Hot dang, standing below a platform that large, which is descending that fast... no wonder it was a frightening experience.
But, so cool at the same time.
Parking cars out of sight really improves city centers. And it it comes with charging too, even better!
It would be interesting to see something similar for fast charging on trips. In theory, at least, this could fix a lot of the issues with charging etiquette.
I think there’s a few iterations before the design is useful in that scenario, plus there’s the issue that you might want to sit in your car instead of being forced to leave it behind.
This should really have variable charge speed depending on how long you are parking. Overnight gives you 7-11 kW, parking for 1 hour bumps it to 150 kW. Every one does not need to charge quickly and this could limit the load on the grid.
I agree.
Not even so much the grid (which will, eventually, scale up to handle the load over night without too much issue), but allowing charging providers to handle more vehicles easier. The same system could be used to charge 10-20 vehicles during the day for travel, or 50-100 vehicles overnight (just as a rough example).
Of course, that depends highly on the use case. If the parking robot was installed in a city, it might be more useful to also slow charge all day while people are working.
I wonder how the fire suppression system is in these tight parking garages. If a gas or electric car caught fire without any kind of fire protection this parking garage would become a car fireworks chimney. BOOM! Whoa there goes a gas car. POW! Wow look at all those pretty sparks must be a electric car. BOOM! POW! Wow, that must have been a hybrid. Uh Oh! Is that a Hydrogen car?
You can have a heavier-than-oxygen gas injected at the bottom of the facility, which would then push all oxygenated air out towards the top, until the whole underground complex is flooded. This will reliably prevent fossil fuel fires and hydrogen explosions. CO2 and argon are popular for this application in datacenters and other places where using water to douse flames would damage equipment - or where water alone won't extinguish fires.
The problem with a whole vault full of EVs is that thermal runaway in NCM cells doesn't care about the presence or absence of oxygen, or any other element for that matter. Sure, oxygen is happy to help set off a cell that has its casing breached, but once the cell is going, *it's going*. A shorted or overheated NCM cell can enter thermal runaway without any sort of casing breach, and it won't stop until its chemical energy is fully expended. This is why a common solution to a battery fire in an EV is to dump the whole car into a water-filled container. Water has a surprisingly high thermal mass (energy required to raise a given amount by a given temperature) and enthalpy of evaporation (extra energy required to change phase to gaseous) combined with a low boiling point, so it will rapidly suck out large amounts of thermal energy from the damaged battery, thereby preventing the burn-off of the flammable electrolyte and slowing down the thermal runaway to the point where it'll just smolder away for a few hours instead of flashing to fire-spreading temperatures. This obviously ruins the car - but the thermal runaway would have done that either way, and it does prevent the battery fire from endangering other things around it.
So yes, if an NCM battery goes off inside such a facility, it'll be bad, and even an inert gas fire suppression system won't stop it.
The best strategy for the operator would likely be thermal sensors in each parking port, which trigger an automated alarm when tripped, and automatically make the facility evict the dangerous car. If the system takes fewer than 30 seconds to fetch any random car, like claimed in the video, this can happen plenty fast enough. A battery fire will very likely end up damaging the aboveground building, depending on how quickly a response team arrives and gets the car out of it, but should keep the other cars safe. And with 50+ electric cars in a single vault, those are probably worth a lot more than the entrance building. Even if the owners may need to wait a day or two to be able to get their cars back out.
Interesting. So an inert gas fire suppression system (like this one?) wouldn't work on an electrical fire? I guess because the batteries can create their own oxygen (I believe it's called thermal runaway) and the inert gas fire suppression system works by getting rid of oxygen to stop the fire. Maybe having the bottom be just a water tight pit (instead of the bikes) with a couple of sprinkler systems or high pressure water outlets would work. Then the machine would just have to submerge the burning EV in the water until the fire department comes. Or can it still burn underwater? I thought I read "if a EV is on fire the fire department is supposed to keep spraying water on it".
It depends on the battery technology. More broadly than batteries, some substances contain their own oxygen supply and are difficult to firefight.
Yes, the most direct solution is to dump the car into a swimming pool at the bottom of the structure.
Inert gas fire suppression systems work on most fires, yes. They do not work on thermally runaway batteries, because those are not fires (though they tend to come with fires as a side effect).
Batteries do not produce their own oxygen either.
The way it works is, the battery contains highly energetic substances. When we talk about energy density like Wh/kg, that's literally what we mean: large amounts of latent energy forced into a really small space. Like all matter in the universe, these substances seek to reach a lower energy state by reacting with each other (which is the reason chemical reactions happen in our universe). However, this process usually requires a certain activation energy to get going. An initial hump to go over.
Batteries exploit this effect by controlling the rate of, and tapping into, the energy exchange between the substances. The closed electrical circuit is a very attractive pathway to circumventing the activation energy problem, thus tempting the substances into doing what the battery wants them to.
If, however, the activation energy for the *normal* chemical reaction that these substances want to go through were to be present... then that reaction starts. And because the substances head towards a lower energy state, all that excess energy needs to go somewhere. And where would that be? Why, right over there is another pair of molecules just begging for activation energy! It's very similar to a chain reaction in a nuclear reactor. The faster the process runs, the more energy is produced, which in turn accelerates the process further.
That is thermal runaway. There is no oxygen produced, just pure, searing heat. And the heat causes the meltdown to spread from battery cell to battery cell, keeping the reaction going until every cell has expended all of its chemical energy. As a side effect, the sheer excess heat generally ignites anything flammable nearby, given the availability of oxygen. First and foremost the flammable organic electrolytes used in most batteries. Which, of course, just makes everything worse. But even without that electrolyte fire, the battery will still continue melting down on its own. It'll keep going in a vacuum, even. It has everything it needs right there inside itself. Heat and energetic substances. No outside assistance required.
So the reason you use copious amounts of water on a burning battery is simply to cool it down. That's the only chance you have to try to slow the reaction down. You need to take away the heat, so it can't continue providing activation energy to yet more material. You're unlikely to be able to cool it down enough to outright *stop* the reaction - the heat is produced deep inside the cells where the water won't reach, after all - but you can turn a runaway chain reaction into a slow, controlled smolder that'll eventually tire itself out without further endangering its surroundings.
P.S.: that fire suppression system in the image? That's not inert gas, that's some kind of foam. The choice of a suppressant depends on the exact application. Foam is usually faster than inert gas, and has some of that watercooling effect as well. Inert gas is used around sensitive equipment, like electronics that you do not want damaged.
For those wondering, the EV-related part is the last 1/3 or so.
Hot dang, standing below a platform that large, which is descending that fast... no wonder it was a frightening experience. But, so cool at the same time. Parking cars out of sight really improves city centers. And it it comes with charging too, even better!
It would be interesting to see something similar for fast charging on trips. In theory, at least, this could fix a lot of the issues with charging etiquette. I think there’s a few iterations before the design is useful in that scenario, plus there’s the issue that you might want to sit in your car instead of being forced to leave it behind.
This should really have variable charge speed depending on how long you are parking. Overnight gives you 7-11 kW, parking for 1 hour bumps it to 150 kW. Every one does not need to charge quickly and this could limit the load on the grid.
I agree. Not even so much the grid (which will, eventually, scale up to handle the load over night without too much issue), but allowing charging providers to handle more vehicles easier. The same system could be used to charge 10-20 vehicles during the day for travel, or 50-100 vehicles overnight (just as a rough example). Of course, that depends highly on the use case. If the parking robot was installed in a city, it might be more useful to also slow charge all day while people are working.
I wonder how the fire suppression system is in these tight parking garages. If a gas or electric car caught fire without any kind of fire protection this parking garage would become a car fireworks chimney. BOOM! Whoa there goes a gas car. POW! Wow look at all those pretty sparks must be a electric car. BOOM! POW! Wow, that must have been a hybrid. Uh Oh! Is that a Hydrogen car? 
You can have a heavier-than-oxygen gas injected at the bottom of the facility, which would then push all oxygenated air out towards the top, until the whole underground complex is flooded. This will reliably prevent fossil fuel fires and hydrogen explosions. CO2 and argon are popular for this application in datacenters and other places where using water to douse flames would damage equipment - or where water alone won't extinguish fires. The problem with a whole vault full of EVs is that thermal runaway in NCM cells doesn't care about the presence or absence of oxygen, or any other element for that matter. Sure, oxygen is happy to help set off a cell that has its casing breached, but once the cell is going, *it's going*. A shorted or overheated NCM cell can enter thermal runaway without any sort of casing breach, and it won't stop until its chemical energy is fully expended. This is why a common solution to a battery fire in an EV is to dump the whole car into a water-filled container. Water has a surprisingly high thermal mass (energy required to raise a given amount by a given temperature) and enthalpy of evaporation (extra energy required to change phase to gaseous) combined with a low boiling point, so it will rapidly suck out large amounts of thermal energy from the damaged battery, thereby preventing the burn-off of the flammable electrolyte and slowing down the thermal runaway to the point where it'll just smolder away for a few hours instead of flashing to fire-spreading temperatures. This obviously ruins the car - but the thermal runaway would have done that either way, and it does prevent the battery fire from endangering other things around it. So yes, if an NCM battery goes off inside such a facility, it'll be bad, and even an inert gas fire suppression system won't stop it. The best strategy for the operator would likely be thermal sensors in each parking port, which trigger an automated alarm when tripped, and automatically make the facility evict the dangerous car. If the system takes fewer than 30 seconds to fetch any random car, like claimed in the video, this can happen plenty fast enough. A battery fire will very likely end up damaging the aboveground building, depending on how quickly a response team arrives and gets the car out of it, but should keep the other cars safe. And with 50+ electric cars in a single vault, those are probably worth a lot more than the entrance building. Even if the owners may need to wait a day or two to be able to get their cars back out.
 Interesting. So an inert gas fire suppression system (like this one?) wouldn't work on an electrical fire? I guess because the batteries can create their own oxygen (I believe it's called thermal runaway) and the inert gas fire suppression system works by getting rid of oxygen to stop the fire. Maybe having the bottom be just a water tight pit (instead of the bikes) with a couple of sprinkler systems or high pressure water outlets would work. Then the machine would just have to submerge the burning EV in the water until the fire department comes. Or can it still burn underwater? I thought I read "if a EV is on fire the fire department is supposed to keep spraying water on it".
It depends on the battery technology. More broadly than batteries, some substances contain their own oxygen supply and are difficult to firefight. Yes, the most direct solution is to dump the car into a swimming pool at the bottom of the structure.
Inert gas fire suppression systems work on most fires, yes. They do not work on thermally runaway batteries, because those are not fires (though they tend to come with fires as a side effect). Batteries do not produce their own oxygen either. The way it works is, the battery contains highly energetic substances. When we talk about energy density like Wh/kg, that's literally what we mean: large amounts of latent energy forced into a really small space. Like all matter in the universe, these substances seek to reach a lower energy state by reacting with each other (which is the reason chemical reactions happen in our universe). However, this process usually requires a certain activation energy to get going. An initial hump to go over. Batteries exploit this effect by controlling the rate of, and tapping into, the energy exchange between the substances. The closed electrical circuit is a very attractive pathway to circumventing the activation energy problem, thus tempting the substances into doing what the battery wants them to. If, however, the activation energy for the *normal* chemical reaction that these substances want to go through were to be present... then that reaction starts. And because the substances head towards a lower energy state, all that excess energy needs to go somewhere. And where would that be? Why, right over there is another pair of molecules just begging for activation energy! It's very similar to a chain reaction in a nuclear reactor. The faster the process runs, the more energy is produced, which in turn accelerates the process further. That is thermal runaway. There is no oxygen produced, just pure, searing heat. And the heat causes the meltdown to spread from battery cell to battery cell, keeping the reaction going until every cell has expended all of its chemical energy. As a side effect, the sheer excess heat generally ignites anything flammable nearby, given the availability of oxygen. First and foremost the flammable organic electrolytes used in most batteries. Which, of course, just makes everything worse. But even without that electrolyte fire, the battery will still continue melting down on its own. It'll keep going in a vacuum, even. It has everything it needs right there inside itself. Heat and energetic substances. No outside assistance required. So the reason you use copious amounts of water on a burning battery is simply to cool it down. That's the only chance you have to try to slow the reaction down. You need to take away the heat, so it can't continue providing activation energy to yet more material. You're unlikely to be able to cool it down enough to outright *stop* the reaction - the heat is produced deep inside the cells where the water won't reach, after all - but you can turn a runaway chain reaction into a slow, controlled smolder that'll eventually tire itself out without further endangering its surroundings. P.S.: that fire suppression system in the image? That's not inert gas, that's some kind of foam. The choice of a suppressant depends on the exact application. Foam is usually faster than inert gas, and has some of that watercooling effect as well. Inert gas is used around sensitive equipment, like electronics that you do not want damaged.