Electrified Road Research Articles

Dynamic Adaptive Charging Network Planning Under Deep Uncertainties

Charging infrastructure is the backbone of electromobility. Due to new charging behaviors and power distribution and charging space constraints, the energy demand and supply patterns of electromobility and the locations of current refueling stations are misaligned. Infrastructure developers (charging point operators, fleet operators, grid operators, vehicle manufacturers, and real-estate developers) need new methodologies and tools that help reduce the cost and risk of investments. To this extent we propose a transport-energy-demand-centric, dynamic adaptive planning approach and a data-driven Spatial Decision Support System (SDSS). In the SDSS, with the help of a realistic digital twin of an electrified road transport system, infrastructure developers can quickly and accurately estimate key performance measures (e.g., charging demand, Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV) enablement) of a candidate charging location or a network of locations under user-specified transport electrification scenarios and constraints and interactively and continuously calibrate and/or expand their network plans as facts about the deep uncertainties about the supply side of transport electrification (i.e., access to grid capacity and real-estate and presence of competition) are gradually discovered/observed. This paper describes the components and the planning support of the SDSS and how these can be used in competitive and collaborative settings. Qualitative user evaluations of the SDSS with 33 stakeholder organizations in commercial discussions and pilots have shown that both transport-energy-demand-centric and dynamic adaptive planning of charging infrastructure planning are useful.

Barriers and enablers: How logistics companies could tackle the transition to electrified road freight transport

Electrifying road freight transport can heavily reduce the sector’s climate impact; however, there exist many uncertainties for making a large-scale transition, especially for logistics companies. In response, the purpose of this article is to identify and describe barriers to transition, but also strategies for how the barriers can be managed. To address the purpose, an interview study was carried out together with two complementary workshops to capture the views of relevant actors. Barriers to electrification are clustered into four separate areas: practical and technological barriers, financial barriers, institutional barriers, and social and cultural barriers. Low cost and high logistics performance are viewed as logistics companies’ competitive advantages, but they are expected to be challenged when making the transition. The current structure of the transport chain also further complicates things: it is transaction-based and risks and benefits can occur in its different parts. This is an issue, since the actor that is forced to take risks is not always the actor that benefits the most. One way to manage this is for actors to form more long-term commitments through collaborations. Moreover, it can be advantageous to start electrifying subsystems that can be described as ‘closed’ and ‘static’, i.e. predictable and easy to control, such as transport between terminals. At the other end of the spectrum, subsystems that are ‘open’ and ‘dynamic’ are the ones that are most difficult to electrify.

Economic Impacts of the Electric Road System Implementation on the Rotterdam–Antwerp Corridor

Electric road systems (ERSs) are a group of technologies that allow powering adequately equipped road transport vehicles with electricity from the road infrastructure while in motorway traffic. They can be categorised into three technology groups: overhead catenary, ground conductive, and ground inductive, depending on the mode of power transfer used. The supplied energy is used for propulsion and for charging the vehicle batteries to be used once the vehicle leaves the electrified road section. Also, another energy source, e.g., diesel, natural gas, or hydrogen, can be used while away from the ERS. This research investigates the potential impacts of implementing the different ERS technologies on the Rotterdam–Antwerp motorway corridor that links the two largest ports in Europe. The aim is to identify which of the routes between the ports is best suited for the implementation of an ERS, whether there are substantial differences in the economic performance of the different ERS technologies, determine what ERS vehicle traffic volumes are required and potentially available for successful implementation, what investment is required to build the system and whether the ERS operator can be profitable, and whether transport operators could operate their trucks on ERS profitability in this corridor setting. The research shows that the route between Rotterdam and Antwerp that runs on motorway E19 is the best to be electrified from an economic standpoint. Our calculations show that the traffic on the Rotterdam–Antwerp corridor is sufficient for economically justifying ERS infrastructure rollout and operation. For transport operators who happen to have specific client bases, e.g., those who usually serve clients from one of the ports along the electrified route, the construction of an ERS on the route could prove to be very lucrative if they adopt the technology early.

Flexible Charging to Energy Saving—Strategies Assessment with Big Data Analysis for PHEVs Private Cars

In road transport, most vehicles today still rely on internal combustion engines. However, these engines have lower efficiency and generate higher pollution levels compared to electric motors. Consequently, there is a growing interest in the transition from conventional vehicles to electric ones. However, the transition to an electrified road transport system is not without challenges. Among these, the impact that electric vehicle charging will have on the electricity grid is of particular concern. This paper analyzes different charging scenarios for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) and proposes charging strategies to minimize their impact on the electricity grid. The analysis is based on a large dataset of trips in urban areas in Italy. The study shows that smart charging of PHEVs can be implemented to minimize the impact on the electricity grid. The implementation of optimized charging strategies can contribute to making PHEVs a valid, eco-sustainable alternative to conventional vehicles while also promoting the stability and efficiency of the electricity grid. The study aims to verify the effectiveness and efficiency of the flexible charging strategy by comparing the common charging operation (first in–first out) with other, less impactful charging schemes.

TECHNO-ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT OF ELECTRIFIED ROAD IN LAEM CHABANG PORT, THAILAND

Increased awareness of decarbonization and high fuel prices have induced a need for a wider deployment of alternative energy sources. Battery-powered electric trucks using an electrified road system offer a promising solution. This paper aims to evaluate the fuel consumption and environmental benefits of a 6 km road in Laem Chabang Port, Thailand, with a prototype system based on conductive charging from below. Battery capacity penetrations were designed for 1258 trucks traveling on weekdays. The annual electricity demand reached 1.608 TWh, and the flexible demand reached 1.65 TWh. The input was Thailand's standard electricity, with one 50 kVA power substation per 0.0016 km<sup>2</sup> and a 22 kV/400-230 V voltage system. Penetration required a capacity of 525 kWh. The findings indicate that fuel consumption was 592.43 TWh, and CO<sub>2</sub> emissions were 51.63 MtCO<sub>2</sub> annually. The electrified road system was evaluated with time series, fixed-effect, and tobit regressions. The time series analysis revealed that CO<sub>2</sub> emissions would be nearly zero by 2060, with an annual 4% increase in Laem Chabang's gross domestic product. A fixed-effect analysis signified the findings with Thailand's recent potential, whereas the tobit regression represented the influence of possible changes. These regressions demonstrated that variations in revenue, oil resources, openness to the sea, and political stability significantly affected CO<sub>2</sub> emissions, although there was no change in the implementation of the electrified road system.

Moving on from a Diesel Mindset—Understanding Enablers and Challenges for Electrifying Road Freight Using Stakeholder Engagement

Achieving net zero by 2050 requires the decarbonisation of road transport. Electrification is recognised as a market-ready solution for certain transport segments, but it still poses a considerable challenge when applied to road freight. Any consensus on the technology choice for road freight electrification has still not been established. Embedding stakeholder input in the approach to address the technology adoption challenge has proven useful in uncovering various perspectives, which can provide useful insights into managing such transitions. This review paper hence took a three-step approach where the findings from the initial step of the literature search were taken up for the second step of stakeholder validation and feedback. The third step involved an analysis of the input gathered and the subsequent literature review to arrive at the conclusions. The outcome from the stakeholder engagement suggests that any specific technology can only support the transition to electrified road freight if enabled by system changes around policy, infrastructure, user behaviour, and the societal setup A follow-up literature review validated the need for a sociotechnical approach to such transitions where system changes are involved. The review also found gaps in the literature when it comes to embedding such sociotechnical approaches to technology adoption for road freight transport.

Theoretical modeling on the temperature-dependent dielectric properties of concrete pavement materials

The variations of concrete pavement temperature will affect the dielectric properties of concrete, which have a substantial influence on the wireless power transfer efficiency of concrete electrified road and non-destructive accuracy of ground-penetrating radar (GPR). In order to elucidate and describe the variations in the dielectric properties of concrete with temperature, the dielectric properties of aggregates (limestone), six types of cement mortar (matrix) and concrete (two types of Portland Cement: P.O 32.5 and P.O 42.5; three W/C ratios: 0.4, 0.5 and 0.6) within the temperature of −30 ℃ to 60 ℃ were acquired via a network analyzer platform and an open-ended coaxial probe kit. The results show that the dielectric constants of limestone, cement mortar and concrete increase with varying degrees when temperature rises. Furthermore, strong linear agreement between the dielectric constants of limestone, cement mortar and concrete and temperature is identified, indicating that the variations in the dielectric properties of concrete with temperature should be taken into consideration. Meanwhile, a temperature-dependent dielectric model of concrete is established by introducing the dielectric-temperature coefficients so as to quantify the influence of temperature on the dielectric properties of concrete. Compared with the traditional models (Brown model, CRIM model, Looyenga model, and Rayleigh model), the proposed model has the highest precision and is less sensitive to temperature variations. Therefore, the proposed model is more suitable for predicting the dielectric properties of concrete at different temperatures, which is essential for the development of future electrified road and promoting non-destructive accuracy of GPR equipment.

Vehicle and charging requirements for an electrified road freight system demonstrator in the UK

The UK has set into law a target reduction of greenhouse houses of 78% by 2035 and 100% by 2050. Heavy Goods Vehicles (HGVs) represent 16% of UK road transport emissions are one of the ‘difficult-to-decarbonise’ sectors owing to their large mass and range requirements. An Electric Road System (ERS) with overhead charging wires presents an attractive solution to rapidly decarbonise HGVs at minimal cost and without the need for megawatt-scale batteries. In this work, we investigate some of the technical requirements for a proposed UK ERS demonstrator comprising 25 km of ERS on the M180 motorway in North Lincolnshire, including battery sizes and static charging infrastructure. A range of theoretical journey scenarios were considered, using simulated journeys and a detailed dynamic model of a 44 t ERS electric lorry. The results indicate the need for three vehicle types: a 150 kWh ‘small-battery’ ERS vehicle, a 500 kWh ‘medium-battery’ ERS vehicle, and a 300 kWh battery variant with a range extender for journeys with significant off-ERS driving requirements during the demonstrator.

Comparative structural performance assessment of electrified road systems

ABSTRACT An intrinsic integration of different new advances into the practical roads, including the electrified road system, could be an important feature of a future smart road. One of the most important tasks in feasibility analysis of implementing electrified road (eRoad) systems into the practice is to quantitatively assess pavement performance after an integration of the functional units and, consequentially, the influences to the sustainability potential of road electrification. In this study, by means of using a simulation tool based on Finite Element (FE) method, some preliminary insights into the structural performance of several promising eRoad systems are obtained. These analyses provide some guidance support for eRoad technological design and deliver the crucial boundary inputs to the life cycle sustainability assessment of using these systems.

Electrified powertrain sizing for vehicle fleets of car makers considering total ownership costs and CO2 emission legislation scenarios

Developing effective computer-aided engineering (CAE) tools is currently a compelling need for fostering industrialization and widespread diffusion of electrified road vehicles. A CAE methodology is proposed in this paper for sizing electrified road vehicle powertrains at an overall car maker vehicle fleet level by considering different evaluation criteria involving retail price, compliance with current and future regulatory CO2 emission requirements, drivability, and real-world operative costs. A case study is performed on a group of different vehicle models embedding the same electrified powertrain, and different vehicle electrification levels are assessed. Plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) is identified as the most robust propulsion system architecture solution considering different sizing targets and 2030 oriented regulatory scenarios. This suggests that, from the perspective of a car maker, investing in research and development and in upgrade of current vehicle production facilities to propose highly electrified vehicles in the market can be a more strategic and successful approach than a conservative strategy which would restrain the economic investments and limit the overall electrification level of all vehicle models. The considerably higher retail price that users are required to pay when purchasing a fleet of plug-in HEVs may in fact be paid off and eventually reveal beneficial in a long term given the avoidance of paying a regulatory CO2 sanction and the consistent reduction in the monthly operative costs in terms of fuel and electricity. Vehicle designers can implement the presented CAE methodology for assessing electrified vehicle sizing options at the overall car maker level based on realistic use case scenarios and different potential CO2 emission regulation scenarios.

An electrified road to climate goals

An electrified road to climate goals

Computationally efficient evaluation of fuel and electrical energy economy of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles with smooth driving constraints

Advanced computer-aided engineering tools are urgently needed to foster the development of electrified road vehicles that would enable abating fuel consumption and pollutant emissions of the transport sector. Concerning plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs), implementing an energy management strategy that can rapidly estimate near-optimal powertrain control trajectories while effectively dealing with broaded battery state-of-charge (SOC) window utilization and smooth HEV driving requirements still needs extensive development. To overcome the highlighted drawback, this paper introduces a formulation of the slope-weighted energy-based rapid control analysis (SERCA) algorithm which can rapidly identify near-optimal plug-in HEV control trajectories while complying with SOC boundaries and limiting the number of thermal engine activations and gear shifts. The HEV numerical model is introduced first, followed by formulating the optimal plug-in HEV control problem with smooth driving constraints and describing the dedicated SERCA based control approach. A performed case study demonstrates that SERCA can identify smooth driving constrained near-optimal HEV control trajectories for a 1.5 hours-long real-world driving mission within two minutes on a desktop computer, while a global optimal control approach such as dynamic programming (DP) is found to require more than 10 hours to perform the same task. On the other hand, compared with the global optimal reference provided by DP, the increase in estimated plug-in HEV operative cost in terms of fuel and electrical energy consumption associated to SERCA is always contained within few percentage points. The proposed methodology can accelerate HEV powertrain design and on-board supervisory controller development procedures.

Resilience assessment of electrified road networks subject to charging station failures

AbstractThe number of electric vehicles (EVs) and charging facilities is expected to increase significantly in the near future, further coupling the existing transportation system with the power system. This may bring new stresses and risks to such a system of systems. This paper presents a mathematical framework to analyze the resilience of an electrified road network (ERN) subject to potential failures of its supporting fast‐charging stations (FCSs). Within this framework, a novel linear optimization model is proposed for the first time to solve the system optimal dynamic traffic assignment problem of ERN. The characteristics considered in the modeling framework include the location, capacity, and charging speed of FCSs, as well as the driving range, charging time, and state of charge (SoC) of EVs. The linear model is proposed based on the cell transmission model. It is used as the first‐stage model to assign the traffic under normal FCS operations. A second‐stage model is, then, extended to minimize the total travel time after the stochastic occurrence of FCS failures, that is, in the failure and recovery phases. Two metrics are considered to quantify the ERN performance and the impacts of FCS failures. A numerical example is studied to illustrate the usefulness of the proposed framework for analyzing ERN resilience. The results show that deploying FCSs near the highway entrances and maintaining their operation are relevant factors to enhance the system's resilience. The analysis can provide guidelines to the system operators for effective management of the ERN operation and identify resilience‐critical FCSs for system resilience improvement.

Commercial Viability Assessment and Planning of Safety-Critical Embedded SW of Electrified Road Vehicles

<div class="section abstract"><div class="htmlview paragraph">Recent extraordinary technological progress in the field of high-voltage-batteries has led an evolution in the automotive industry, resulting in vehicle manufacturers to shift from conventional powertrains towards electric ones. However, electrified road vehicles are amazingly complex. Today, the number of operations for a modern electric vehicle grew from millions to billions per second. This is mainly fueled by the electrification and safety requirements in addition to critical core functionalities. This emphasizes the importance of software development cost, effort, and production planning in the automotive industry. In this paper, in the framework of EU funded H2020 OBELICS project, a <i>detailed</i>-COCOMO approach is proposed for a manually coded safety-critical embedded SW for an electric vehicle not only to plan the project well in advance but also to assess its commercial viability using quantifiable cost metrics to make the process more objective and repeatable. In this context, a case study is given for a battery-management software using an algorithmic model. The case-study has demonstrated not only the planning requirements but also the impact of project type on effort and time estimation in each phase of the software lifecycle. The results have shown that inaccurate software project type estimation can lead an error of up to 16% in effort and 19% in development time according to the phase. It also shows that reliability, database size and complexity are the major contributors of the total time, effort and hence of the cost. The results have also demonstrated the impact of model-based design and automated code generation tools on planning for different phases of the V-cycle briefly.</div></div>

Guest Editorial Introduction to the Special Section on More Electric Vehicles

The articles in this special section focus on electric vehicles. In order to face the energy transition challenge, the transport sector should electrify more and more vehicles. The 2016 transport report of the International Energy Agency indicated that, from several scenarios, the number of electrified road vehicles has to move from 1 Million to 100 Millions in only 15 years to keep the global warming under +2 °C. The electrified vehicles can be classified in pure Electric Vehicle (EV, supplied by a battery but also by the electrical grid), Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV, combination of electric motors and thermal engine), and Fuel Cell Vehicle (FCV, with H2 as energy source). These disruptive technologies thus require fast development to face this challenge.

Multi-objective optimal computer-aided engineering of hydraulic brake systems for electrified road vehicles

Electrification of road vehicle powertrains involves significant re-design and re-sizing of foundation brakes. Both the usage and the size of hydraulic brake systems can particularly be reduced thanks to the contribution of regenerative braking torque supplied by electric motors, thus reducing cost and weight. In this work, a multi-objective optimal computer-aided engineering (CAE) methodology is proposed that allows designing hydraulic brake systems for electrified road vehicles. The achievement of requirements imposed by braking maneuvers concerning safety standards for brake systems represents a feasibility constraint for the design candidates within the proposed CAE workflow. A particle swarm optimisation (PSO) algorithm allows efficiently exploring the design space. Minimising the overall size of the hydraulic brake system and maximising the electrical energy recovered in the battery on average in everyday driving conditions represent the optimisation targets retained. A case study considering a battery electric vehicle (BEV) powertrain layout suggests the effectiveness and the flexibility of the developed CAE methodology in promptly identifying and assessing sub-optimal design alternatives for both front-wheel drive (FWD) and rear-wheel drive (RWD) arrangements. Furthermore, compared with the RWD option, the FWD powertrain layout appears considerably favorable for a BEV in terms of electrical energy recovering capability during braking.

Active Shielding Applied to an Electrified Road in a Dynamic Wireless Power Transfer (WPT) System

An active coil system is proposed to shield the magnetic field produced by a dynamic wireless power transfer (WPT) system used to power electric vehicles (EVs) in motion. The considered dynamic WPT is based on an electrified road with many short-track pads. A sophisticated mathematical procedure is developed to optimize the design of the active coils configuration and their excitation. By the proposed approach, the resulting magnetic field is compliant with the reference levels (RLs) of the ICNIRP (International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection) 2010 Guidelines inside the cabin of EVs and on the side of the electrified road.

The role of transport electrification in global climate change mitigation scenarios

Electrification is widely considered an attractive solution for reducing the oil dependency and environmental impact of road transportation. Many countries have been establishing increasingly stringent and ambitious targets in support of transport electrification. We conducted scenario simulations to depict the role of transport electrification in climate change mitigation and how the transport sector would interact with the energy-supply sector. The results showed that transport electrification without the replacement of fossil-fuel power plants leads to the unfortunate result of increasing emissions instead of achieving a low-carbon transition. While transport electrification alone would not contribute to climate change mitigation, it is interesting to note that switching to electrified road transport under the sustainable shared socioeconomic pathways permitted an optimistic outlook for a low-carbon transition, even in the absence of a decarbonized power sector. Another interesting finding was that the stringent penetration of electric vehicles can reduce the mitigation cost generated by the 2 °C climate stabilization target, implying a positive impact for transport policies on the economic system. With technological innovations such as electrified road transport, climate change mitigation does not have to occur at the expense of economic growth. Because a transport electrification policy closely interacts with energy and economic systems, transport planners, economists, and energy policymakers need to work together to propose policy schemes that consider a cross-sectoral balance for a green sustainable future.

Technoecological analysis of energy carriers for long‐haul transportation

AbstractLong‐haul transportation demand is predicted to increase in the future, resulting in higher carbon dioxide emissions. Different drivetrain technologies, such as hybrid or battery electric vehicles, electrified roads, liquefied natural gas and hydrogen, might offer solutions to this problem. To assess their ecological and economic impact, these concepts were simulated including a weight and cost model to estimate the total cost of ownership. An evolutionary algorithm optimizes each vehicle to find a concept specific optimal solution. A model calculates the minimum investment in infrastructure required to meet the energy demand for each concept. A well‐to‐wheel analysis takes into account upstream and on‐road carbon dioxide emissions, to compare fully electric vehicles with conventional combustion engines. Investment in new infrastructure is the biggest drawback of electrified road concepts, although they offer low CO2 emissions. The diesel hybrid is the best compromise between carbon reduction and costs.

Life Cycle Assessment of an On-Road Dynamic Charging Infrastructure

On road dynamic charging represents a possible solution for the electrification of the transport sector and eventually, for its decarbonisation. However, only a few studies have evaluated the environmental impact of this technology. A detailed life cycle assessment (LCA) of charging infrastructure is missing. This study is a life cycle assessment of the construction and maintenance of an electrified road (e-road) equipped with dynamic wireless power transfer technology (DWPT). The data from an e-road tested in a test site in Susa (Italy) have been adapted for motorway applications. The results show the relevance of wireless power transfer components compared to traditional components and materials. The wireless power transfer (WPT) component production in fact accounts for more than 70% of the impacts in the climate change category, even though it represents less than 1% weight. Maintenance is the phase with the highest impact due to the structural features of the e-road. However, there is considerable uncertainty about this value which still requires further refinement when more data from e-road monitoring are available.