REPS has raised a $23.6 million equity financing round to scale what it calls “road power plants”. The fresh capital will finance its worldwide rollout of a hardware and software layer called the Road Energy Production System (REPS), designed to be installed into any existing tarmac to capture otherwise wasted mechanical energy from passing cars.
The Munich-based firm is planning to use the funding injection to speed up its manufacturing ramp, grow its engineering teams and move into new markets abroad. The equity move will follow a €1.3m seed round led by Berlin-based accelerator EWOR just eight months prior to this, highlighting the eye-popping rise in investor belief in the financial case for energy-generating infrastructure.
Fixing the Historic Flaws of Kinetic Infrastructure
The concept of generating electricity from vehicular traffic is not entirely new, but previous global attempts have notoriously crashed under the weight of terrible physics and even worse economics.
Historically, companies attempted to use piezoelectric materials (embedded crystals that generate tiny electrical charges when squeezed by shifting road weight). However, piezoelectric systems producing tiny fractions of usable current were subjected to fierce wear and damage under heavy axle loads and ended up being more costly to operate per unit of electricity output.
Source: Reps
Similarly, high-profile solar-powered roads from the early to mid-2010s were unable to sustain the attacks of caked tyre rubber and dirt, decimating the solar cells. REPS has completely bypassed these approaches by designing a mechanical system built around a patented magnetic bearing system. Instead of pressure crystals, REPS installs highly durable steel plates directly into the road surface over repelling permanent magnets.
According to REPS internal benchmarks, this electromagnetic methodology delivers 254 times higher energy efficiency per unit than traditional piezoelectric alternatives. Furthermore, by removing high-friction mechanical gears, the plates are designed to operate for more than 20 years with near-zero degradation.
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Targeting the Braking Zone
Rather than scattering plates randomly across fast-moving motorways, REPS has mapped out a highly deliberate deployment strategy focused on areas where vehicles are already forced to slow down or brake.
“Traffic is everywhere, and until now, the kinetic energy spent decelerating thousands of tonnes of steel has been lost entirely as ambient brake heat,” said Alfons Huber, Founder and CEO of REPS. “We are capturing that wasted mechanical force and transforming it into grid-ready clean electricity without disrupting logistics flows or increasing vehicle fuel consumption.”
The ideal deployment environments include port gates, logistics yard entrances, highway off-ramps, and urban speed-reduction zones. In these specific locations, the REPS plates act effectively as smart, energy-generating speed bumps or rumble strips.
Real-World Proof at the Port of Hamburg
The technology is already operating beyond the theoretical stage. The first commercial REPS installation has been running at the Port of Hamburg since November 2025.
Over a six-month pilot window, more than 115,000 heavy freight trucks crossed over the system under real-world traffic and weather conditions. The installation successfully generated over 6,700 kWh of electricity, averaging roughly one kilowatt-hour for every 16 heavy trucks. The generated power was fed directly back into the port’s localised grid to offset operational footprints.
Following the success of the Hamburg pilot, REPS revealed that it is already engaged in active negotiations with over 90 entities globally across the port, municipal transit, and industrial logistics sectors.
Scaled Ambitions: The Dubai Concept
With the new capital secure, REPS is aiming to prove that infrastructure can function as a predictable, decentralised utility. Because the system depends entirely on vehicular movement rather than sunlight or wind, it provides stable baseload power that operates 24/7, completely independent of weather conditions.
The company’s long-term projections indicate massive municipal potential. REPS estimates that installing roughly 64,000 systems across a high-traffic metroplex the size of Dubai could recover approximately 3.2 TWh of electricity annually. This footprint would theoretically cover nearly 11% of the city’s entire current energy demand, offering a return on investment (ROI) timeline of less than four years for infrastructure operators.
