Economic Viability and Environmental Impact of In-Motion Wireless Power Transfer

In-motion charging of electric vehicles (EVs) using wireless power transfer (WPT) represents an alternative to both traditional internal combustion engine (ICE) transportation and long-range EVs. This paper focuses on understanding the economics, environmental impact, and infrastructure rollout of in-motion WPT applied to the U.S. transportation fleet. This paper represents a novel, large-scale integration of numerous research methodologies previously presented by our research group into a comprehensive study to thoroughly address potential in-motion WPT implementation scenarios using geographically diverse data sets, validated vehicle models, real-world drive cycles, variable vehicle adoption rates, and variable infrastructure deployment rates. By using both in-motion WPT and conventional charging infrastructure, the proposed vehicle and roadway architectures satisfy 97.7% of the sampled 24-h drive cycles, a 22.4% increase over a baseline short-range EV without in-motion charging. Economic results show a national return on investment but economic viability is dramatically impacted by upfront capital costs and technology adoption. An environmental impact assessment shows that total greenhouse gas emissions from light-duty vehicles and Class 8 trucks would be reduced by 29.3 trillion kg CO2-eq. (30.6%) when compared to a business as usual scenario (i.e., a scenario were current overall emissions trends continue) for the first 50 years of technology deployment. These results demonstrate that in-motion charging using WPT presents both economic and environmental benefits when compared to conventional ICE transportation and a long-range EV fleet.