Watch the electric Hyundai Ioniq 6 get charged by a robot

Hyundai has developed an ‘Automatic Charging Robot’ which automatically connects and charges an EV without driver input.

There was a time, as older readers will remember, when the local butcher and grocer delivered your goods to your door, and filling up with petrol saw a man in overalls do the job for you, clean your windscreen, top up your washer bottle and check your oil.

All that disappeared as businesses decided it was the customers’ job to do the heavy lifting and trek to the butchers or grocers (latterly the out-of-town hypermarket) to serve yourself, and garage forecourts became staff-free zones with you doing all the work.

We’ve seen something of a return to grocery deliveries with a seemingly endless procession of scooters bearing ‘L’ plates queueing up at supermarkets to fulfil orders for the terminally lazy, and click and deliver online the favourite sport for many. Now, Hyundai has decided it’s time that electric charging points should actually do all the work for you, and has developed an Automatic Charging Robot (ACR) so forecourts can once again be ‘Full Service’.

The ACR (you can see it in action in the video below) is a one-arm robot which communicates with the EV, automatically opens the charging flap, plugs in using 3-D camera-based tech and, once the charge is complete, reverses the process and notifies the driver the charge is complete.

Dong Jin Hyun, Head of Robotics at Hyundai, said:

The ACR will help to make EV-charging easier and more convenient, especially in dark environments. It will also improve accessibility, particularly for people with mobility barriers, as charging cables become thicker and heavier to enable high-speed charging. We will continue developing the ACR for increased safety and more convenience, so that all EV customers can soon benefit from using it at charging stations.

How close Hyundai’s ACR is to actually going into production and rolled out across charging stations is anyone’s guess. After all, Tesla revealed the ‘Tesla Snake‘ back in 2015 promising similar functionality, and that hasn’t seen the light of day since.

Hyundai Ioniq 6 Automatic Charging Robot Video