Earlier this week, Sophie-Marie and Vojtech went to Lund to meet the project partner Elonroad, and to participate on the Charging Ahead conference that was co-organized by Elonroad, the Evolution Road project, Innovation Skåne and other partners.
On Monday, we took the opportunity to visit Elonroad’s factory and interview Toby Hörnlein, who is the Sustainability Growth Director (and the new contact person for our project). We asked Toby about Elonroad’s view of sustainable and circular vehicle charging in the future, business models, and barriers which hinder the adoption of decarbonization processes. It was also very cool to see the factory, where you can feel the innovation truly happening, and experience a true startup spirit!
The main conference program took place on Tuesday and Wednesday, with many interesting speakers from research and the industry. For us, the presentation from David Cebon, which showcased the feasibility of battery powered electric vehicles, especially in combination with Electric Road Systems, was very interesting. On a similar note, Jakob Rogstadius (together with co-authors) presented a new, hot off the press report on decarbonization pathways for EU road transport. Some of the results look rather pessimistic – there simply isn’t that much time to replace the freight vehicle fleet until the target year 2035 to reach the decarbonization goals. However, the models clearly show the role of battery powered vehicles and charging. We definitely plan to develop these models to include local energy production and storage!
Presentations on the success of the Norwegian electrification of passenger fleet (did you know that we need roughly 10 quick chargers per electric vehicle?) by Lars Godbolt, Michael Bayer’s inspiring view of the fast(er) changes, and Jan Petterson’s view of the need for electric road systems were also super interesting.
In the evening, there was time to check out the demonstrator of electric road system on a public road in Lund, and to hear about the technical aspects of it from the founder of Elonroad Dan Zethraeus and Mats Alaküla, professor at LTH. It was also great time for some networking and exchanging experiences back at the Elonroad factory in the evening!
In the second day of the conference, there was time for roundtable discussions on several interesting topics. It was a shame that we could participate only on two topics as there was so much that was very interesting for us and our project! We chose “Logistics – the new frontier of e-truck charging” where major European logistics companies shared their views and experiences with charging solutions, electric truck purchases and business models that would enable higher adoption by small haulers. And the discussion on the “Operations and Business models for electric road systems” showed how much to do and develop there still is on the topic.
We would like to thank to Elonroad for being amazing partners and also fantastic conference organizers!
CIRC-S Project Website 