Imagine it's the year 1900.
The horse and buggy still reign supreme as the choice mode
of transportation,
but a relative newcomer,
the automobile,
is about to become all the rage.
And so roads begin to pave and things
like gas stations and traffic lights appear,
and voila!
Everything looks different and probably smells a lot better,
too.
The transition from horse to horsepower ushered
in a complete infrastructural change that had ripples
through every sector imaginable
and made our modern world possible.
A century later,
are we on the cusp
of another transformation that of magnitude?
Today, the world pretty much agrees on the basic idea
that we need to get off fossil fuels and move
toward more sustainable solutions to our modern needs.
The transportation industry accounts for something
like 14% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
And that's one of the largest contributors
of pollution in the world.
But going electric is not a simple panacea
for the world's climate problem.
We need to understand that electric vehicle is very good
but the battery is not so green.
The more we consume electric vehicles,
the more we consume electricity
and electricity is powered
by polluted materials like natural gas or coal.
Just like going from 19th to 20th century mobility,
the very infrastructure we built our society
on may need to change.
And a lot of unresolved issues remain
before this shift goes into full gear.
For example...
There aren't enough lithium ion and cobalt resources
in the world today.
And the whole industry is centered on making sure
that there's no anxiety associated with the range.
Batteries don't grow on trees.
And for every mile you want to go,
they become heavier,
which then drains them faster,
forcing us to stop
and charge up again
and again
and again,
which of course takes up energy.
And so we're left with the ultimate riddle.
How can we move with the ease and freedom
that internal combustion offers
while successfully reducing our overall carbon footprint?
Israeli EV startup ElectReon is helping crack the code.
We don't need to remove the battery at all
but we need to reduce the size of the battery.
And this will create a green solution to all of us.
We took a step back and we looked at the shift
to electric vehicles in a more holistic way.
And we said okay,
what makes the most sense?
How can we create a charging solution where the vehicle
battery can be as small as it can possibly be?
When you think about battery capacity and battery density,
not every vehicle requires a huge battery.
Not every vehicle needs to travel hundreds of miles.
So ultimately,
the vision is to empower the transition
to electric vehicles in the most sustainable
and efficient way possible
whilst ultimately lowering the cost
of ownership of the vehicles for the owner.
And the existing solutions based
on plug-in charging will not do the shift alone.
So we believe
that wireless charging is the technology
that can help to accelerate the adoption
of electric vehicles.
Yes, you heard that right.
Car charging wirelessly.
Wireless charging is a way to transmit energy
from one coil
to the other coil without having hard connection
between the two.
While we're driving,
we can charge it
while we're waiting for passengers
inside the city.
We can charge it
while we are loading goods
at the loading dock.
So it means
that we can charge the vehicle almost
any time,
anywhere.
We don't need to carry a huge battery with us.
We can reduce the size of the battery
and we can transmit the energy almost all day long.
We have the copper coils that are installed
under the road,
under the roadway or wherever
it is that we're deploying that transfer energy
over the air to a receiver
that's installed directly
under the vehicle chassis.
Works on the exact same principle
as an electronic toothbrush,
or we're seeing a lot
of new generation wireless charging for iPhones.
There's no actual connection required between the two.
The energy is via the app.
Wireless charging is actually nothing new.
It's use has been around almost as long
as the discovery of electricity itself.
The principle is based
on Nikola Tesla discovery
more than 100 years ago.
Nikola Tesla,
was so ahead of his time
that his vision for wireless energy
transformation was buried by his competitor,
Thomas Edison,
in favor of a less egalitarian
and more capitalistic system of energy transmission.
Today,
he's practically worshiped by the tech elite
and the Tesla coil remains the inspiration
for wireless internet connections
as well as charging solutions
like ElectReon's.
This charging can occur even when the car is moving
and comes with a holistic power management system
to maximize the process.
ElectReon's technology is made
up of four major components.
There's the copper coils directly
under the road.
There's the receiver unit,
which accepts the energy
from the copper coils under the road.
Then that relationship is managed
by a management unit at the side of the road,
which receives energy directly from the grid
and then safely transfers it
to the copper coils under the road.
These three components are managed
by cloud software,
which enables us to remotely
monitor the entire relationship,
make sure enough energy is being transferred,
and ultimately charge and bill for the energy.
The benefits of wireless charging are huge.
When we look at the transition
to electric mobility,
there are a lot of costs incurred
on the vehicle side
and on the infrastructure side.
Installing the technology
means a vehicle's battery capacity
can be massively reduced,
which can be up to 50% of the cost of the vehicle itself.
The vehicle never needs to stop
to charge again.
You can charge with different amount of energy
different vehicles on the same platform,
which is very unique to wireless charging.
Just as in the transition
from horses to automobiles,
public infrastructure plays a critical role
in enabling mass adoption,
but making major changes
to large complex systems
while they're in use isn't easy.
There is no standard
for wireless charging dynamically.
Ultimately,
in order to be able
to enter the market
and offer our technology at commercial scale,
we need standardization of the technology.
So of course,
we're looking,
in this case,
at involvement with the local government municipality,
regional transport authority,
whatever it may be,
that funds the infrastructure deployment
on the one side
and then the user,
the vehicle itself,
or the owner of the vehicle will be charged
for the amount of energy that's transferred
to them in the same way that you pay
for roaming services
or a vehicle today is charged.
When you deal with disruptive technology,
you need to educate the market.
You need to deal with standardization,
regulation.
You need to teach lots
of students
and bring them to the company.
You need to gain new knowledge.
You need to learn from others' mistakes.
We need the electric companies
and the grid companies to work together
to figure out how best to deploy
this technology in terms
of the grid requirements at scale.
And that's what all of the pilots
that we're working on are aimed at.
To figuring out all the pieces of the puzzle.
Implementing this technology sounds
like quite an ordeal,
but then again,
if there's anything that is constantly being worked
on already,
it's roads.
We're talking about scraping off just a small amount
of the center of the road
to deploy the technology
and doing it as quickly as possible.
So today we can lay a kilometer
in just one night.
So really limiting impacts to the road.
You know,
if we're doing it on one side of the road,
then the public can still use the other side
of the road the different direction
and making sure that as much
of the preparatory work is done
ahead of time as possible,
limiting impacts to road users.
In a few hours,
we can take an existing electric vehicle
and we can install our unique receiver pad,
connect it directly to the battery,
and then you can drive.
So it's very easy to convert
or to deal with any type,
any kind of electric vehicles.
What's really interesting
about this technology is how it fits
into each different type or use case.
So of course there are the vehicles that long,
long range.
You know,
long haul trucking companies,
for example,
traveling between states or
between countries want an extended mileage.
When we think about last mile or delivery vans,
well they're limited today
by the vehicles battery capacity
and how often they need to charge.
But essentially,
with this technology,
they could run double shifts.
If we look at city taxes,
just as an example from the mobility
as a service world,
they're also limited by the amount of charge required.
Ultimately, if we installed charging technology
along the areas where they were resting,
they'd be able to operate for longer hours.
Buses, too,
which operate on fixed routes.
So it makes perfect sense for them
to be able to charge
while driving and save downtime.
There is a huge need for electric busses.
So we decided to start with this section.
We have one kilometer of electrified road,
then we will drive the bus,
and you will see that it transmits energy
during driving.
Every hour,
we get 75 kilowatts charging the bus.
That means that in two hours,
we get 150 kilowatts.
This is half of the amount
of energy that the bus needs to drive all day long.
That means that we can reduce the size
of the battery by half
and lead to great savings and cost of the bus battery
and the bus itself.
Once we're going to drive the bus,
we're going to see
that the bus driver doesn't need to do anything.
This is the beauty of it.
For him,
it's a normal bus.
He doesn't need to change anything in his driving.
ElectReon is not relying on this test site alone.
As a proof of concept,
they have several projects around the globe
in various stages.
We have a project in Gotland, Sweden
where we show the charging of a large truck,
a 40 ton truck,
and a large electric bus showing the capacity
for battery reduction.
As the vehicles are charged directly
from the road in Tel Aviv,
we're showing that ultimately,
a bus can operate an extended
or 24 seven service with higher frequency trips
because it doesn't need to stop for dedicated charging time.
In Italy,
we're going to be deploying an interesting project
with a toll road operator,
which is a classic use case for us,
right?
If you,
as a user,
are already paying to use a toll road,
why not also get energy transfer to your vehicle
then and charge your car?
Part of ElectReon's vision is in alignment
with the trend of increasing public spaces
in urban environments.
We're talking about infrastructure
that's essentially invisible.
It's under the road,
so no changes to the road surface,
no noise,
no additional use of space.
So if we look at the urban environment,
for example,
it makes more sense to have dedicated space
for pedestrians,
for cyclists,
to increase the amount of space for them
and to not have the focus
on the visible charging infrastructure.
In keeping with Nikola Tesla's egalitarian ideals,
ElectReon plans on sharing their solutions
with the world at large.
So our approach is a bit different.
We are going to offer the IPs
for free for a car manufacturer
in order to increase the adoption
of wireless charging.
This sort of open source IP sharing is typical
of the Silicon Valley set.
Elon Musk did the same in the hopes
of moving to a new generation of sustainable development.
As the rising tide does raise all ships.
ElectReon,
even as it proves its concept
and takes on more partners,
remains in its infancy.
There's still some questions
about the economics behind their product,
and if it's able to be deployed
around the world,
but they are picking up steam
with several projects in Europe
and plans to expand in the U.S.
and capture on President Biden's initiative to try
to ramp up EV infrastructure in the country.
That's a big if since there's no guarantee
that ElectReon will receive the benefits
of Biden's infrastructure plan,
not to mention that they're not the only game
in town.
Siemens eHighway,
Elways,
and ELONROAD
all claim to have commercial-ready electric road systems,
but the ElectReon team and their ambitions remain undeterred
by competition and held strong
by an unwavering faith in their core mission.
The real question is,
is what are we doing to limit the environmental impacts
of electric mobility?
How are we making it truly sustainable?
And that's how I was really able to get
behind the vision that the founders have here
and what they're trying to do.
And as for the daunting task of altering the world's roads
for wireless charging,
ElectReon is taking it one kilometer at a time.
When you start something that at the beginning
you need to put lots of effort
to start moving this change.
But once you are in motion,
then it will be much easier to move fast
and fast and accelerate.