The electric road system transition from a system to a system-of-systems

Abstract

Electric roads have had a pleasant journey through the research landscape but are now about to enter the “valley of death.” The basic technologies for dynamic power transfer from the road to vehicles in motion has been developed through various research projects across the globe, largely supported by public funding. Electric road systems (ERS) will soon be tested on public roads, but is still a long way from constituting a large-scale commercial system. While ERS has gained recognition as a technological solution, few studies address the necessary system transition from a holistic perspective. This article addresses this gap by presenting the state of the art of ERS and examining future use case scenarios and stakeholder implications. The purpose of this article is accordingly to examine how ERS not only constitutes a technical development challenge, but also radically increases technical, business, and systems complexity. This article illustrates how ERS will likely evolve from a system to a system of systems and the likely changes in the business and system architecture occurring during this transformation will be analyzed. Finally, future challenges will be discussed.