One of the big barriers to electric cars taking off – or at least driving off – is lack of charging stations. They are few and far between and finding them and planning your journey accordingly is a challenge. However, if you could drive your car up to your friend’s house, the gas station, bus stop, parking lot, top up your car and drive off, the problem would go away. Charging stations would be as close as the nearest electric socket. It seems that ELVIIS has solved the problem.
A collaboration between Ericsson Labs and the Viktoria Institute in Sweden (ELVIIS, right?) has used the new electric Volvo to solve the problem. The team put a charging gateway into a topping up point and used the C30 to allow customers to ‘fill up’ with electricity, and charge it to the card or payment mechanism that is registered with the vehicle, not the gas station.
It is a simple yet familiar concept and one that could fully open the door to greener car take up. Suddenly there are limitless numbers of places to top up – as long as there is a billing system in place.
Of course the move from pump to plug will send the minds of cyber criminals into overdrive. Will it be possible to hack into a system and get free gas for life or charge someone else for the electricity in your battery?
The answer is yes, where connected technology is concerned nothing is 100 percent secure. Our world, though, hinges on the question ‘is it secure enough?’ And soon the answer may be yes, and maybe it will be in time for the launch of the production version of the C30, driven from the building by ELVIIS.
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