Electric road system technologies in Sweden : Gaining experience from research and demo facilities

Electric Road System (ERS) is a technology concept that has the potential to heavily reduce the fossil fuel dependency in the transport system. ERS is defined by electric power transfer from the road to the vehicle while the vehicle is in motion through rail, overhead-line, and wireless solutions. The basic technologies for power transfer from the road to vehicles in motion have been developed through various research projects across the globe. However, electric road systems had never been demonstrated for heavy-duty vehicles on the public road until the Swedish pre-commercial procurement. The first ERS in the world was inaugurated in 2016 and since then significant amounts of experience regarding building, operating and maintaining ERS has been gathered. The main conclusion is that ERS works, it is possible to transfer electric energy from the road to a vehicle in motion. However, additional verification is needed before any ERS is fully mature.CollERS: Swedish-German Research Collaboration on Electric Road System