New Innovation Project: Translating European ERS Experience to the North American Heavy-Duty Market

The electrification of heavy-duty road transport faces a practical infrastructure challenge. In the United States, road transport contributed 23% of all greenhouse gas emissions in 2022, and emissions are not decreasing. Although passenger EVs and some urban truck and bus segments are growing, the transition for long-haul freight remains constrained by the logistics of charging: in an industry where time is a key cost, relying only on “stop-and-charge” can be impractical.

In the U.S. market, daily energy use is increased by cruise speeds about 20% higher than in Europe, while mandated driver breaks are shorter and less frequent. To maintain current supply-chain velocity with static charging alone, an electric truck may require larger battery packs, very high charging power during breaks, or operational changes, all of which raise Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).

The Pennsylvania Case: A Beachhead for In-Motion Charging

This new bilateral initiative is shifting part of the focus from the vehicle’s onboard energy storage to the shared road infrastructure. The collaboration brings together the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission (PTC), RISE Research Institutes of Sweden, Elonroad and Michael Baker International to assess Electric Road Systems (ERS) on a major U.S. toll way corridor. PTC’s interest in ERS is motivated by that in-motion charging is more compatible with customers’ existing logistics patterns, and substantial economies of scale may reduce the total future infrastructure cost for a toll way operator who must supply charging to its customers.

The collaboration between a road operator, an infrastructure engineering consultancy, an ERS technology provider and a research institute, supported by public data and prior research, enables the project to develop actionable decision support tools for ERS investment planning by PTC and similar toll way operators. A key question in the project is how to assess project risk: as an ERS network becomes more attractive to use the larger it gets, future ERS revenue for PTC will depend in part on subsequent network expansions into neighbouring States. The project will therefore prepare for economic assessments also outside of Pennsylvania. Generalizable decision support tools using approved calculation methods can be a way to overcome the scaling challenges faced when attempting to introduce a new class of infrastructure to the market.

Engineering the Investment Case

Previous simulations of ERS for heavy-duty trucks under European conditions indicate a potential reduction in required battery capacity of up to 70% per vehicle. By providing energy through conductive or inductive interfaces while vehicles are in motion, ERS can address several barriers to electrification: battery cost, payload loss, lost productive time for charging, and the need for substantial electrical grid upgrades to many truck depots and warehouses. This project tests how those effects translate to the Pennsylvania Turnpike context. The project is also the first to assess the pros and cons of installing a conductive rail ERS solution in pre-existing concrete roads.

The project’s expected scientific contributions include methodological advancements in the area of ERS utilization forecasting under network expansion uncertainty, and improved understanding of incentives to drive utilization. Prior research has often focused on long-haul trucks as users of national-scale ERS networks, while a regional road operator like PTC must finance the investment with revenue from other customers.

The project’s work culminates in two practical deliverables:

• An ERS Deployment Handbook: A planning guide for tollway and road operators, covering cost drivers, installation timelines, infrastructure synergies, maintenance coordination, traffic disruption, user adoption, pricing strategies and project risks.
   
• Investment Decision Support: An economic case study and supporting tools to estimate ERS utilization, energy sales, pricing options, geographic synergies and return on investment for staged deployment on toll motorways.

A Strategic Bridge: The Role of Future Mobility

By funding this project, Future Mobility helps Elonroad, a Swedish technology startup with no direct U.S. competitor, engage directly with potential customers in North America. This creates value for Swedish industry by giving Elonroad and RISE access to end-user needs, infrastructure constraints, customer data and investment questions that are difficult to reproduce in domestic studies. 

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