Electric road systems (ERS)—infrastructure that allows for charging while driving—are currently considered in Sweden for electrifying long-haul trucking. The technology can also charge battery electric passenger vehicles (BEVs). This study utilizes real-world car movement data in Sweden and detailed spatial analysis to explore to what extent ERS could displace stationary charging if it is available for BEVs and the expected benefits. We find that ERS utilization and the minimum battery ranges depend more on visited locations and home locations and less on the annual travel distances of car users. The median battery ranges required by rural residents are 15–18% greater than for urban residents. Our scenarios suggest that a mix of ERS and home-charging would achieve the most significant benefits. ERS with home charging reduces the required battery range by 62–71% in the main scenarios, and the net savings from smaller BEV batteries exceed the cost of ERS. Eliminating all stationary charging is feasible for many but not all vehicles. Utilizing ERS could also significantly reduce peak BEV charging by distributing charging throughout the day. We also find that there is a considerable difference between the maximum possible and minimum needed charging on ERS, which can significantly influence ERS revenues. Future studies can expand to include other modes (e.g., trucks) to provide more holistic assessments of economic benefits and charging needs.

Due to expensiveness of PHEV batteries, the dimensioning of the batteries is very important. We derive the marginally optimal size from a consumer economics perspective and show that a crucial factor for optimal size and profitability is the marginal annual recharging frequency. We apply the analysis to a small set of Swedish vehicle movement data and demonstrate that the resulting optimal battery is highly dependent on the specific movement pattern of the individual car. We conclude that it is now urgent for the continued development, planning, and estimates of proliferation and impact of PHEVs, that statistical data, today mostly lacking, for the movement patterns of individual vehicles are assembled.

An electrification of vehicles can contribute to increased energy efficiency and decreased air pollution in urban environments. The high vehicle costs involved, especially for the batteries, means that careful considerations of the options are needed. We have investigated the optimal design and potential for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) under various viability conditions with the help of a data set for individual vehicle movements from a mid-size Swedish town. In the estimates each car is equipped with a battery cost-optimized in size with respect to the individual car movement pattern and charging options expressed as the minimum break time interval required for considering recharging. The resulting optimal battery sizes are relatively small for lower economic viability, but increase with raised charging options. For high economic competitiveness the optimal sizes are larger, but decrease with better recharging possibilities. The results point to a PHEV design strategy with a small battery in an introductory phase and then an increased size when the economic competitiveness is further enhanced. Still the resulting optimal battery size is highly dependent on the specific movement pattern of the individual car. It is now urgent for the continued development, planning, and estimates of proliferation and impact of electrified vehicles that further statistical data, today mostly lacking, for the movement patterns of individual vehicles in various regions are assembled and utilized.

The ability to regenerate energy when braking is a valuable advantage of hybrid and fully electric vehicles. How much energy that can be regenerated depends mainly on the car driving and the capacity of the driveline. Detailed studies of possibilities for brake energy regeneration in real world driving are needed to better understand the potential gains of car-electrification since test cycles do not take individual driving or elevation into account. This study has analysed the potential for regeneration in Swedish car driving by applying a model for a normalized vehicle to a highly detailed and representative data set of individual car movements for privately driven cars in Sweden. The share of energy at the wheels used for braking was found to range from 12% to 63%, with an average of 30%. Engine braking could however reduce the amount of recoverable energy to about 16%. On average 42% and 89% of the potentially regenerable energy is available below 10 and 40 kW, respectively. Drivers with lower average speed have in general a higher share of the energy at the wheels potentially available for regeneration. This is however not an important factor to determine the total yearly energy/cost savings. Instead the yearly mileage is shown to be a more relevant indicator on total energy savings from regeneration. The results are compared to the NEDC and WLTP test cycles.

An optimization model was developed to estimate the potential for a BEV, when replacing one of the conventional cars, to viably contribute to the performance of the driving in the households. It uses data from 1 to 3 months of simultaneous GPS logging of the movement patterns for both cars in 64 commuting 2-car Swedish households. The results show that the BEV can potentially roughly double the driving and still decrease the unfulfilled driving in the household with a flexible car use strategy compared to a BEV substituting the 2^nd car only, turning the BEV economics into a TCO gain.

The PHEV is an interesting option for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from transport or to increase energy security without losing performance in car operation. However finding an optimal battery size is of great importance for the overall economic and environmental performance of the PHEVs. This study investigates the resulting vehicle design, and fleet composition and performance when optimising the PHEV battery with respect to different objective functions possibly reflecting different actors’ interest: number of PHEVs, cumulative cost savings and share of electric driving respectively under various assumptions concerning policies and costs. A recently available data set of car movements, containing 445 privately driven Swedish cars that have been measured with GPS-equipment for 1-2 months each is utilized to get a representative car fleet. We find that the battery size and fleet performance are heavily influenced by not only the choice of objective function for the optimization but also by its interaction with the cost structure and performance requirement in the transition from an energy efficient fuel-driven car to a PHEV. The effect of different policies may also vary depending on these conditions and may favour various actors’ interests differently. We conclude that these aspects are important to consider both when designing vehicles and when formulating policies for the introduction of PHEVs.