USA – There are some ideas that seem so obvious upon their introduction that one wonders why somebody did not think of it earlier. A hands-free charger that automatically plugs into an electric vehicle and unplugs from it when finished surely qualifies as a not-so-obvious obvious idea. It makes perfect sense – given the potential dangers of handling high-voltage equipment, and also given the prospect of driverless vehicles – to develop chargers that do not require a human to operate them. After speaking to Erin Galiger – who is director of the North American market for Dutch tech firm Rocsys – at the latest ACT Expo, I learned that hands-free chargers have several more applications than I had initially expected.

Consider, for example, a driver whose contract does not allow him to handle charging equipment while on the job. According to Galiger, it is not unusual for union contracts to enforce restrictions of this kind. In such cases, an automatic charger that requires no handling whatsoever is an elegant workaround. It is also a complementary technology to the “smart depots” of the future, where parked-up vehicles could take turns to recharge overnight without requiring human intervention. With a setup like this, drivers would not need to enter the depot at all; they could leave the vehicle at the entrance and allow it to park and recharge itself. Not only would this be more convenient, it would also make drivers safer and could potentially bring gains in efficiency.