Sometimes inspiration strikes in the most unusual way – and for Elonroad founder Dan Zethraeus, inspiration came from the snow and slush that gather along the highway’s median strip during winter. Zethraeus, a former film director, was commuting between his home in Lund, Sweden to his office in Malmö, and as early as 2012 he wanted to buy an EV – but the cost was prohibitive at the time, and because he lived in an apartment, the charging infrastructure just wasn’t there.
Zethraeus’s idea was that plus and minus posts, not in parallel with one another but instead one after another, could solve EV charging challenges. To confirm his hypothesis, Zethraeus built a prototype using his children’s Lego.
“As Dan was driving to work every day, he thought to himself ‘What if there was something there that could charge my car’ – a bit like the car racing tracks he played with when he was a kid,” explains Karin Ebbinghaus, the chief executive of Elonroad. “We have Lund Technical University right in our backyard, so Dan contacted a professor to discuss his idea. The professor thought there was potential but pointed out that if conductive rails were above ground level, it might be a bit like having a speedbump on a highway, which could make them unpleasant for drivers.”
Zethraeus went to a lumber yard and cut a piece of wood to mimic exactly what the rail would look like, then took the professor to a racetrack and drove over the mock-up rail at various speeds – and he did it with a full coffee cup in the cup holder of the car. When the professor saw how little disturbance there was, he was convinced.
New technology requires new solutions and new mindsets – and one of the biggest challenges for Elonroad was getting people to understand the concept. After the first prototype was built, Zethraeus took part in numerous conferences, trying to explain the concept and how it fulfills a real need in the EV ecosystem, where you would no longer have to follow the traditional ‘fuel up at the gas station’ model to keep your EV charged.
“Stationary charging stations will not be enough when we become a fully electric vehicle society,” explains Ebbinghaus. “They will be part of the larger ecosystem of charging options. And if we look at rural areas, the Elonroad solution will have very positive implications: when you’re in a city or town, you usually have quite a few charging options, but out in the countryside there aren’t as many, so having charging rails on the roads outside the cities will solve a lot of problems in a very simple way.”
And as urban populations continue to grow, cities have to ask themselves if they want to take up more space for parking where an EV could be charged? Or would it be better to use existing infrastructure, such as roads?
“In a city, there are so many use cases that can share the same infrastructure and solution,” says Ebbinghaus. “So, if you put a network of charging lanes, you can charge anything from cars and buses, to taxis and last mile vehicles. You wouldn’t have to build as many pantographs for buses or charging stations for cars – it’s suboptimising the charging infrastructure because you are using one solution to solve the challenges faced by many user groups.”
Elonroad’s electrified road solution can also be a boon for large, long-distance trucks, where battery size is a challenge, as is the amount of time to charge the large batteries that would today be needed to power a large vehicle. In fact, the Swedish government has large trucks as a use case, due to the difficulty in electrifying them. Elonroad would enable them to be charged while they’re operating.
Connecting Elonroad with Tele2 IoT
On a practical level, a device is placed in the car that connects to the conductive rail in the road. There is both a digital and physical connection called a pickup, and there is also an antenna that sends an encrypted signal identifying the vehicle and unlocking the power distribution. The driver is in control of whether or not energy is being picked up, and can set parameters, such as setting when the battery should be charged, among other things. That signal also enables payments, which can be pay-per-use or via a subscription.
“The system also knows how much effect we have in the grid at any moment, which means we can then distribute it to whomever needs it the most. We will know in real-time how many users need charging,” explains Ebbinghaus. “We have a lot of sensors in the road, and we have a lot of processing power to have the safety to unlock the power system. It’s the IoT sensors that allow us to unlock the energy strip in real time. Right now, we’re using 4G, but 5G is going to be even better, both for real-time and for lower latency.”
Elonroad’s embedded IoT sensors are able to gather data on more than just charging – they can also gather data on things like moisture, air quality, temperature, ice and snow – in other words, Elonroad’s solution can make the road smart and gather information that can benefit different stakeholders – and that’s not limited to drivers. Real-time and historical data can be used by municipalities to gauge what is happening in the moment, such as if a road needs to be sanded because it’s covered in ice. That information and data can also help with long-term planning of repair work, upgrades to roads and identifying problem areas, such as: Where is it getting icy? Is water rising? Where is wear and tear most dire? So, while this is a solution for EV charging, its applications are much wider.
As the technology evolves and more innovative ideas come to the fore, electrification will no longer operate in small hubs. Instead, these will cluster and merge as the ecosystem matures – and electrified roads will play a big part in this.
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