World’s first permanent vehicle-charging electric road to be built in Sweden

NordenBladet — Sweden’s highway network is set to build the world’s first permanent electric road in the country by 2025, which will allow electric vehicles to charge as they drive.

According to a report by World Highways, the electric road is to be built in Örebro county, roughly 100km west of Stockholm.

The aim of the road is to encourage the use of electric trucks across the two-lane E20 highway between Hallsberg and Örebro, which stretches to 21km. The road was chosen due to the amount of freight transported between northern and southern Sweden across it.

The decision to build the road came after several pilot projects to assess whether electric roads would be able to charge electric vehicles.

One of these pilot projects took place in the Swedish city, Lund, in June 2020. This project was developed by a partnership between the Swedish company Evolution Road and Lund University that was able to transmit 300kW worth of power to a vehicle through a retractable pick-up that drags along a metal rail embedded in the road.