Israeli smart electric road technology developer ElectReon Wireless is up 7% today in lively turnover on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE). ElectReon notified the TASE that it had installed 20 meters of its full electric road system below the asphalt on a trial section of road on the company's premises near Beit Yanai, and had successfully charged an electric Renault ZOE in transit.
In the trial, the company also demonstrated transmission of 8.5 kilowatts with higher than 90% utilization. ElectReon believes that it will achieve over 15 kilowatts in energy transmission in the coming weeks.
Success in the current trial constitutes an important milestone towards installing the system developed by the company in a project led by ElectReon in Sweden, scheduled for implementation this November. A 1.6-kilometer road will be built in this project as part of a 4.1-kilometer route between an airport and the city of Visby on Gotland Island. An electric bus used as a public shuttle and an electric truck traveling on the road will be driven by a professional driver in order to ensure that the system is ready for a large-scale project on high-speed roads.
The Swedish government is paying for NIS 35 million of the project's NIS 45 million cost. The remaining cost will be paid by a consortium of companies consisting of EiTech, a subsidiary of global infrastructure group VINCI Energies; European research institute RISE; Dan Public Transportation (a party at interest in ElectReon); and several international companies.
Ahead of installing its system in Sweden, ElectReon will hold an instructional and demonstration meeting with the company's partners in the project in Sweden. The Swedish installation team will be trained and will jointly install another 50-meter section of the road on ElectReon's premises. The meeting, with participation from both various representatives of the parties involved in the project in Sweden and parties involved in ElectReon's pilot installation, is scheduled to take place in Tel Aviv in the coming months. It will include training in the installation method, comprehensive tests of the system by external parties, and a thorough discussion of preparations for deploying and operating the system in Sweden.
ElectReon adds that it has begun installing the receivers developed by the company on two electric buses and a heavy electric truck. Installation on the truck is slated for completion this December in advance of the live demonstration on an electric road in Sweden in the first quarter of 2020. Completion of the installation on the buses is scheduled by February 2020, and the company expects to conduct a drive and charging of the buses in Sweden and Tel Aviv (on Klausner Street near Tel Aviv University) in April 2020.
ElectReon's share price has soared 307% this year, pushing its market cap up to NIS 636 million.
ElectReon, led by cofounder and CEO Oren Ezer, works in wireless charging of electric vehicles through smart road technology. Its technology, which is based on infrastructure coils implanted below the surface of a traffic lane, is designed to facilitate wireless energy transmission to vehicles traveling on it. This can extend the range of vehicles, while saving time for charging them and substantially reducing their weight, because the vehicles will have only a small battery. Vehicles will thus be able to also travel on road sections that lack the company's coil infrastructure.
In the first stage, ElectReon plans to apply the technology to buses and trucks traveling on fixed lanes, and later to private vehicles. Applying the technology also depends on cooperation from regulators. In February, ElectReon signed a cooperation agreement with the Tel Aviv municipality for the first pilot of its type in operating a Dan public transportation line using electric road infrastructure.
Ozer and CTO Hanan Rumbak founded ElectReon in 2013, after serving in various positions at Elbit Systems. ElectReon, which became a listed company in October 2017 when it was merged into stock exchange shell Biomedix, has since increased its market cap 14-fold. ElectReon is currently controlled by Ezer and Rumback (18% each) and Dan (16.3%).
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