I’m sure that many readers will remember the days when petrol stations had attendants that put the petrol into the tank for you – before the days when “self service” became the modern way of filling up.
Well, perhaps we are going to return to that kind of service. I’ve been fascinated today by a video of a petrol station in the Netherlands, that uses a robot arm to fill up the cars.
The robot knows from the type of car how to open the petrol cap, and presumably whether or not to put diesel in. I wonder how it copes with bio-ethanol?
It looked rather slow at the moment, so I guess the queues at the petrol station near here would just get longer. I also didn’t see anywhere to pay for the petrol – does the robot arm swipe your credit card as well?
As fascinating as it is, I’m still not too sure what to make of it all. It may be nice not to have to get out of your car, but it doesn’t help the unemployment figures!
Filling up with petrol – a robot's job
Filling up with bio-ethanol for the first time
Today I filled up with bio-ethanol for the first time. Germany’s first bio-ethanol petrol station is located in Bad Homburg and to operate the pump I have a coded key, which allows me to go there at any time of the day, regardless of the opening hours.
For my first visit, however, I decided to go there whilst it was open, just to make sure that there were no problems.
Actually there was a problem – a car had parked on the space in front of the bio-ethanol pump, and I had to wait about 15 minutes until it was moved.
After that I parked there myself, turned the key and filled up the car. As simple as that! Now I have a full tank and can work out for myself how much the car is using. The on-board computer says that I used 13.3litres/100km since I started driving the car, but I don’t know how many litres were in the tank when I got it so I can’t check that figure.
The first bio-ethanol petrol station in Germany,
located in Bad Homburg
