The technology will roll out in Sweden in 2025 on a highway that intersects three major cities.
Sweden is making great progress on completing an ambitious e-motorway by 2025, essentially a stretch of highway that can recharge electric vehicles in motion. The advantages of an electrified road are numerous, as it can negate the need for EVs to stop and clog up charging stations while also allowing more EVs with smaller batteries to travel further without needing to make a stop to be recharged. Studies suggest that the tech can reduce the size of EV batteries by up to 70%, and based on Swedish driving habits, only 25% of roads would need to be rebuilt to see these benefits.
European route E20 is the first of its kind and could set the blueprint for others to follow around the globe. Currently, the project is in the procurement stage, with plans for it to be built by 2025.
Sweden has been working on electrified roads for a couple of years now, with smaller stretches of road being used for testing purposes. Eventually, it aims to expand the road to cover a distance of roughly 1,864 miles.
One big decision that must be made is the charging method for E20, with three current delivery methods on the table. They are a catenary system, a ground-based conductive system, and an inductive system. Still, not all of them can be used for private vehicles like the Tesla Model Y and Volvo XC40 Recharge - both very popular EVs in Sweden.
Conductive charging can be used for private vehicles as it involves the use of a conduction system with a rail. Charging of the vehicle takes place via a stick that makes contact with the rail while the car is in motion.
The Swedish Transport Administration already created the first charging rail in the world on public roads in 2018 along a stretch covering around 1.2 miles. In this implementation, electric trucks can lower an arm which receives power from the electric rail below which has been milled into the asphalt.
The inductive charging system differs in that it uses equipment beneath the road that transfers electricity to a coil in the EV, and this coil then recharges the battery. More limiting is the catenary system with overhead wires, as this can only work with special heavy-duty vehicles like buses or trams.
"We think the electrification solution is the way forward for decarbonizing the transport sector and we are working with a number of solutions," said Jan Pettersson from the Swedish Transport Administration when talking to Euronews Next.
The motorway set out for this world-first project links Hallsberg and Orebro and will intersect three major cities in Sweden: Stockholm, Malmo, and Gothenburg.
While America may not be the first to see a project like this reach fruition on a larger scale, it is also working on its own solutions. In 2021, the Indiana Department of Transport (INDOT) indicated its plans for wireless charging technology to be equipped to a quarter-mile stretch of road as part of a pilot project. In February this year, INDOT tweeted that the laboratory testing phase of the project has been completed, and the next stage is to finalize the design of this quarter-mile stretch of road.
While it will likely be a good few years before these electrified roads begin to ease charging station congestion and improve the range of EVs, the technology holds much potential and we look forward to seeing if Sweden's e-motorway technology will soon reach other major nations in Europe and around the globe.
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