Seen from the outside, it looks like any other street. Asphalt, lanes, sidewalks, low buildings, Detroit traffic flowing without much ceremony. The difference is underneath, hidden where we usually imagine only pipes, concrete and eternal maintenance: copper coils installed under the pavement, capable of transferring energy to an electric vehicle as it passes over that stretch of roadway. We are on 14th Street, in the Corktown neighborhood, next to Michigan Central, the former large train station that has now become a district dedicated to mobility and innovation. Here, since November 2023, the Michigan Department of Transportation, the city of Detroit and Electreon have turned on what MDOT calls the first US public stretch of road with wireless charging for electric vehicles.
The stretch measures a quarter of a mile, so just over 400 meters, and runs on 14th Street between Marantette and Dalzelle Streets. The technology is induction: under the asphalt there are coils connected to the electricity grid; There must be a compatible receiver on the vehicle. When the authorized vehicle passes over the active segment, the energy is transferred through a magnetic field and reaches the battery. The same system can also work when stationary, in static mode, for example in equipped car parks near the Michigan Central Station.
Under the asphalt
The promise is elegant, almost too elegant: eliminate part of the dependence on the charging station, reduce stops, help electric vehicles that always take the same route. To understand it without getting caught up in science fiction, it is best to imagine a shuttle, a city bus, a delivery van. Vehicles that often return on the same routes, pass through the same points, stop in predictable areas. In that case, some electrified stretch can become a kind of widespread, short, repeated supply, inserted into daily work.
The Detroit system, in fact, was born as a test in a real environment, with real traffic, real weather, real diversions and all those hassles that separate a clean laboratory from an in-service American road. Michigan Central lists a shuttle for transporting people and a vehicle for delivering packages among the first use cases. MDOT talks about data collection, real-time monitoring and testing on a Ford E-Transit shuttle, dubbed Ellie, equipped with the necessary receiver.
In the report published in September 2024, the shuttle traveled 202 miles, approximately 325 kilometers, in 38.1 operational hours. In that month the system transferred 101.5 kWh of energy without wired charging, with 7.43 total hours of wireless charging and zero minutes of system downtime declared in the period analyzed. The tests lasted 11 days, with technical refinement activities, driver training and some public demonstrations.
The data should be read for what it is: a first operational result on a small, controlled experiment, with a prepared vehicle. No cover miracles. But the technical fact is there: the van received energy from the road while it was moving and while it was parked on the static lay-bys. In the September report, the system worked even with a day of light rain and temperatures between 67 and 88 degrees Fahrenheit, or about 19-31 °C; MDOT and Electreon report negligible weather impact in those conditions, adding that monitoring must continue with more varied climate scenarios.
The road is used by fleets
The most interesting point, for now, concerns less the private motorist and more the fleets. Any electric car, purchased today, passes on that road like any other road. To receive energy you must have the compatible kit on board. This is where dynamic wireless charging shows its most credible use: buses, shuttles, delivery vans, company vehicles, all vehicles with predictable routes and downtime to reduce.
Michigan also announced a partnership in 2024 with Electreon and Xos to integrate the technology into an Xos Stepvan electric van and install stationary wireless charging at a UPS facility in Detroit. The stated aim is to test the value of cable-free charging for commercial vehicles, especially in busy depots and last mile logistics.
In practice, the Detroit road functions as a test bed. It helps to understand how much energy is really transferred, how much the alignment between vehicle and coils weighs, how much it is worth electrifying only some strategic points of a route, how much it costs to maintain such a network under the asphalt and how much it can hold up over time. Electreon claims that, after 18 months of operation, the project has demonstrated continuous charging and reliable performance in urban traffic, with the 14th Street stretch and static areas used by the Ellie shuttle even in cold, hot and everyday traffic.
How close it is to us
For Italy, similar technology would make sense especially where the route is stable: electric bus lines, airport shuttles, port vehicles, urban logistics, industrial areas, perhaps some local public transport routes. Thinking of electrifying kilometers and kilometers of road network open to all, however, immediately means entering into a difficult discussion: construction sites, costs, technical standards, interoperability between different vehicles, maintenance, safety, management of the electricity grid.
Wireless charging on the road, therefore, should be taken for what it is today: a real technology, working in some pilot contexts, still far from being a universal solution. It has its own logic if it helps vehicles that travel all day and waste time at the charging stations. It makes much less sense if it is told as a magic wand for every motorist.
In Detroit, meanwhile, the future passes under the wheels of a blue van, on a stretch of road just over four blocks long. The scene makes less noise than an express column on the motorway. But something really lights up down there.
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