Electrify America And Stable Team To Deploy Robotic Charging Stations

Automakers around the world are pushing hard to roll out autonomous cars. Many of those autonomous rides will be electric vehicles, and for fleets to deploy electric vehicles, there has to be a way to charge EVs when there is no human present to plug-in chargers. To address the need to charge autonomous autos Electrify America and Stable have announced a team-up.The companies will deploy a robotic fast-charging facility for self-driving EV fleets. The two firms will deploy a pilot solution in San Francisco, CA, at charing autonomous EVs with no assistance from humans. The charging solution will be a 150kW DC fast charger.

The charging facility is expected to open in early 2020. As part of the agreement, Electrify America will evaluate hardware, network operations, and billing for the autonomous system to best suit the autonomous fleets. Electrify America provided a pair of 150 kW DC fast chargers to the Stable charging facility for initial development work.

Stable will manage the overall project and pair its robotic technology and advanced scheduling software located at its facility. The facility will allow vehicles to park anywhere inside a standard parking space, and the Stable robot will then automate the connection between the vehicle and charger.

Stable has chosen Black & Veatch to be the engineering company for this project. The engineering firm has experience in designing global infrastructure solutions for cleantech transportation markets. Demonstrations of the charging station design, hardware, and back-end solutions will be done when the site is closer to deployment.