The electric roads that charge your car as you drive - BBC News

charging up without plugging in to be the future for electric vehicles in the town of London in southern Sweden I'm being taken for a spin along Evolution Road this looks like a regular electric vehicle but underneath there's something different there's a pickup that means it makes contact with electrified Rail and can charge up while it's on the go the road consists of short segments that actually switch on power under the vehicle the power is following the vehicle and we have more than three sliding contacts so we get a steady current from the road [Music] isn't Wireless is called conductive charging imagine SK electrics electricity flows to the vehicle through a metal strip that slides along the rail camera follows the green LED lights to help keep it centered while an antenna system and series of sensors ensure only specific sections have live current and because it IDs the vehicle the owner can be billed for their energy use under here you have an antenna receiver so the vehicle comes send the signal this will switch on to 650 volts when the vehicle is over it and then when it has passed it will immediately switch off Elon rode the phone behind the tech argued that electric roads make more sense than building a huge network of charges this is especially important when you have long-haul trucks or buses and it's actually cheaper to build electric roads if everyone has smaller batteries it will pay for the infrastructure it works for all types of four-wheeled vehicles to test it out a Tesla and Nissan Leaf have been modified though there's no connection to those companies the tech has also been applied to a local boss and even this commercial van I think it's time I give it a go I don't get to drive fans very often so I'm just going to Center the van yeah so let's see if you can get the pickup down yep yep there we go oh yeah it's following the I can see the green lights and it's there isn't it yeah so now you you will get the energy to drive and you will charge the battery at the same time and when you leave the road it will automatically go up yes you can continue driving for twice the length but just how safe is it having an electrical current in the middle of the road both for drivers and the public we believe we have a really safe system that you cannot hack and it will immediately shut down the road if if someone tries to tamper with it the demo Road in Lunt will be here for just one more year this is one of the Rails that built out on Evolution Road and been tested in a real life environment and we take it back and we open it up to see how it has been affected by snow water ice whatever Now new track is being made ready for high-speed testing in Belgium and the startup is looking Beyond cities to roads at ports and Industrial sites if you have a broad network of charge rails or electrical Road system you don't have to carry on board all the energy you need that means we can reduce the battery sizes we can accelerate the electrification but using much smaller resources than compared to it than everyone having big batteries it's still going to need a lot of new infrastructure to be built there isn't it all these rails will have to be installed it will require Investments but we need to do that in order to have this changed and I think going forward it won't be either chords or electrical modes it will actually be all of the above because we will need so much charging infrastructure to have a 100 fully electric Society here in Sweden and plot by 2025. so perhaps in the not too distant future we could be powering up as we drive

Channel: BBC News

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Keywords: bbc, bbc news, news, world news, breaking news, us news, world

Id: XpZcveIiU_8

Length: 5min 1sec (301 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 08 2023