A6 motorway in Germany to become an inductive ‘e-road’

A test track is being built on the A6 motorway in southeastern Germany to allow electric cars to be charged inductively while driving. The section between Amberg-West and Sulzbach-Rosenberg will be around one kilometre long. Tests are scheduled to begin at the end of July or beginning of August.

This is according to a report by the local publication Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR). According to the report, the corresponding technology will be installed in the direction of Nuremberg. This will take place as part of an upcoming road renewal on a section of 5.7 kilometres near the ‘Oberpfälzer Alb Nord’ service area. However, the actual inductively charging e-road will not be longer than one kilometre.

According to BR, specially prepared electric vehicles will then be able to charge while driving on the A6 motorway from the summer, a first in Bavaria, but not a first in Germany. This is because ElectReon, a technology specialist already active in Germany, is involved in the project and is currently driving forward a number of e-road projects worldwide in parallel.

The core of the approach is the Israeli company’s electric road system (ERS), which utilises inductive coupling between copper coils installed under the road surface and a receiver attached to an electric vehicle. Similar to a wireless phone charger, electricity is transmitted on the road through a magnetic field that is activated when a vehicle equipped with a receiver parks or drives over the road’s own transmitters.

The construction of the test track is embedded in the E|MPOWER research project, which was launched in 2022. The project consortium includes the FAPS Institute at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), the ELSYS Institute at Nuremberg Institute of Technology, Risomat GmbH & Co.KG and VIA IMC GmbH. E|MPOWER is funded by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology and Deutsche Autobahn GmbH, among others.

The E-Road near Amberg is intended to clarify questions about the efficiency of the system and the cost of installation, and those involved want to use the test track to collect a range of scientific data. In the course of the project, the technology is now to be demonstrated on a motorway for the first time in Germany, and, according to earlier information, also implemented using new construction techniques to reduce construction costs and duration.

Bavaria also wants to position itself as a pioneer in inductive charging with an e-road centre. The Fraunhofer Institute IISB recently opened a new technology centre in Hallstadt near Bamberg, which is dedicated to researching contactless electric car charging solutions. After an initial research phase until November 2027, the e-road centre is to be made permanent. The centre is being subsidised by the Bavarian state government with around 7.5 million euros.

br.de (in German)