There’s been all manner of tech coming out of China lately. If it isn’t phones with gigantic batteries, then it’s semi-affordable humanoid robots. The latest development involves Xiaomi and your electric vehicle.
The company recently showed off a demonstration video of its latest cool thing — a robotic arm autonomously plugging in an electric vehicle to charge. When it’s done, it unplugs the charging gun and stows itself away, saving EV owners up to several seconds every day.
Plug me in, Xiaomi
This particular robot was designed specifically for this task, so you won’t catch it doing anything else. Xiaomi will offer it in 7kW and 11kW flavours.
The former’s entire package occupies a 400mm x 180mm x 120mm space, great if garage space is at a premium, and runs on 220V single-phase power. Its beefier 11kW sibling has the same dimensions, but steps up to 380W three-phase power.
To use this thing, apparently, all you have to do is park your car nearby. The arm knows what to do and will handle the rest. You will also have the option to enable charging remotely via an app.
Xiaomi’s robot arm is expected to reach markets in the fourth quarter of this year, according to CarNewsChina, but no pricing details have been announced yet. Whether it will reach South Africa is unknown and seemingly unlikely.
Considering this country’s relatively slow EV adoption, it seems more likely that we’ll have fully-fledged household robots performing this task by the time South Africans are ready for a dedicated car-charging robot.
