be $3,000.
Here's an interesting interview:
http://articles.sae.org/11923/
Here's the SAE J1772 standard on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAE_J1772
The Tesla adapter:
http://shop.teslamotors.com/products/sae-j1772
An article bitching about the whole thing:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/pikeresearch/2013/02/26/tesla-te...
This is a legitimate question. This robotic snake problem is solving a problem that does not exist.
And, please, don't invoke the handicapped card as someone already did. They manage just fine today. Anyone, handicapped or not, who qualifies to drive a car can handle plugging a cord into a socket. A 7 year old kid can do it.
So why throw a $30,000+ robot at a non-existing problem. I'll tell you why:
Musk understands marketing. With oil prices so low and nothing significant coming out of Tesla they all but evaporated from public view. There is/was no news to be had about Tesla. The SUV is tanking. That's a non-story. So, how do we get people talking about Tesla again. We put out outrageous-yet-brilliant-sounding futuristic ideas that are easy to consume by the average Joe and blog writers can parrot liberally. Musk/Tesla sound like geniuses and the general public doesn't even take a millisecond to apply critical thinking to what they just read.
The ONLY way a complex robotic auto-charge system might have a tenuous level of applicability is in the context of self driving cars AND "driven" by people so extremely handicapped that they would not be allowed to drive a car today. In other words, paraplegic, severe Parkinsons or other ailments.
That scenario is decades away. And, even then, a simple drive-on docking station would be far cheaper, reliable and easier to install than some kind of a robotic snake rig.
I love technology as much as anyone on HN and i have been involved in industrial and educational robotics my entire adult life. Yet, I have to be honest with myself and not treat everything like a nail just because I have a hammer.
So Tesla will sell you a $30,000 robotic snake for your $80,000 car while Toyota will probably sell you a $3,000 floor-mounted docking station for their $30,000 car. And so will all other manufacturers. Because it makes sense.
Pretty neat to watch: http://youtu.be/_gU6TWGynkU?t=28s