Huawei teases valet charging, where the car drives itself to a charger and plugs itself in

Huawei's Qiankun smart vehicle solutions unit previewed the feature on August 8. In a demo video, an owner who cannot stay with the car simply taps the valet charging button in the phone app. The car then uses the Qiankun ADS driver-assist system to navigate the parking lot on its own and pull into an open charging bay.

Once parked, the charging port cover opens by itself. A robot arm uses vision-based positioning to align and insert the connector, so nobody has to handle the cable.

The whole session runs without the owner present. The system streams live battery status and an estimated time to full charge, and handles payment automatically. When the battery is full, the arm unplugs and returns to its position, and the car drives itself to a designated waiting spot, ready for the owner to get in and leave.

The feature is part of Huawei's 10-minute smart-driving lifestyle circle, a set of services built around daily errands within a short drive of home. The same ecosystem includes valet car washing and seamless hands-free payment.

For owners, valet charging closes the loop between driving and recharging. Nothing about plugging in requires a human anymore, at least in the demo. The catch is infrastructure. Robotic charging stations have to exist before any of this works, so the scale of the rollout will decide how useful the feature actually is.