How can “range anxiety” be addressed when it comes to driving EVs?
Research and testing are ongoing worldwide on the viability or “concrete ‘eRoads’ that would inductively charge EVs as they travel. This inductive charging is wireless and would occur if the vehicle is stationary or moving.
“What is being underlined by the research is the need for the road surface to have long-term durability and minimum maintenance. Both are inherent characteristics of concrete roads,” stated Britpave chairman Joe Quirke in an article in the UK’s Construction Enquirer.
The possibility of making the actual concrete road itself conductive is also being explored.
“Concrete eRoads should have a very significant role to play in helping deliver the widespread adoption of electric vehicles and the removal of reliance on fossil fuels,” concluded Quirke.
Britpave – the British Cementitious Cement Association – is an infrastructure industry association. A recent press release entitled The road ahead should be concrete, included a whole life costs benefit analysis of concrete roads. It stated that the organization believed “it is time for the UK take note of why other countries increasingly prefer concrete pavements over asphalt.”
The release goes on to state: “With traffic in the UK forecast to grow by nearly 50% by 2040, the 40 year long-term, minimum maintenance performance of concrete is increasingly attractive to UK highway authorities especially when those benefits are combined with the reduced whole life costs over a 40 year period compared with the more frequent maintenance and re-construction interventions necessary for other road solutions.”
The release breaks down the results of whole life cost analysis of concrete vs. asphalt. The analysis concluded that over the course of 90 years the concrete option would be 29% less expensive than asphalt.
The concrete industry is one that constantly innovates. ERoads could have the capacity to encourage the adoption of electric vehicles worldwide, helping us drive into a low or zero carbon transport future.