Ram Trucks knows its drivers don’t want to plug in chargers, so it made a robot for that
When you think of charging your electric vehicle, you don’t typically imagine robots involved. But in its quest to make the charging experience for its its new Ram Revolution electric pickup as seamless as possible, Ram Trucks has introduced a robot that can autonomously charge your EV.
Ram reveals a robot charger for its electric truck
Ram finally took the sheets off its electric Ram Revolution truck at CES this year after teasing the concept several times.
The EV pickup comes with some pretty cool features like shadow mode, where the vehicle automatically follows its owner around, and a flexible high-tech cabin that can transform the interior from a relaxing setting to party mode with the press of a button.
Ram revealed another innovative product alongside the interior – an inductive autonomous charging robot, aka “Ram Charger,” that finds your EV for you, enabling hands-free recharging.
During the reveal at CES, Ram CEO Mike Koval said the company knew from its Real Talk tour that its customers are “concerned with how long a charge will last on the road, but also how easy it is to charge.”
Koval continued to say its Ram charging robot will make home charging as easy as possible by intelligently detecting the vehicle’s charging needs and automatically moving into place and aligning itself underneath to begin the recharge.
Perhaps more importantly, Koval said the Ram robot charger would feature smart charge capability, allowing it to send energy during off-peak hours.
The Robo-EV charger, developed by EFI Automotive over the past five years, has a range of 5 to 10 meters, with the ability to charge several EVs.
EFI says the innovative system improves efficiency by 97% with contact under the vehicle compared to those with air gaps. The robot features first-level communication with the car and includes intelligence to avoid obstacles.
Charging power is planned at 7 kW but can be extended. Depending on usage, you can use either a wallbox (home) or terminal (businesses/fleets).
Production of the robotic charger is slated for 2025, a year after the Ram Revolution electric truck is set to arrive.
Electrek’s Take
My initial reaction to a robotic EV charger was, “how hard is it to plug in a cord,” but after digging a little deeper, it may have a use case.
For example, fleets or businesses can use the robot technology with intelligent charging to cut utility costs and ensure their vehicles are fully charged and ready to go.
I don’t see this as a big-ticket item for the average person since plugging into a home charger takes all of three seconds. Perhaps it’s a luxury extra.
The robot charger may find its role in a future filled with autonomous EV fleets, and that’s where we are headed. Fleets like the USPS, FedEx, Amazon, UPS, you name it, could potentially benefit from autonomous robots charging their vehicles. Until then, the cord remains the most viable option.
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EV sales kept up their momentum in December 2024, with incentives playing a big role, according to the latest Cox Automotive’s Kelley Blue Book report.
December’s strong EV sales saw an average transaction price (ATP) of $55,544, which helped push the industry-wide ATP higher, according to Kelley Blue Book. The December ATP for an EV was higher year-over-year by 0.8%, slightly below the industry average, and higher month-over-month by 1.1%. Tesla ATPs were higher year-over-year by 10.5%.
Incentives for EVs remained elevated in December, although they were slightly lower month-over-month at 14.3% of ATP, down from 14.7% in November.
EV incentives were higher by an impressive 41% year-over-year and have been above 12% of ATP for six consecutive months. Strong sales incentives, which averaged more than $6,700 per sale in 2024, were one reason EV sales surpassed 1.3 million units last year, according to Cox Automotive, a new record for volume and share.
(My colleague Jameson Dow reported yesterday, “In 2024, the world sold 3.5 million more EVs than it did in the previous year … This increase is larger than the 3.2 million increase in EV sales from the previous year – meaning that EV sales aren’t just up, but that the rate of growth is itself increasing.”)
Kelley Blue Book estimated that in December, approximately 84,000 vehicles – or 5.6% of total sales – transacted at prices higher than $80,000 – the highest volume ever. KBB lumps gas cars and EVs together into this luxury vehicle category, so this is where Tesla Cybertruck is slotted.
However, Tesla bundles sales figures of Cybertruck with Model S, Model X, and Tesla Semi(!) into a category it calls “other models,” so we don’t know for sure exactly how many Cybertrucks Tesla sold in Q4, much less in December. However, Electrek‘s Fred Lambert estimates between 9,000 and 12,000 Cybertrucks were sold in Q4, and that’s not a stellar sales figure.
What will January bring when it comes to EV ATPs? What about tax credits? Check back in a month and I’ll fill you in.
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Tesla is now claiming that Cybertruck was the ‘best-selling electric pickup in US’ last year despite not even reporting the number of deliveries.
There’s a lot of context needed here.
As we often highlighted, Tesla is sadly one of, if not the most, opaque automakers regarding sales reports.
Tesla doesn’t break down sales per model or even region.
For comparison, here’s Ford’s Q4 2024 sales report compared to Tesla’s:
You could argue that Tesla has fewer models than Ford, and that’s true, but Tesla’s report literally has two lines despite having six different models.
There’s no reason not to offer a complete breakdown like all other automakers other than trying to make it hard to verify the health of each vehicle program.
This has been the case with the Cybertruck. Tesla is bundling its Cybertruck deliveries with Model S, Model X, and Tesla Semi deliveries.
Despite this lack of disclosure, Tesla has been able to claim that the Cybertruck has become “the best-selling electric pickup truck” in the US in 2024:
It very well might be true. Ford disclosed 33,510 F-150 Lightning truck deliveries in the US in 2024 while most estimates are putting Cybertruck deliveries at around 40,000 units.
Those are global deliveries, but Tesla only delivered the Cybertruck in the US, Canada, and Mexico in 2024, and most of the deliveries are believed to be in the US.
However, there’s essential context needed here, as we highlighted in our recent ‘Tesla Cybertruck sales are disastrous‘ article.
First off, Tesla had a backlog of over 1 million reservations for the Cybertruck that it has been building since 2019. This led many to believe Tesla already had years of demand baked in for the truck and that production would be the constraint.
However, based on estimates, again, because Tesla refuses to disclose the data, Cybertruck deliveries were either flat or down in Q4 versus Q3 despite Tesla introducing cheaper versions of the vehicle and ramping up production.
Again, that’s after just about 40,000 deliveries.
Furthermore, with almost 11,000 deliveries in Q4 in the US, Ford more likely than not outsold Cybertruck with the F-150 Lightning in Q4.
Electrek’s Take
Tesla is in damage control here. There’s no doubt that it is having issues selling the Cybertruck.
Inventory is full of Cybertrucks and Tesla is now discounting them and offering free lifetime Supercharging.
Tesla is great at ramping up production, and it’s clear the Cybertruck is not production-constrained anymore. It is demand-constrained despite having over 1 million reservations.
Again, those reservations were made before Tesla unveiled the production version, which happened to have less range and cost significantly more.
The upcoming cheaper single motor version should help with demand, but I have serious doubts Tesla can ramp this program up to more than 100,000 units in the US.
As a reminder, Tesla installed a production capacity of 250,000 units annually and Musk said he could see Tesla selling 500,000 Cybertrucks per year.
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