V-Charge wins connected car award
The ‘V-Charge’ research project has won the Auto Bild / Computer Bild 2015 Connected Car Award.
‘V-Charge’ stands for Valet Charge and is pointing the way to the intelligent future of automated parking and electric vehicle charging. In the USA especially valet parking is very popular.
The ‘V-Charge’ project picks up on this idea, focusing on automated searching for a parking space and charging of the electric vehicle. The vehicle automatically looks for a vacant parking space that has the necessary charging infrastructure and inductively charges its battery. Pedestrians, cyclists and other vehicles get recognized by the cameras and ultrasound sensors integrated within the vehicle, allowing it to move about in ‘mixed mode traffic’.
The Connected Car Award covers all aspects of automotive connectivity and has been awarded by Auto Bild and Computer Bild since 2013. Experts from both magazines had pre-selected a shortlist, from which the readers were able to determine their favourites in nine categories via online voting.
Participants in the ‘V-Charge’ project in addition to Volkswagen Group Research are the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, the Technical University of Braunschweig, Robert Bosch GmbH, the University of Parma and Oxford University. The award was presented to Dr Volkmar Tanneberger, Volkswagen Brand Head of Electrical and Electronic Development and Prof Dr Thomas Form, Volkswagen Group Research Head of Electronic and Vehicle Research, representing all the partners, at CES in Las Vegas.
