A journey into the future: what will the roads of tomorrow look like?

Today, driving in Spain is much more comfortable and safe than it was decades ago.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
04 June 2022 Saturday 21:46
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A journey into the future: what will the roads of tomorrow look like?

Today, driving in Spain is much more comfortable and safe than it was decades ago. This has much to do with the increase in the number of kilometers of motorways and the improvement of both the layout and the road surface, capable today of draining rain or better resisting heat.

The next step in its evolution will come from the hand of new technologies, which will allow us to access all the information on the roads in real time, reuse the asphalts on which we drive or supply more sustainable energy for vehicles.

One of the factors that will most contribute to the improvement of roads is, without a doubt, the deployment of new technologies such as 5G, artificial intelligence or big data, which in a short time -if they are not already doing so- They will be an active part of our trips. The name by which they are known says it all: smart roads.

In just a few years, the roads will be connected to our vehicles, so that they will receive information in their navigation systems about any eventuality on the routes they plan to travel. They will also have sensors installed in the pavement itself, which will report on the traffic situation and will even be capable of detecting possible structural damage to the roads and reporting them to road managers to speed up maintenance work.

Currently, more than 30 million vehicles circulate each year on the more than 165,000 kilometers of the national road network, which implies a considerable wear of the asphalt and forces the administrations to dedicate abundant resources to its maintenance.

For this reason, the priority for the coming years is to extend the useful life of the asphalt and even create pavements capable of self-repairing, as is the case with a solution developed jointly by Repsol and Acciona. The mixture with which they work makes the asphalt practically "heal" itself, thanks to the incorporation of rejuvenating agents, which are released when a small crack occurs. Another of its technological developments even allows the reuse of pavements already damaged by the constant passage of vehicles and inclement weather to manufacture new mixtures, which will help reduce the amount of asphalt that ends up in landfills.

Another option being considered is the use of a material 200 times stronger than steel and, at the same time, lighter than aluminum: graphene. At the end of last year, the UK government announced that this component would be used as a test on a section of the country's A1 highway. Thanks to its characteristics, the roads will allow a smoother and safer driving while prolonging their useful life.

In just a few years, cars and trucks powered by various more sustainable energy sources, such as biofuels, synthetic fuels, hydrogen or electricity, will circulate on our roads. Each of these energy solutions are complementary, the use of one or the other will depend on the user's mobility needs, for example, the distance to be covered.

Biofuels (those produced from raw materials of biological origin) and synthetic fuels or e-fuels (those made from CO2 removed from the atmosphere and renewable hydrogen) "are a real and available solution to reduce emissions immediately, which will be essential to decarbonize all transport sectors, especially those that need to travel long distances," explains Miguel Ángel García Carreño, Manager of Process Development at Repsol Technology Lab. He adds, "its chemical composition is very similar to that of conventional fuels, so they are fully compatible with current vehicles with combustion engines, which avoids having to develop new technologies for vehicles and allows taking advantage of the extensive network of distribution and refueling infrastructures that already exist”.

In the case of electric cars, in the coming years it will be necessary to deploy a wide network of recharging points, with capillarity criteria and in strategic locations, allowing drivers to recharge their batteries in times that are as similar as possible to those for refueling traditional fuels, such as the one that Repsol inaugurated at the beginning of the year on the A-1 as it passes through Venturada, in the Community of Madrid, which has four recharging points of 350 kW each, and where a electric vehicle can recharge its battery in an estimated time of between five and ten minutes.

At the same time as the network of charging points is expanding, the sector is working on the development of innovative solutions, such as the so-called electromagnetic induction technology. It is about burying cables under the asphalt that generate strong electromagnetic fields. These will be received by a component of the vehicles that will convert them into electrical energy.

This technology has been tested in Europe for some time. An example of this is the Swedish proposal, eRoadArlanda, which has been working for a few years on the conversion of roads into power sources for electric vehicles, specifically a two-kilometre stretch between Arlanda airport and Stockholm. Another project is called "Elisa", led by Siemens in Germany, which allows a network of hybrid trucks to connect to a catenary line placed on the highway, in order to extract electrical energy and charge the batteries that propel them.

There's no doubt about it: the journey into the future of roads has long since begun. All these projects confirm that the priority for the coming years will be to create roads that are friendlier to the environment and adapted to the needs of drivers and pedestrians. And it is that, when designing them, we no longer only think about the vehicle: environmental sustainability plays a key role. The objective? Achieve better quality of life for people.