Amazon’s latest patent: drones that charge your vehicle while you’re on the road

By Warren Miller, contributing writer

Amazon has big plans for drones, the hope being that one day, all of our packages will be delivered by flying robots instead of UPS. However, the tech giant recently filed a new patent involving drone technology, one that may change the future of electric vehicles. First reported by Greentech Media, Amazon plans to design a drone that finds your EV when your battery is low on energy and recharges it for you on the spot, even while you’re still moving.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted Amazon a patent in early October to develop the drone, although Amazon filed the application all the way back in 2014. The premise is simple: When your battery is running low, your car will connect with a central server, which will ascertain how much more energy your car will need to arrive at your next destination (or the location of the nearest charging station). The server will then send an unmanned drone equipped with a battery to your vehicle to charge the battery to appropriate level. Easy-peasy, right?

Not so fast, luddites. Patent approval is just the first step in a long development process, and there is still a myriad of obstacles to overcome. For one thing, these new drones will need to adhere to the same rules and regulations that all flying machines do in the United States, rules that restrict where and when drones can fly safely without affecting commercial air travel and creating noise pollution. Additionally, the technology to charge batteries wirelessly isn’t advanced enough yet. A group of enterprising scientists at Stanford University were able to transfer electricity to an LED light bulb in motion earlier this year, but only 1 milliwatt of electricity was actually transferred. Electric vehicles operate at tens of kilowatts of energy.

Amazon plans to design a drone that finds your EV when your battery is low on energy and recharges it for you on the spot, even while you’re still moving. Image source: Pixabay.

Still, while Amazon’s vision may not be realized in the near future, the implications of it for the future of electric vehicles aren’t hard to imagine. The major restraining factor in the mass proliferation of electric vehicles worldwide is the absence of enough charging stations to service them. If you could charge your car almost anywhere, without even having to stop and get a soda at the Stop & Shop, then why bother with fossil fuels? It’s estimated that Americans put 130,000 new EVs on the road in 2016, but as of now, there are only about 16,000 public charging stations in the U.S., and most of those require the driver to wait for as long as a couple of hours for their vehicle’s battery to be recharged. A future without having to seek out a charging station or wait for your battery to charge seems almost too convenient to not eventually become a reality.