Sweden opens world’s first electric highway

As a part of their efforts to achieve an oil-free future, Sweden has now officially opened a 2-km long electric highway named e-way, near the city of Gävle in central Sweden. As current electric-motoring technology based on batteries is just good enough to make small passenger cars viable, the Swedish government tied up with Siemens and Scania to build the electric highway in order to power large trucks and buses.

The highway is built by erecting 2-kilometre long overhead electric cables over the slow lane of one of its major highways. Currently, only specially-modified Scania G 360 4X2 9-tonne trucks are able to use the track. The track uses conductor technology developed by Siemens to receive electric power from the overhead cables through a pantograph power collector. The connection and disconnection procedures can be done easily, even when the truck is on the move. This also helps when it overtakes another truck on the lane. The trucks are also powered by a bio-fuel 9.0-litre 360 hp parallel-hybrid powertrain to traverse other non-electric roads.

A pilot study on this new road is being conducted in the town of Sandviken. Magnus Ernström, a project manager for the road, hopes that if everything is favourable, a 200-km road from Gävle to the industrial town of Borlänge will be considered for the project. This will power Sweden’s vision of a fossil fuel free future.