Smokes, snacks and plug-in charging
Top off your plug-in while grabbing a candy bar
Panasonic Electric Works and a group of 10 vending machine companies plan to turn 10,000 vending machines in Japan into electric vehicle charging stations as well, with SoftBank Telecom and SoftBank Mobile providing telecom services to connect the stations.
While such vending machines don’t resonate in the US as well as they do in Japan, the idea represents an interesting conversion of consumer choices and EV potential.
As plug-in vehicles will require a lot more charging compared to filling conventional vehicles with gasoline, making charging almost dynamic is the kind of approach that could simplify the process, while also increasing EV cost-effectiveness. For instance, with wireless plug-in charging capabilities, a plug-in vehicle driver in Japan could charge their plug-in without any effort doing something they’d do regardless of the kind of vehicle driven.
That kind of simplicity could be game-changing.
According to a considerable amount of battery research, batteries are going to continue to be too expensive for average consumers for many years, even decades, without considerable technological advances, advances that will probably require a technology beyond lithium according to the consensus. However, something like dynamic charging could enable electric cars to utilize much smaller battery packs, keeping vehicle costs more in line with conventional vehicles.
To be sure, vending machines alone probably aren’t enough to create such dynamic charging, but they seem a step in the right direction, especially in dense cities like Tokyo, Japan.