Stellantis is experimenting with the electric road: soon cars with unlimited autonomy?

New stage for experimental electric road technology, or Electric Road System (ERS): the company ElectReon a formalized this week the launch of a new experiment in Italy, in partnership with Stellantis and Iveco.

Launched near Milan, the “Arena of the Future” is a 1 km long (1 meters) road equipped with ElectReon’s dynamic induction charging technology. An electric Fiat 050 and an adapted Iveco E-way electric bus can recharge there while driving.

The technology is based on the same electromagnetic induction phenomenon as a wireless charger for smartphones, but on the scale of light vehicles and even heavy goods vehicles, and above all adapted to operate in motion. The idea is to recharge vehicles while they are driving, which reduces the capacity of their batteries, and therefore their mass, and therefore improves their energy efficiency.

It will be necessary to ensure that the ecological gains on vehicles are not canceled out by the ecological costs linked to the installation of coils along the roads, and by the probably lower efficiency of wireless charging, a fortiori moving. We can nevertheless hope that the strong pooling will allow economies of scale to be achieved. Unfortunately, ElectReon does not yet answer all of these questions.

Regardless, the electric route is an interesting alternative to ultra-fast charging, battery swapping or hydrogen. Each solution has its advantages and disadvantages, some are complementary, the future will tell us which ones are successful.

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