France has launched its first highway capable of charging electric vehicles while they drive. On a 1.5-kilometer stretch of the A10, near Angervilliers, southwest of Paris, VINCI Autoroutes and a consortium of partners have begun real-world tests of an inductive charging system touted as an innovation that should complement the charging infrastructure landscape.
Developed in partnership with Israeli tech company Electreon, VINCI Construction, Gustave Eiffel University, and Hutchinson, the ‘Charge as You Drive’ project embeds copper coils beneath the asphalt surface. These coils transmit electricity wirelessly to vehicles equipped with a compatible receiver, allowing them to recharge while in motion.
Live trials
After two years of lab development and road-surface durability testing, the project has moved into live trials involving four vehicle types: a heavy truck, a utility van, a passenger car, and a bus.
Preliminary results are impressive. Independent testing by Gustave Eiffel University shows the system delivering a steady 200 kW and peaking above 300 kW, figures comparable to some of the fastest stationary DC chargers.
According to VINCI Autoroutes, such power levels could enable heavy-duty fleets to operate more efficiently while reducing emissions from freight transport.
“This is a pivotal moment in the global development of electric roads,” said Oren Ezer, Electreon’s CEO. “The system’s outstanding performance, demonstrated through the project and verified by independent laboratories in France, shows that our technology is the only one capable of delivering dynamic vehicle charging with such power and reliability.”
Technically demanding
The company added that the platform exceeds all French regulatory standards and could scale to thousands of kilometers of electrified roads across Europe in the coming years.
Because energy transfer occurs continuously as vehicles move, batteries can be smaller and lighter, reducing manufacturing emissions and reducing dependence on lithium and cobalt. This should translate into lower operating costs, greater truck payload capacity, and reduced downtime. And it effectively kills range anxiety, the biggest hurdle for EV adoption.
From Sweden to Belgium
The A10 project builds on Electreon’s earlier city-scale pilots in Sweden and Italy, but is the first to operate on a live highway with regular traffic. Similar trials are under development in Germany and Israel, though none yet match France’s scale or power levels.
Outside France, several countries are actively piloting ‘electric road’ systems that charge vehicles while in motion. In Sweden, Trafikverket has tested various technologies — overhead wires, in-road rails, and inductive coils — to electrify a stretch of the E20 highway called ‘Elväget’. However, this stretch is not open to general traffic.
In Belgium, Flanders Make conducted a trial from 2010 to 2013 on inductive road charging with Van Hool buses. It concluded that the technology could be as efficient as plugged charging. However, no live project was planned as a follow-up.
The reason is apparent. Induction roads are costly to build. According to different sources, prices can range from 2 to 6 million euros per kilometer. In comparison, a fast-charging station costs 150,000 to 200,000 euros. For induction highways to become a reality, scale will have to drive down the upfront cost.
