The optical response of nonparabolic quantum wells is dominated by a strong peak at the plasmon frequency. When the electrons reach the anharmonic regions, resonant absorption becomes inefficient. This limitation is overcome by using a chirped laser pulse in the autoresonant regime. By direct simulations using the Wigner phase-space approach, the authors prove that, with a sequence of just a few pulses, electrons can be efficiently detrapped from a nonparabolic well. For an array of multiple quantum wells, they can create and control an electronic current by suitably applying an autoresonant laser pulse and a slowly varying dc electric field.