EURO 2025 Leeds
Abstract Submission

1920. Charging Ahead: Optimal Location of In-Motion Charging Infrastructure to Electrify Urban Roads in the Rectilinear Plane

Invited abstract in session MC-48: Location and Energy, stream Locational Analysis.

Monday, 12:30-14:00
Room: Parkinson B09

Authors (first author is the speaker)

1. Thomas Byrne
Department of Management Science, University of Strathclyde
2. Yudai Honma
Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo

Abstract

Most experts agree that transportation sector electrification will be vital to tackling climate change. Indeed, if all cars on the road became electric, we could cut almost one-fifth of global emissions. The two widely accepted chief barriers to switching to an electric vehicle (EV) are cost and range anxiety. Recently-developed in-motion charging technologies solve both: by directly and efficiently receiving power while travelling along an 'electric road', battery size and charging time can be saved. This revolutionary technology is being widely heralded as the future of transport. However, it is prohibitively expensive and of little value if not effectively implemented.
Urban environments, with lower average speeds and reduced areas compared to motorways, represent an application with lower investment cost and likely higher utilisation. To this end, we design an optimisation model to identify optimal segments of a general urban transport network to electrify, taking into account the continuous distribution of population and the behaviours of the transport infrastructure's users. In order to maximise the number of EV users of the road network, we exploit classic grid-like urban structures and utilise geometric results to quantify the benefit of electrifying select edges, all while incorporating re-routing behaviours seldom approached in previous studies: we adjust routes in order to pass a petrol station, so why should the same not be true for passing over an electric road?

Keywords

Status: accepted

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