Engineers working for Hyundai Motor Group in South Korea, briefly They call it ACR a fully automatic charging robot they developed. The company claims the ACR can work in any environment and in any weather, making electric car charging easier and safer for drivers.
The ACR looks like a giant wheelbarrow with a lever attached to it, but despite its rather simple appearance, the machine is quite complex. Its progression from a CGI prototype to a working unit currently being tested and evaluated at a purpose-built EV charging station took about a year of the engineer team.
As we can see in the video released by Hyundai, all the driver has to do is activate the autonomous parking function. When the vehicle arrives at the designated parking spot, ACR takes over. In this case, the car communicates with the Ioniq 6 and opens the charging port, then simply plugs the charging cable into the charging port. At work ACR in operation published by Hyundai a quick video:
The ACR seems to monitor the environment and warns passers-by not to pass near the vehicle or the charging cable. After charging is completethe robot removes the cable and the vehicle sends a notification to the driver that the battery is complete.
The simple and efficient solution leaves out a large group of potential users, although the majority of EV drivers do not have problems with charging. Disabled drivers can own any electric vehicle tailored to their needs, but unfortunately the same cannot be said for charging stations. Having an automatic charger or ACR like this will definitely make the process accessible to many.
Another use case is a multi-car garage or even a parking lot where only one charger is available. While drivers park their vehicles and go about their business, ACR by charging all the cars one after the other will take care of. After a vehicle is charged, ACR will simply switch to the next. This, without the need to install multiple chargers It will be a good solution for office and factory buildings.
Hyundai will show the ACR in action at the 2023 Seoul Mobility Show, which begins next week. This is not the first automatic charging solution, Tesla experimented with a robotic arm in 2015. Although the idea was never taken beyond the prototype stage, Elon Musk mentioned that the snake-like robot is still on the agenda in 2020.