Electric Road Systems (ERS) – allowing trucks to charge while driving via overhead lines, inductive systems, or rail – are often presented as a promising solution for one of the main bottlenecks in heavy-duty electrification: large battery packs, long charging downtimes, and limited range. In theory, ERS could accelerate the shift to clean regional and urban freight and cut emissions along dense urban corridors.
However, recent research published in Transportation Research shows that the stagnation of ERS deployment in Europe is not due to technical limitations. The core issues are institutional, political, and organisational. Based on 22 expert interviews across eight European countries, the study identifies three major barriers that slow down large-scale implementation.
The first barrier concerns the complexity of politics and coordination. ERS requires major infrastructure investments across multiple road authorities, regions, and even countries. Unlike depot or fast chargers, ERS cannot be rolled out by private actors alone. This makes ERS dependent on long-term public commitment, which remains absent as long as governments prefer technology-neutral policies rather than backing a specific system.
The second barrier concerns the timing of incentives and market structure. Stationary charging solutions have established commercial interests, clear business models, and immediate applicability for urban logistics, distribution, and passenger mobility. ERS, by contrast, has no dominant lobby, no clear market owner, and high entry risks. As a result, subsidies and policy support tend to gravitate toward solutions that can scale quickly, even if they may be less efficient or more expensive in the long run.
The third barrier concerns system compatibility. ERS affects several domains at once: vehicle technologies, energy supply, road design, regulation, interoperability, and standardisation. This requires coordinated planning between governments, grid operators, OEM,s and logistics firms. Current governance of zero-emission mobility is organised mainly around individual vehicles and charging stations, rather than networked infrastructure corridors.
These findings carry important implications for city logistics. Electrifying urban freight cannot be solved solely from the vehicle side. It requires institutional innovation, long-term vision, and coordinated regional corridors connecting ports, cities, and logistics networks. ERS could play a key role here, especially for regional-to-urban freight flows, but only if policy frameworks and responsibilities are redesigned.
The study’s broader message is clear: the transition toward clean urban logistics is not merely a technical challenge, but primarily an institutional one. That makes it harder, but no less necessary.
Also read: Electric Road System on Rotterdam-Antwerp corridor is a viable concept