Sweden's new road powers electric vehicles – what's the environmental impact?
Rick Greenough, De Montfort University Sweden has built the first smart road that will allow electric vehicles to charge as they drive . The eRoadArlanda pilot scheme, which covers two kilometres of road outside Stockholm, is an attempt to solve one of the biggest challenges that the transport industry faces. Namely, how to move freight and people in a way that neither damages the climate through greenhouse gas emissions nor the quality of air through nitrogen oxide pollution . The eRoadArlanda scheme is supposed to extend the range of electric vehicles beyond what was previously possible. Yet as an engineer, I have concerns about the durability of this road. Even more significantly, the cost of the technology and the disruption that building it causes is likely to restrict any mass scale replication. If this solution cannot be widely replicated then it is really no solution at all. Instead, a serious attempt to reduce hazardous emissions should focus on m...