Electrification of roads: Opportunities and challenges

• A historical overview of the technology development towards the electrification of road is presented.
• A review of the Inductive Power Transfer technology and the corresponding pilot efforts is given.
• The challenges over the infrastructural aspects of eRoads are discussed in details.
• The significance of environmental performance of eRoad infrastructure is emphasized.

The Electrical Vehicle (EV) has become a potential solution for enhancing the sustainability of our road transportation, in view of the environmental impacts traditional vehicles have regarding emissions and use of fossil fuel dependence. However, the widespread use of EVs is still restrained by the energy storage technologies, and the electrification of road transportation is still in its early stages. This paper focuses on the technical aspects related to the ‘electrification of roads’ (called ‘eRoads’) infrastructure that aims to diminish the limitations for using EVs. A historical overview of the technology development towards the electrification of road transportation is presented, along with an overview of prospective technologies for implementing an eRoad charging infrastructure. Of these, the Inductive Power Transfer (IPT) technology is examined in further details. The main objective of this paper is to explore the potential knowledge gaps that need to be filled for a successful integration of IPT technology within actual road infrastructure. As such, this paper can be used as an overview of the current state-of-the-art of eRoad infrastructure and also as guidance towards future research directions in this domain.