Volvo is planning to outperform its own energy-saving Hyper Buses by building a road that can wirelessly charge city buses in operation.
The company is working with the city of Gothenburg and the Swedish Transport Administration to use a technology called inductive charging and build an electric road that can transfer energy directly from the grid to the battery of a vehicle while the vehicle is passing over that road. The company plans to test out this technology on Gothenburg's public transport.
"Vehicles capable of being charged directly from the road during operation could become the next pioneering step in the development towards reduced environmental impact, and this is fully in line with our vision of becoming the world leader in sustainable transport solutions," says Volvo Group's executive vice president for corporate sustainability and public affairs Niklas Gustavsson in a press release.
"Close cooperation between society and industry is needed for such a development to be possible and we look forward to investigating the possibilities together with the City of Gothenburg," he adds.
Volvo has been providing energy-sipping gas-electricity Hyper Buses, short for Hybrid and Plug-in Extended Range Buses, for several years. The city of Gothenburg already has three of these buses in operation. The next step is to update these buses, which currently take five to eight minutes to recharge at the charging stations, so that they don't have to stop to be recharged. This would reduce the time it takes for charging and increase the distance the buses can travel without running out of power.
Volvo has yet to submit a formal proposal to the Swedish Transport Administration. This will include details on how it plans to construct its vehicle-charging road and develop public transport vehicles suitable for testing.
By 2015, Volvo hopes to finish the construction of ElectriCity, its test road that will span 300 to 500 meters along a bus line between Chalmers and Lindholmen in central Gothenburg.
In 2013, Volvo also announced testing for inductive charging after it had built a quarter-mile road with two power lines attached to the surface. A year before that, it also began testing at a facility just outside Gothenburg, but the company said its current technology did not allow inductive charging for long-distance trucks and buses, and that it still needed to conduct "a great deal of research" before it can roll out its electric roads for public use.
