In Elon Musk's weird and wonderful future, rockets will land on barge ships, people will be slung between cities in vacuum tubes and giant metallic noodles will autonomously probe your Tesla Model S to recharge its battery.
Recently, the Tesla CEO has started to hint at the type of autonomous features that may make their way into the company's cars. These have included software updates that would allow a certain degree of autopilot and an auto-summoning capability where the car drives itself from a parking spot to pick you up, kind of like a robotic valet service.
But in Musk's mind, even the charging process should take care of itself. He first revealed the company was working on an automated charging solution in a tweet in December.
Btw, we are actually working on a charger that automatically moves out from the wall & connects like a solid metal snake. For realz.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 31, 2014
And the company has now released a short video of this creepy charging centipede in action. The prototype stands by harmlessly until the charging port flicks open, at which point it appears to sense the opportunity and go in for the kill. The blue light changes to a flickering green to indicate charging has begun.
That's about all we know for the time being. The prototype does seem to function as intended, and if does find its way into the garages of Model S owners it might mean never waking up to a flat battery again.
You can check out the prototype in action in the video below.
Source: Twitter
