Electrifying vehicles is seen by many as a possible solution to reduce environmental emissions and the dependence on fossil fuel. Unfortunately, most environmentally friendly energy storage systems, such as batteries, have less energy density compared to fossil fuel, which will have a negative impact on the vehicle range. An alternative would be to continuously transfer energy from the road to the vehicle both for propulsion and charging. A development of an electrified road system (ERS) between cities would mean that most of the route could be driven on electricity from the road and the remaining distance can be driven on energy from potentially smaller batteries optimized for city routes.

This is a first report in the Slide-in project where the final objective is to evaluate the technology to conductively transfer energy from the road to the vehicle based on cost, efficiency and feasibility.

The project partners are: Volvo GTT, Scania CV, Alstom, Vattenfall, The Swedish Transport Administration, Projektengagemang (Svenska Elvägar AB), Lund University, KTH Royal Institute of Technology and Chalmers