Britpave calls for concrete e-roads Fuuse and partners develop V2X

Britpave has called for the provision of concrete ‘electric roads’ that charge electric vehicles as they pass over them. E-roads enable vehicle batteries to be charged inductively via wireless systems using magnetic coils installed in the concrete road surface that feed an electric charge to magnetic coils fitted on a vehicle’s undercarriage.

The inadequacies of the UK electric car charging network were underlined by the annual Christmas getaway with queues of vehicles waiting for up to three hours for Tesla superchargers. Britpave, the infrastructure industry association, believes that the problems support the case for a different solution.

Members of the Tesla Owners Club UK took to social media to vent their frustration with the lengthy queues in Hertfordshire, Westmorland, Cumbria and Telford. Up to 40 cars were reported to be queuing for a charger at Westmorland, north west England. The queues happened as millions took to the roads for the Christmas holiday period.

There were 420,000 pure-electric cars on UK roads at the end of February 2022, according to the comparison website Next Green Car. These were served by only 30,290 charging points across Britain, of which 5,494 were rapid chargers.

“The number of electric cars significantly outweighs the number of charging points. As proven by the excessive queues over Christmas, this can result in problems for motorists wanting to ensure that their vehicle batteries are adequately charged for journeys,” said Joe Quirke, chairman of group Britpave.

“We believe that best way forward is the provision of concrete e-roads that charge electric vehicles as they pass over them. The long-term strength and performance of concrete makes it the better option for such roads as they do no need regular maintenance and in hot summers – such as the summer that we have just had – do not melt unlike asphalt roads. Road surface melting could dislodge and compromise the embedded coils.”

EV chargepoint management platform Fuuse and innovators in energy and EV charger manufacturing have been granted almost £200,000 to develop an endto-end V2X (vehicle-to-everything) DC microgrid solution for fleets. The project seeks to provide support for the National Grid as EV uptake continues to accelerate putting rising pressures on energy demand.

The project, already underway, explores the efficient distribution of energy between EV batteries and other site components such as buildings, other vehicles, or local generation sources such as solar panels and wind turbines.

Joining Fuuse are TPS (Turbo Power Systems), providing their Velox ultra rapid electric vehicle charging hardware which uniquely can both charge and discharge vehicle batteries to enable V2X. Whilst fleet electrification specialists, Gridicity, join the consortium to provide smart intelligent forecasting of energy demand and supply. Fuuse will collate these insights and determine where the energy in the EV batteries will be moved from and to.

Powering the testbed on which to prove the capabilities of the new solution, is PNDC (Power Network Distribution Centre) based at the University of Strathclyde.

The grant funding comes as part of the government’s V2X innovation programme, part of a wider Flexible Innovation Programme to deliver a range of smart energy applications.

This phase of the project aims to test the concept in a controlled environment. Future developments will include real world testing with forward thinking fleets.

Launched in 2021, Fuuse is a back-office system for EV chargers, Dr Will Maden, chief operating officer of Fuuse, said: “As momentum for EV uptake accelerates and more pressure mounts on fleets to make the transition, we must focus our efforts on resilience, for not only organisation sites, but the wider Grid. We must enable fleets to transition as responsibly and efficiently as possible.”