Wireless Charging Roads - Are They Viable?
Wireless charging roads present an innovative and probably necessary alternative to stationary charging.
Watch the video to get more information about electric road systems and their implementation, or, if you prefer, you can read the transcript further below.
Wireless charging roads - Video Transcript
In this video I'll talk about wireless charging roads or electric road systems, as they are also called.
These are roads with tracks on the surface so that drivers can charge while driving.
A lot of research has been made into the usefulness or perhaps necessity of electric road systems and I'll tell you about this later in the video.
The question is: why on earth will electric road systems be needed?
The best alternative, it seems, would be to charge at night when the demand for electricity is low.
There are several reasons why electric road systems may become necessary.
The first is that it's the goal in the EU to ban the sales of new petrol and diesel cars from 2035.
And there are many car owners without dedicated parking spaces where they can install their own chargers so they would have to spend time during the day or in the evening to move their cars to fast chargers and from fast chargers to make it possible to use electric vehicles.
The second reason is that many drivers would lose valuable time at work if they had to charge in stationary chargers. They would have to stop driving during the day and wait beside the vehicles until they are fully charged.
This would mean that more new vehicles would be needed to compensate for the time lost while charging, and it would make electromobility less efficient than present transportation systems.
The third reason is that without electric road systems, only a limited share of truck fleets can be converted to electric drive.
Many lorries are driven almost 24 hours per day. They are used on long haul routes at night and for first and last mile deliveries and pick ups during the day.
If we want to reduce carbon dioxide emissions on a large scale, we need to make it possible to change all vehicles to electric.
Electric road systems are very new innovations and only a small number of companies in the world develop them.
There are three different technologies available:
The first one, and the oldest technology, is the one that relies on pantographs and overhead cables. But these can only be used for lorries and buses.
Then there is the technology based on conductive tracks on the road surface.
There is also the alternative of inductive tracks in the body of the road.
For wireless charging roads to become useful for a large share of vehicles conductive or inductive tracks will have to be used, and thousands of kilometers of electric roads will be necessary in large countries.
Recent research by Jakob Rogstadius at RISE, the Research Institute in Sweden, and the team led by Professor Mats Alaküla at Lund University indicates that electric road systems are likely to be needed for electromobility to become efficient.
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