One shortcoming of current (hehe) overhead electric delivery systems is that, in the case of a road closure or accident on the route, the buses may be unable to detour around the obstacle. This type of system should address that. I also like the idea of doing away with the tangle of lines, especially where routes turn and the lines need extensive tension supports.

It's a great system and probably the way to go for electrified bus lines.
But this is not the "world's first". There's a great article on Wikipedia about this technology, search for the term "capa vehicle". Looks like this was tried in Shanghai starting in 2005.
Maybe ABB has some detail in this that is different from what was done in Shanghai and thus tries to claim the "first" label. I might be missing that.

"no CO2 emissions are involved at any step of the process" right up until that point it was a great article ... then it had to jump into the CO2 is bad nonsense ... get over it, CO2 is not heating up the planet ... electric city buses are a good idea becasue of the other reduction in emissions and noise not CO2 reduction ...

Clever :-)

not a lover of the articulated buses but think this could be a winner although I have heard of similar systems

I wonder if you could retrofit the system to EC or hybrid SUVs or vans? Ford Transit at least had one model in its range. Allow delivery vehicles to use bus stops and quick charging and a lot of city pollution disappears! Garage doors might need to be modified though.

400 KW x 15 seconds = 1,66 KWh charging. If this buses needs only this energy, they can use a very small, high effective and cheap 20 KW on board range extender using biogas or hydrogen made of hydro-power instead this expensive environment. Refueling less than 3 minutes too.

I think this is a brilliant idea, however, what about the electrical field for the passengers, would this not cause health problems? Its a VERY high voltage just a few inches from their heads...

See an overview of electric urban transport in the International Electrotechnical Commision publication e-tech, April 2013
http://www.iec.ch/etech/2013/etech_0413/tech-2.htm

@Jeffrey J Carlson I'm not sure the inclusion of a fact, "no CO2 emissions are involved at any step of the process", turns a "great" article into a not great article. The author made no statement as to how good or bad CO2 is, but you assumed he is saying it's bad. By the way, you are correct, CO2 isn't warming the planet, it's insulating it thus aiding in the trapping of heat. That is what is heating the planet, and that is a scientifically accepted fact by more than 96% of those whose expertise makes them qualified to interpret and draw conclusions from the data.