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Take a look at the primary energy consumption here in this chart [0]. As you can see despite 45% of electricity coming from renewables it's still only 14% of the total energy consumption. Just the mineral oil consumption alone contributes 2.5 times more energy than renewables. This looks bad at first glance except you have to consider that the efficiency of ICE cars is extremely low, somewhere around 25% or even less depending on the fuel. Electric motors will massively reduce the total amount of energy needed for transport no matter what the source of energy is.

[0] https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g...

This is a prototype. The billing will be added later, when it is deployed for real.

That is the same with billing at public charging stations for electric vehicles. In the past, you basically got the charge free of charge. The billing, if there was any, was more about the parking. That was to encourage to build up a charging network.

But now, new charging stations are regulated by the calibration rules, like every by law calibrated weighing device you find in shops. That means they now measure the charge and this will be billed. The requirements are strict, because everything as to be reliably recorded, so the proof would stand in court. That makes those systems expansive. That means electric charging at public stations seems to be more expansive than fueling your ICE.

> More specific to Germany, I really don't want to sound like I am against EV but it's something I genuinely wonder about : Say this system becomes popular and tens of thousands of trucks start sucking electricity out of the grid, the electricity demand will skyrocket. Is Germany going to raise the electricity prices to import or build clean plants or just restart a few coal plant?

Germany already has increased electricity prices to massively build out its solar and wind turbine network, a lot of those right next to autobahnen. If they can transmit power along those lines, and distribute some storage across it, this could serve as a long-range electricity transmission network for all the renewable capacities scattered over the country.

It's a pilot system, so one goal is to exactly answer these kinds of question: durability, maintenance etc. I've passed the installation on the A5, and the pylons are on the side of the road, and I've seen machinery parked on the side of the road without a lane blocked, so possibly they can even do cable replacement without blocking a lane.

For the same reason I dont' think they care about billing or huge electricity demand yet (the electricity probably will be paid from the pilot project funds).

But here's an idea: If it's a hybrid system anyway, why don't dump a variable amount of excess electricity generated by renewables into it, instead of selling that at a negative price to other countries in times of low demand?

In regards to billing, it wouldn't surprise me if it was a combination of strict regulations/registrations about efficiency and then semi-simple toll roads. If you know how much a given truck consumes and the distance it travels, that might be close enough math to not need more detail. I could also see a potential factor of registered load mass having an effect too, but that should be possible to include.

Germany also already has high electricity prices compared to a lot of the world, but I doubt this would be a rapidly adopted thing that is going to cause a massive price spike

Germany will use French nuclear power and feel good to have no nuclear plants.

If you want to have EV on these roads, pay a fee.