The Swedish Transport Administration, Trafikverket, has announced the team set to construct the world’s ‘first electric road’
The consortium Smart Road Gotland won the final round of the tender with the highest evaluation points.
Electreon AB will lead the electric road project’s next phase to provide vital knowledge of the future potential of dynamic wireless mobile power transfer through this demonstration road system.
This initiative, based on Electreon’s technology, is expected to be the first in the world to charge inductively both an electric truck and a bus while in full motion.
To enable the mission-critical knowledge transfer to the Swedish Transport Administration, the Smart Road Gotland consortium will deploy a fully functional public shuttle service and testbed through a 1.6 km long electric road as part of the total route of 4.1 km between the airport and city centre of Visby on the island of Gotland.
The electric truck will be test-driven by a professional in varied seasonal conditions to ensure that the system is ready for large-scale projects on highways.
As an integral strategic step towards implementing the Swedish government’s national roadmap for electric road systems, the Smart Road Gotland project will create a learning curve for the authority.
After acquiring relevant ERS demonstration results, the Swedish Transport Administration can evaluate the potential for larger scale electric road investments.
Alec Arho-Havrén, CEO/founder Gotland GPe Circuit, said: “For the whole consortium, it’s wonderful news that we have been selected as the top candidate. It is of utmost importance to significantly reduce CO2 emissions within the transport sector.
“To commence with the heavier transports is logical since the biggest emission improvements can be gained where the usage and tonnage is the highest. The future positive impact could be global.”
Jan Pettersson, programme manager at Trafikverket, added: “We, the Swedish Transport Administration, believe that electric roads are an important contribution to reducing CO2 emissions from heavy transportation.
“Demonstrating and evaluating new technical solutions for electric routes is one of our most important steps in our long-term plan for a potential rollout of electrified routes on the heavy road network in Sweden.”
