Possibilities for large-scale Electric Road development
In April 2019, Trafikverket, the Swedish Transport Administration, announced that the Smart Road Gotland consortium, led by Electreon AB, a wholly owned subsidiary of Electreon Wireless, won a tender to demonstrate a wireless Electric Road System (wERS) in Sweden. The Smartroad Gotland Project began operations in early 2020 and is a pre-commercial demonstration project of an electrified road in Sweden. Based in the town of Visby on Gotland Island, the project aims to build knowledge and create possibilities for a large-scale development of Electric Roads throughout the country.
The Smartroad Gotland project is one of four Electric Road demonstration projects currently funded by the Swedish Transport Administration in an effort to reach a national target of installing 2,000 km of electrified roads in Sweden by 2030 and achieving net zero emissions by 2045. This project demonstrates how an electric bus and an electric truck can charge from a road while driving in a real-world environment and how wireless charging is a viable option to provide cities with a convenient, cost-efficient, and sustainable way to shift towards an electric future.
Smartroad Gotland results
After implementing the first stretch of the wireless infrastructure in November 2019, the original deployment of this electrified road in Sweden was completed in December 2020. Since then, some key concluding results from the Sweden project include:
- The first electric road charging two heavy duty vehicles, an e-truck and e-bus, simultaneously – a fully electric, 40-ton truck and trailer having successfully conducted tests on 1.65 km (1 mile) of road between the airport and city center of Visby, and an e-bus transporting passengers from the airport to the city center.
- The e-truck drove at speeds reaching 80 km/h while receiving an average wireless power transfer of 100 kW from the electrified roadway.
- In addition to speed tests, Electreon showcased extreme weather and roadway structural integrity tests, highlighting the durability of its system for the roadway
- Enabling the operation of the e-truck on a 210 kWh battery, which is a lot smaller than many proposed battery capacities for e-HGV vehicles.
- Showcasing the maturity and validity of wireless Electric Road Systems as a critical milestone for large-scale, fully commercial pilots in other parts of Sweden, which are estimated at about $3 billion as the global market of long-haul trucks continues to rapidly grow.
Project Details
- Construction start date: November 2019
- Operation start date: Early 2021
- Project status: Complete
- Application: Inter-city long-haulage and a city bus
- Vehicle type: E-bus with a supercapacitor battery and a heavy-duty e-truck with a lithium-Ion battery
- Roadway length: 1.65 km (1-mile) of public road
- PROJECT WEBSITE Smart Road Gotland
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