A recent study found the top fifty sustainable cities — including cities in Sweden, Germany, and the US — will also become the early adopters of green technology for the future of smart cities. This includes venturing into smart road technology, which many public transport services and companies are funding to open new possibilities. Such possibilities include Electreon, which is setting its sights on going global by building its first electric roads in those countries.
Electreon essentially offers wireless charging solutions for electric vehicles (EVs). Its first smart road project was in Gotland, Sweden, which was completed in 2017. The company’s director of the Nordic region and project manager for the Smartroad Gotland project, Håkan Sundelin, added that “the planned large scale electric road pilot in Sweden, in addition to the French government’s decision to fund pilots for wireless charging roads, shows high demand for Electreon’s technology in Europe.”
Smartroad pilot project in Sweden
After the success of the smart road project in Sweden, Electreon announced its extension to the other countries this April. The idea of the project is pretty basic; your EV gets charged as you drive along the electric road. However, the execution seems hard as it entails laying the segments of coils that charge an EV under the road. The company is also testing the run of its electric airport shuttle bus and plans to release it to the public this summer in Sweden.
The program manager of electrification of the Swedish Transport Administration, Jan Pettersson, shared that they were “very positive about the opportunity to test higher wireless charging performance, as well as road durability. Now that the corona restrictions have eased, we are also looking forward to spreading the knowledge from the project more widely.”
Electreon also plans to increase its receivers’ capacity to 30kW and to add more features to the technology in the coming years. The company will also incorporate billing features for the partner companies to bill the vehicle subscribers using the electric roads.
Piloting in Germany
In 2020, the company studied the port area of Karlsruhe, Germany. The project was called the Electric Road System (ERS) to power a bus line that connects the new EnBW training center in Karlsruhe’s Rhine harbor to the local public transport system hub. The project is expected to cover a length of 500 meters opening directly into the city.
Implementation in Michigan
Meanwhile, Michigan, US, saw the wireless charging infrastructure implemented in the central district to help the Electreon study the use cases on the roads, such as vehicle types, autonomous vehicles, and many others. “We are looking forward to collaborating with departments of transportation, state and municipal agencies, and automotive and mobility industry innovators in Michigan, California, and New York on charging infrastructure that’s vehicle agnostic and can be included in any electric vehicle,” informs Stefan Tongur, the company’s vice president of business development in the U.S.
YouTube: The world’s first Electric Road that charges EVs wirelessly as they drive | The Gotland Pilot
Photo credits: The images used are owned by Electreon and have been provided for press usage.
Source: Press release
