ElectReon plans inductive test road in Italy

ElectReon Wireless, an Israeli company specialising in inductive charging of electric vehicles, will provide its technology to charge two Stellantis vehicles and an Iveco bus while driving in Brescia, Italy, as part of the Arena of the Future project.

The project aims to demonstrate inductive charging of a range of electric vehicles on motorways and toll roads. In addition to ElectReon, Stellantis and Iveco, other participants in the “Arena del Futuro” include ABB, the chemical group Mapei, the storage provider FIAMM Energy Technology and three Italian universities.

In autumn 2020, ElectReon had already signed a letter of intent with the Italian toll road operator Brebemi, according to which an approximately one-kilometre-long test section of the A35 motorway between Brescia and Milan is initially to be equipped with ElectReon’s technology.

The current announcement now states that a 1,050-metre ring road with one megawatt of power is to be built near the Chiari Ovest exit of the A35 motorway. It does not say whether this ring road, which is to form the “arena of the future”, will be built in addition to the one-kilometre section of motorway or instead of the project announced in October.

As part of the project, ElectReon technology will be used by the partner companies and the universities to demonstrate inductive charging in multiple states. It will also test “advanced IoT connectivity technologies” to ensure safety and increase productivity. The tests will also examine “optimisations of road construction” – and the durability of roads when the inductive charging systems are installed.

In Israel, ElectReon has currently prepared two sections of road with its technology: A 20-metre stretch in the Israeli settlement of Beit Yanai on the Mediterranean Sea, where tests with a Renault Zoe were completed in 2019. The other is a 600-metre stretch in Tel Aviv that is the centrepiece of a pilot project with the Dan Bus Company. Incidentally, technical data on the inductive charging solution in Tel Aviv does not emerge from Israeli media reports on the project launch. So it is not known how much energy the electric buses absorb during the 600 metres over the induction coils.

Update 03 December 2021

The construction of the “Arena of the Future” announced in May has been completed, according to ElectReon. On the test track in Brescia, which was built in cooperation with Stellantis, Iveco, the Italian road operator A35 Brebemi-Aleatica and other partners, an Iveco bus and a Fiat 500 will now be charged while driving. For this purpose, charging coils from ElectReon were embedded in the carriageway of the 1,050-metre-long track, which are supplied with a total of 1 MW of electrical power.

The first test and calibration runs have already taken place, and both vehicles were on the road at the same time and were charged in parallel. Both the e-truck and the e-bus have been equipped with an ElectReon receiver on the vehicle side.

According to the Israeli company, the successful demonstration in Brescia is proof of readiness for series production. In the press release, the ElectReon inductive charging technology is described as a “technological pioneer for an immediately implementable, tangible solution for the decarbonisation of the mobility industry”.

businesswire.com, businesswire.com (update)