Charging Up INDOT, Purdue Lead $11M Wireless EV Charging Highway Project

Purdue University engineers testing technology they designed to enable all electric vehicle classes to receive power from the road.Photo byPurdue University photo/Vincent Walter

The Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) is partnering with Purdue University on an $11 million state-funded project to build the United States' first segment of roadway that can charge both heavy-duty and passenger electric vehicles (EVs) as they travel at highway speeds.

Construction began in April on a quarter-mile test bed on U.S. Highway 231/U.S. Highway 52 in West Lafayette and should be completed by May 2025.

The construction contract was awarded to Clinton-based White Construction, and Columbus-based Cummins Inc. is providing the trucks for the project. Cummins has developed a 750kW wireless charging system with Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and integrated it into a Class 8 (tractor-trailer) electric truck for the project.

After completion, the INDOT/Purdue team will use the road segment to test how well a patent-pending system designed by Purdue engineers can provide power to electric heavy-duty vehicles traveling at highway speeds. The goal is to electrify a section of an Indiana interstate in the next four to five years.

Like charging a cellphone

The system basically operates like charging a cellphone on a charger, said Steve Pekarek, Purdue’s Dr. Edmund O. Schweitzer, III Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “We’re doing something similar. The only thing that’s different is the power levels are higher, and you’re going out across a large distance from the roadway to the vehicle.”

The project began in 2018 and has gone through several levels of research and study, including assessing the technical and financial feasibility of electric roadways in Indiana, designing a high-power dynamic wireless power transfer (dWPT) test bed using modeling and simulation techniques, and understanding the interaction between the embedded dWPT system and the pavement structure.

First of its kind

Although Detroit has a quarter-mile stretch of concrete that uses inductive coupling technology to charge EVs as they drive or park, the INDOT/Purdue project is the first to focus on highway use and heavy-duty trucks.

The Purdue-designed wireless charging system is designed to work at power levels much higher than what has been demonstrated in the U.S. so far. By accommodating the higher power needs for heavy-duty vehicles, the design can also support the lower-power needs of other vehicle classes.

Trucks that operate locally and regionally use battery electric vehicles (BEV) that return to their home base every day, and aren’t designed for heavy-duty, long-haul trucking, said Gary Langston, President of the Indiana Motor Truck Association, Indianapolis. “If proven effective, the dWPT system being tested in West Lafayette would address several of the obstacles that currently exist with BEVs, such as truck weight, travel range, lack of charging infrastructure, and battery charge time,” he added.

How it works

In the Purdue wireless charging system, transmitter coils would be installed in specially dedicated lanes underneath normal concrete pavement and send power to receiver coils attached to the underside of a vehicle.

While other wireless EV charging systems also use transmitter and receiver coils, the Purdue-designed coils accommodate a wider power range — larger vehicles wouldn’t need multiple low-power receiver coils on the trailer to charge from the road, which has been proposed to meet the high-power demands. Instead, in the Purdue design, a single receiver coil assembly is placed under the tractor, greatly simplifying the overall system.

Building electrified highways with heavy-duty trucks in mind would maximize greenhouse gas reductions and the economic feasibility of developing infrastructure for EVs.

“As technologies like dWPT continue to advance and obstacles continue to be removed, it’s logical that we will see an increase in the adoption of electric as well as other hybrid alternative fuel combinations, which will help to move closer to a zero-emission goal,” Langston added.

Heavy-duty trucks are one of the biggest sources of greenhouse gas emissions for the U.S. transportation sector because they make up a large portion of interstate traffic. Compared to passenger cars, these trucks also need a lot more fuel so that they can constantly transport everything from the packages we order to groceries.