Electric truck charging roadway to undergo testing in Indiana soon

A roadway designed to charge electric semi trucks as they drive will soon undergo testing in Indiana. 

The “Electrified Roadway” is a project started in 2019 by Purdue University and the Indiana Department of Transportation. Crews have been installing electric coils underneath the pavement of US 231 in West Lafayette, Indiana, and are now working to repave the patches they dug out along the highway. 

”Now we’re just going through and we’re covering with the pavement leveling that out and having that almost ready to where it could be drivable in the very near future,” said Blake Dollier with INDOT, reported CBS4Indy.

The project is intended to charge fully loaded commercial vehicles as they drive 65 mph along the highway by using a magnetic field to transfer energy from the coils to a receiver on the semi truck. 

”For a fully loaded semi vehicle, 80,000-pound vehicle going 65 miles an hour,”  said Steve Pakarek, a professor of Electrical Engineering at Purdue University. “You’re talking about 200 kilowatts you have to deliver and that’s a lot of power. Like on the order of 100 homes worth of power that you’re continually delivering.”

”You would place these coils within the roadway and then all of the EVs would reduce their battery size and reduce the range anxiety,” Pekarek said. “We’re trying to deliver the power to the propulsion system and any auxiliaries associated with the vehicle so you can forget the battery. You’ll need a battery to get on the roadway, you’ll need a battery to get off the roadway, but while it’s on the roadway the battery isn’t needed.”

The roadway will be reopened for all traffic in the next few months. Then in the Spring, crews will begin testing the technology with electric semi trucks. 

”What was science fiction 20 years ago is present now,” Pakarek said.