Exploring Barriers towards Adoption within Electric Road Systems : A Case Study of the User Perspective

Sammanfattning: In recent years, Electric Road Systems (ERS) has emerged as a potential solution for sustainable road transport. However, early ERS commercialization has turned out to be challenging and it is needed to better understand what drives a user’s decision to adopt ERS. Previous studies have covered the technical aspects of ERS, but there is a gap in the current research about the user perspective regarding interests and barriers that influence ERS adoption. Moreover, prior research has defined the early adopters of ERS to be direct users that operate heavy vehicles on short repetitive routes. However, a problem with this user approach is that some important industry dynamics, which seems to make a significant impact on adoption, is disregarded. Therefore, this exploratory case study takes a wider approach and aims to analyze the barriers that exists for both direct and indirect users in ERS adoption. The study is based on the inductive, wireless ERS technology provided by ElectReon AB. Furthermore, the Swedish Transport Administration pilot project on highway 73 is used as an illustrative case to deepen the analysis and exemplify results. The data is primarily collected from interviews with the defined user types, as well as from interviews with some of Sweden’s leading experts within ERS. The interviews are complemented by written reports within the area of transportation and ERS. The analysis builds on two main user segments within the industry of transportation. The first segment is Passenger Transport, which includes the following two user types: Public bus transport and Commercial bus transport. The second segment is Transportation of Goods, which includes the following user types: Transport buyers, Transport providers, Freight forwarders and Logistic hubs. The results of the study show that the general interests for ERS are simple and mainly include an improved value proposition and profitable investments. However, the barriers are complex and multidimensional, and they originate from dependency in incumbent fuel technologies which creates lock-in effects hindering adoption. The study further shows that wireless ERS may open up for novel business models, which can minimize the experienced barriers for different users. Minimizing efforts for barriers can efficiently be evaluated based on a model with two variables: “risk in adoption” and “industry influence”. The main contribution from this study is that it illuminates the importance of taking a wider user approach and including indirect users and environmental aspects (such as market forces) in the analysis when evaluating ERS adoption.