That's ridiculous. You are reaching in a feeble attempt to win an argument supporting a senselessly complex solution.

OK. I'll play your game.

Charging depot:

Docking station that the car aligns with and drives up against or onto. Contacts come up, down, in out of either the car or the docking station.

It can be as simple as a very inexpensive device on the ground and a compliant wall (to allow for accidents) with alignment markers (high contrast cross, circle, whatever).

One might even be able to design it so that it is a drive through docking station with the car stopping in the middle during the charging process.

Or, how about the famed battery swap system.

Nearby charging station? Well, if cars have 300+ mile range and you charge at home there should be zero need for locating charging stations all over a city. And yet, it can be as simple as a cord in a parking lot at work. No robotics needed.

Return home:

Put simply. I, and I would guess this is true for most people, have exactly zero interest in my auto-drive car returning home, opening the garage and driving in to charge. Why? Well, more than one reason. Let's just say that bedroom communities would be prime for burglaries. All you have to do is wait for auto cars to let you in.

In both cases the whole idea of having your car drop you off and then go back home or to a distant charging station is simply ridiculous. I'll only mention two issues with this, but there are more.

First, you just doubled traffic and congestion. If every car is a self-driver and they all return home, you now created a mess of traffic as every car now has somewhere else to go rather than just being parked for the work day.

You don't have kids, do you? There is no way in the universe that I would leave my kids inside my self-driving car to be delivered to school. That, on the face of it, is also a ridiculous idea. It would be beyond irresponsible to leave kids in a car driving around town given that, well, shit happens.

Second, you are wasting HUGE amounts of energy driving cars around that simply do not need to drive around. The average commuter in the US travels 25 minutes to work. About 1.7 million travel 90 minutes or more each way. About 2.2 million travel 50 miles or more. You are talking about having self-driving cars effectively drive 50 miles to deliver a person, 50 miles back to park and charge, then 50 miles to go pick them up after work and 50 miles to return them home. In other words, you turned a 100 mile round trip into a 200 mile insanely and utterly pointless trip.

Seriously, please, try to reason a bit. If you are in the Tesla cargo cult club, fine, you win. You are right. A complex robot is the only sensible way to charge an electric car. On the other hand, if you are not a Tesla fan boy. THINK. A technologically simple docking station is BY A HUGE MARGIN a far more sensible idea. Please don't try to invent ridiculous scenarios to support an equally ridiculous idea. Sometimes ideas are bad. Nothing wrong with that.

You don't have to agree with me. Just give it 10 or 20 years and you'll see which approach succeeds in the market. Or none of them. After all, my initial point in this sub-thread is still valid: What the heck is wrong with a simple charge cord? Nothing.