The Rise of Smart Road Furniture

There’s a very useful feature buried in the roads of Kashiwa, Japan. The city, a sort of proving ground for emerging assisted-driving technologies, has charging coils inside the pavement located under traffic lights.

Battery-electric vehicles equipped with experimental charging technology draw power from the coils as they idle waiting for the lights to change from red. The charging coils are an in-progress experimental program to judge whether such enhanced infrastructure would be beneficial enough for adoption by the world’s municipalities. The program is slated to run until March 2025.

It’s reflective of a wider reappraisal of the potential of road furniture, until very recently considered to be a static (and hardly exciting or useful) element of the driving experience. Theoretically, those boring highway signs, road markers and traffic lights could dramatically enhance it if wired with the right kinds of assistive technology. That’s happening throughout the world but only sporadically. Also, when municipalities develop so-called “smart infrastructure,” their priorities might not necessarily be on the road.

Arne Assman, chief strategy officer of connected device software developer 1NCE, says: “The key rationale of many projects is most often to use smart things to remotely detect anomalies or malfunctions, enabling municipalities to take timely action and extend the lifespan of critical infrastructure. We see this with multiple related use cases, such as utilities and infrastructure monitoring, smart grids, intelligent lighting solutions, pest control and an array of other applications.”

While he isn’t including any examples related to automobiles, we’re living in the 21^st century, and we depend on our vehicles for transportation and commerce more than ever. Accommodating the auto power technology of the moment – BEVs – is a necessity and, if not a priority now, is very likely to become one in the future. Devising well-considered and efficient uses for smart road furniture can have enormous benefits for all types of municipalities.

Using Kashiwa-style red light charging as an example, Jarred Knecht, president of high-voltage wire harness manufacturer ProEV, says such a technology is “Ideal for densely populated cities facing space constraints. With numerous condos and high-rises, finding room for charging stations becomes a challenge. Red-light charging thrives in bustling city traffic, providing a clever solution to the infrastructure hurdle.” Of course, no technology is a perfect fit for every location on the globe. Knecht points out that more thinly populated locations might not be suitable for smart furniture solutions.

Again using red light charging as an example, these areas typically have more available and developable land, thus can easily accommodate sufficient dedicated charging facilities for BEVs. Also, the standard dwellings in such places are houses and other single-family structures, as opposed to the apartments and condominiums predominant in cities. Most houses have parking areas and many are wired for home charging. This also obviates the need for a buried charging system, say, or other solutions that ease the operation and traffic flow of large numbers of vehicles.

Costs, of course, are a consideration as well. Even a relatively well-off municipality might balk at the expense and the disruption of wiring roads, signs and other pieces of infrastructure to aid the operation of next-generation cars. What often happens when a government, either national or local, takes on such pricey projects is that it boosts related revenue. Time-honored ways of doing this involve raising charges such as road tolls and auto registration fees. To understate the case, these rarely sit well with drivers (particularly drivers who vote).

To their credit, certain governments are well aware of this need for funding and are making efforts to help. One massive example is the sprawling $1 trillion infrastructure development bill passed into law in the U.S. in mid-2021. This calls for $500 million in grants over five years for projects covering assisted and (ultimately) self-driving technology and smart infrastructure, plus related solutions. While $500 million spread throughout the massive country and funding a loosely defined range of solutions is hardly enough to smarten all American road infrastructure, it can potentially provide a spark to wider development and implementation if channeled prudently to the right recipients.

And what about funding from automakers, many of which are used to devoting piles of capital to envelope-pushing technology? Well, the immediate priorities of these companies often lie elsewhere. “For the next five to 10 years, the OEMs are laser-focused on getting their vehicles from initial build to production,” says Knecht. “That alone is a monumental challenge.” While these entities are aware of how such solutions can help their businesses, Knecht contends “at this moment, smart infrastructures are not a main priority for carmakers."

So, in the most likely scenario, the development of embedded street charging and the like will occur slowly and in piecemeal fashion, even in countries eagerly embracing next-generation vehicle development. Yet progress, as ever, is probably inevitable and positive change is (eventually) on the horizon. Assman concludes, “From street lights to the shareconomy, the more objects get connected, the more we’ll find these smart solutions turn to clever ones.”