The electric road system: technical, economic and environmental study carried out in France. Part 2. Economic and environmental aspects

Abstract

This paper evaluates the introduction of an Electric Road System on the French motorway network. The starting assumptions are the size of the network concerned, the size of the truck fleet and the truck traffic measured on this network from counting stations. The size of the necessary electrical infrastructure is calculated on the basis of peak traffic and an economic optimum is sought, including the costs of batteries and infrastructure. It follows that an ERS network applied to the French road network reaches the optimum for a size of about 8,700 km if it is limited to heavy goods vehicles and about 16,900 km if it is open to vans and private vehicles.The results are as follows: (i) costs to carriers are similar to diesel, (ii) decarbonisaation achieves 86% of current emissions, and (iii) the reduction in battery size significantly reduces pressure on critical materials such as nickel.