Some of us are more careful about this than other but there may come a time when you are on a particularly long trip and you just run out of gas. You may find yourself calling for help or pushing your car in neutral to the nearest station. If you own and operate an electric car the situation may be even dire. The nearest spot to charge your car might not be for hundreds of miles. Amazon has spent years coming up with new conveniences and now they’ve patented something very interesting. They may be launching a new service where drones deliver charges to your car.

The Electrifying Amazon Patent – The Amazon UAV

It was three years ago in 2014 where Amazon applied for this new patent for their electric charging drones. However it was not finalized and made official until now. The patent is for all of Amazon systems and or devices but also delivery methods for electricity to other vehicles. It would entail an “unmanned autonomous vehicle” or UAV drone. The way that the Amazon UAV works is by placing a charger on top of the car. It then uses the drone to plug into the car to give electric vehicle owners a much needed boost. Amazon’s UAV will accept requests and is coded to transfer energy to vehicles when certain protocols are met in its programming.

The specifics have not been finalized yet but Amazon representatives say that the UAV won’t always fly directly to the car but instead select a rendezvous location for you to park your car for the energy transference. Other times it will simply fly to the vehicle. In other tests Amazon says they are attempting to allow the drone to charge the car while it is driving. It will do this by anticipating the position of the car that made the request for the charge. Amazon has not yet finalized this process nor the drone itself. However the engineers have toyed with the idea that the UAV will also communicate back to the car in question to guide the driver to the rendezvous location. It will adjust depending on how much electricity your car needs versus how much it will require to get to the location.

How Will Amazon Make All This Possible?

This new Amazon patent comes right on time as Tesla announces a project to remotely upgrade EV owners’ batter life. Of course even outside EVs, the technology to allow for remote refueling has yet to be perfected. Considering how many vehicle owners are in the US, companies would need to invest in fleets of UAV drones. These UAVs must also have enough energy to refuel several cars or at least give them enough to get to proper station.  None of these questions have been fully addressed yet. The truth of the matter is that companies like Amazon file patents like these often. There is no real set in stone promise that Amazon will make these drones. However if they ever do get made, it will be Amazon that does it and they theoretically could.