On the last day of last year, Elon Musk tweeted this:
Btw, we are actually working on a charger that automatically moves out from the wall & connects like a solid metal snake. For realz.
â Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 31, 2014
Charger prototype finding its way to Model S. https://t.co/L9E4MR642G
â Tesla Motors (@TeslaMotors) August 6, 2015
Totes realz. Tesla looks like it will indeed deliver an automated snake charger that Teslas will charge with once you park your car in the garage. It’s a fascinating and undeniably cool concept that just also happens to look totally like robot sex in real life. So, watch it plug in over and over again? Awww yeah.
I feel like this is NSFWIYAAR (not suitable for work if you are a robot), but I can’t look away.
Creepiness aside, the tech on display here is impressive. Both the snake and the car have to first know that they are in range of each other, the car has to open its charging port, and then the snake has to utilize some kind of three dimensional data and dozens of motors to carefully articulate itself into the port.
See? That doesn’t sound so NSFWIYAAR…right?