Elon Musk's 'Solid Metal Charging Snake' Is Real - Watch It In Action

Christian de Looper, Tech Times 06 August 2015, 05:08 pm

Elon Musk told the world that we would eventually get a "solid metal snake" that automatically recharges Tesla cars, and he has come through on that promise.

Tesla unveiled a new video today, showing off a prototype of the robot, which basically coils down and levels with the charging port before automatically plugging itself in to begin the charging process. The robot works with not only the Tesla Model S, but also the upcoming Model X and Model 3.

The goal here is to remove one of the biggest frustrations that Tesla owners experience: having to plug in their car when they get home, or if not, walking into their garage the next morning only to find that their car is out of power.

While the technology has been developed, it is of course a pretty complicated and expensive way to get your car charger plugged in at the end of the day. Other electric cars, for example, are experimenting with wireless charging methods, which would be far simpler. In fact, Qualcomm has been developing wireless charging tech for a number of years now, technology that is already being used in Formula-E racing cars. Both of these technologies require almost no human effort, making them perfect for the more forgetful among us.

Whether the tech ends up being a common way to charge Tesla cars or not remains to be seen, but regardless, it looks pretty cool. It also shows that Tesla is thinking about all aspects of the electric car, instead of just focusing on the car itself.

This also proves that when Elon Musk says that Tesla is working on something new, there is a good chance that it actually is. Of course, there are plenty of things that Musk has talked about that remain to be seen, such as the self-driving fleet of Tesla cars Musk recently talked about.

Tesla is working on a number of projects right now, and is set to begin delivering its Model X SUV next month. The company said that it is planning on delivering a little over 12,000 vehicles in the third quarter, which is a 60 percent increase in car deliveries from the third quarter of last year. A small number of these deliveries will be of the Model X, with the majority being the Model S.

The charging prototype was first showed off on Twitter through a video, which can be seen below.