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,