This Wireless-Charging Road Is More Powerful Than Most Tesla Superchargers

• In-road wireless charging has so far been little more than a science experiment.
• Slow charging speeds and limited real-world availability didn’t make a case against simply stopping at a DC fast charger.
• Now, though, a new stretch of publicly available highway is pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with in-road wireless charging.

The world’s first dynamic induction charging system implemented on a highway with real traffic is now live in France, and it’s pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with in-road wireless charging.

While still in its infancy, the technology implemented by Electreon on a nearly one-mile (1.5 kilometers) stretch of the A10 highway southwest of Paris shows that induction charging while on the move could be a feasible alternative to charging stops, especially for heavy trucks that usually need huge batteries.

Electreon’s wireless charging system

Photo by: Electreon

After conducting several on-site test charges under real traffic conditions, three laboratories from Gustave Eiffel University found that the in-road inductive charging system can safely deliver a peak power of over 300 kilowatts and an average power above 200 kilowatts.

By comparison, the most popular wired DC fast charger in the United States, the Tesla Supercharger V3, is rated at a maximum output of 250 kW. The newer, much rarer Supercharger V4 can currently offer up to 325 kW, but with the right power cabinets, it can actually go up to 500 kW.

Four vehicles are now equipped with the proper hardware to be fast-charged while driving on the A10 highway, including a heavy-duty truck, a utility vehicle, a passenger car and a bus. In other words, this is still a small-scale project, but its potential is quite high, especially for the heavy truck segment.

Big rigs need huge battery packs to provide meaningful driving ranges, and with big batteries come big waiting times while charging. By enabling the trucks to charge while driving, they could theoretically do with smaller batteries, which would reduce the amount of raw materials, specifically rare earths. That said, there’s the issue of the materials that have to be buried in the ground to make an induction charging system like this feasible.

As far as durability is concerned, the teams behind the wirelessly charged piece of the A10 highway in France are adamant that the pavement housing the charging coils can withstand decades of wear and tear. 

“The initial results of the ongoing trials on a section of the A10 motorway confirm the findings of previous studies,” said Nicolas Notebaert, Chief Executive Officer of VINCI Concessions and President of VINCI Autoroutes, the company that led the consortium behind this project. “Deploying this technology on France’s main road networks, in addition to charging stations, will further accelerate the electrification of heavy-vehicle fleets—and thereby reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the freight and logistics sector, which alone accounts for more than 16% of the country’s total emissions”.

While this is not the first in-road wireless charging system in the world, it is the first one deployed on a motorway. Other, smaller projects were deployed in the United States, China, Germany, Norway and Israel, among others.