Experiment charges your Tesla with footsteps

06 Jul 2015 • engadget.com

Eventually, you might not have to find a charging station when you park your electric car downtown – pedestrians could do the work instead. Pavegen has teamed up with Tesla to show off an experimental charger that tops up your EV through kinetic energy from footsteps. You’d need “several hundred thousand” steps just to drive a Model S for 20 minutes in a downtown area, the company tells PSFK, so you won’t power your vehicle just by running in place. However, this isn’t as daunting a challenge as it sounds. Many urban hubs are chock-full of foot traffic, and a sufficiently long stretch of sidewalk could speed up the charging time.

Who’d have thought. Large groups of pedestrians walking down the sidewalk charging the cars of the future. Sounds nice.