BMW has developed street lights equipped with sockets to charge electric cars, it said on Friday, and will run a pilot project in Munich next year that uses existing local authority lighting networks.

BMW also claims the charging-socket equipped street lights can easily graft onto the existing municipal infrastructure. 2014 BMW i3 (German-market version), Amsterdam, Oct 2013.

The lights combine hardware from BMW's own ChargeNow charging stations with LED elements for maximum efficiency. BMW says they can be easily added to the existing municipal infrastructure.