Swedish project makes it possible to have more e-cars in rural areas

Mittstråket provides the freedom of choice

Mittstråket, meaning “the middle road”, is a in central Sweden that crosses the country from Sundsvall on the eastern coast to Storlien at the border with Norway, and then goes on to the city of Trondheim in that country.

There is an ongoing project (Ladda i Mittstråket), involving this road stretch, which has the aim of making it truly sustainable and convenient for the users. It does so by ensuring that there will be enough electric vehicle charging points on it.

The implications of that effort can be quite significant given the fact that rural populations tend to eschew electric cars due to the simple fact that the recharging infrastructure is not widespread in sparsely populated regions.

In a country like Sweden, though, which is a leader in terms of ownership of electric cars (33% of registered vehicles in 2020), it would be illogical not to expand such infrastructure.

Reach one’s destination regardless of transport mode

According to the Swedish Transport Administration, we can talk about gaps in a charging infrastructure if there are more than 100 km between fast chargers. That is because older e-car models have a shorter range and would not be able to cover that distance. As of last year, Mittstråket doesn’t have such gaps anymore in any of its sectors in Sweden and Norway.

“The train and the public transportation is good here, but it's sometimes difficult to reach your end destination with public transport,” says Ladda i Mittstråket project manager Henrietta Philp, as quoted on Euronews. “So, you might need a car. We want to give people here equal opportunities to own and use an electric vehicle just as you would anywhere else in Sweden, where it's more populated than here.”

There are 85 charging points planned to serve the more than 200,000 potential drivers on the road, whose Swedish sector has a length of 358 kilometres. The budget for the project is a bit over 800,000 euros – more than half of which comes from the European Cohesion Policy.