Meet the New Electric Road

Swedish project aims to charge vehicle batteries
By Neal Colgrass,  Newser Staff
Posted Apr 29, 2018 12:25 PM CDT
Updated Apr 29, 2018 1:00 PM CDT
Meet the New Electric Road
This publicity photo shows an electric road in action.   (eRoadArlanda)

You may one day drive down roads charged with electricity that your vehicle automatically detects and sucks up through an automatic arm—if a Swedish project gains any headway, CNN reports. Called eRoadArlanda, it has turned 1.2 miles of road outside Stockholm into a kind of slot-car track where electric trucks insert movable arms into a rail to recharge the vehicle's battery while driving. Designers say the technology is weather-proof and the arm will rise automatically when one car passes another, Sky News reports. The rails are also said to be safe to the touch.

"One of the most important issues of our time is the question of how to make fossil-free road transportation a reality," says eRoadArlanda Chairman Hans Säll. "We now have a solution that will make this possible, which is amazing." Among its pluses, Säll says the electric road lets vehicles have smaller batteries and therefore makes vehicles cheaper to produce. The $7.7 million project will be tested with a truck fleet for two years, and if the government approves, it could be implemented for $1.9 million per mile and include buses and cars. "Sweden is at the cutting edge of this technology, which we now hope to introduce in other areas of the country and the world," Säll says. (Meanwhile the entire country of Sweden is now listed on Airbnb.)

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