Ancil
The first of its sort worldwide, the e-motorway could cause a further 3,000 km of electric highways in Sweden by 2035 to be developed.
European nations are hurrying to ready the infrastructure required for fossil fuel-free mobility as the EU passed a historic regulation last month requiring all new automobiles sold to have zero CO2 emissions from 2035.
And Sweden is now turning a highway into a permanent electrified road – the first of its kind in the world.
Trucks and autos can charge while driving on an electric road.
Dynamic charging, according to experts, lets them avoid waiting at charging stations and drive farther with lesser batteries.
The Scandinavian country has pioneered electrified roads through several pilot projects including the world’s first temporary electric road.
Jan Pettersson, Director of Strategic Development at Trafikverket, the Swedish transport agency, told Euronews Next: “We think the electrification solution is the way forward for decarbonising the transport sector and we are working with a number of solutions.”
Located midway between Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö, the selected freeway, European route E20 links logistic hubs between Hallsberg and Örebro.
How Does It Work?
Designed to be completed by 2025, the project is now under procurement.
Though three forms of charging—catenary system, conductive (ground-based) system, and inductive system—the charging technique for E20 is yet unknown.
We think the electrification solution is the way forward for decarbonising the transport sector and we are working with a number of solutions.
Only heavy-duty vehicles can use the catenary system since it employs overhead wires to supply energy to a certain type of bus or tram.
Conductive charging, on the other hand, works both for heavy-duty vehicles and private cars as long as there is a conduction system such as a rail. The vehicles are charged through a stick that touches the rail.
Trafikverket opened the first charging rail for electric vehicles on public roads in 2018 as a pilot between Arlanda airport in Stockholm and a logistic hub in Rosersberg.
An electrical rail has been ground into the asphalt on which electric trucks lower a moving arm receiving power along a 2 kilometer long span.
Special equipment hidden under the road sends power to a coil in the electric vehicle using an inductive charging mechanism. The coil in the car then charges the battery using that power.
Trafikverket erected a wireless electric road for buses and heavy trucks in the island city of Visby in 2020.
Pettersson claims maintaining hefty car charge presents a “special challenge” for the planet.
“If you are going to have only static charging full battery solution for heavy-duty vehicles, you will get vehicles with a huge amount of batteries that the vehicles need to carry,” he said.
Although the Electric Road System (ERS) mostly concentrates on trucks, a recent study indicated that individual cars could potentially have advantages.
Combining home and dynamic charing can cut the size of the battery by up to 70% according to a simulation of 412 privately driven cars on sections of Swedish national and European roads.
Furthermore, researchers behind the study argue that not all Swedish roads should be electrified; doing so on just 25% of all roads would be effective for the system to operate.
This was the first effort at real-life driving patterns simulating the electric road system (ERS).
The ERS might not be for everyone, the researchers do note, though.
Furthermore mentioned by him is the fact that technology is still developing and the research makes presumptions based on specific criteria.
“But with enough development, I think they could reach such properties,” he added.
Other countries like Italy, the UK, the United States, and India are doubling down on building ERS systems.
