Electric Tri-State? Illinois Tollway looks at embedding charging equipment in I-294

4537 Views 32 Replies 10 Participants Last post by DMC5180, Oct 1, 2018

Tacoma

Discussion Starter · Sep 27, 2018

The Illinois Tollway is examining the possibility of embedding equipment into I-294 that would charge electric vehicles as they drive along the road.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-biz-tollway-electric-charging-20180926-story.html

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wssix99

· #8 · Sep 28, 2018

Steverino said:
However, EV's are consider "Vehicle: Other" (not a regular car IOW) for this system —not that they tell you that anywhere.

Actually, this is not how the cars are considered. The "Other" designation comes from how they sort the Secretary of State license plate types. The IL Secretary of State has hundreds of types (some of them are special vanity types, etc.) and there are too many to put in pull down boxes on the web sites!

EV plates are not considered regular "Passenger Car" plates by the Secretary of State. They are their own thing. When there are enough EV plates so that they outweigh Motorcycles, Disability, Military plates, etc. then we'll get our own "Other - Electric Vehicle" plate type in the systems:

https://www.illinoistollway.com/license-plate-number-tooltip

^ You may notice that EV's may be moving up in numbers within the "Other - None of the above" category as the Electric Vehicle plate is now the example image for the group.

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wssix99

· #9 · Sep 28, 2018

bjrosen said:
It's good that they are looking at this but it's premature. You can't start building this into highways until there is a single world wide standard and that's a long way off.

You may notice that the article mentions that the technology is currently is a study phase with Universities. This project would be a practical test bed as a next phase project; just for a short section of the road.

Tollways should be early adopters for this technology when it comes along because they have an easy mechanism to charge customers for the electricity. (It would be impossible to recover the massive power costs fairly on a public road.)

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wssix99

· #21 · Sep 29, 2018

Steverino said:
The Volt has a gas engine and is not considered as an EV like the Bolt. wssix99 nailed it, the EV license plate makes the Bolt different. So apparently there was a record mismatch in the tollway system. My transponder's "car" designation did not match the EV vehicle license type of "other".

The transponder isn't coded to a plate type. The transponder only corresponds to a vehicle classification, by number of axles. The Tolls are all the same per number of axles, so that's all that matters.

It sounds like your transponder wasn't read once or twice and that you were secondarily video tolled when you went through. When your plate type in the system doesn't match your physical type in real life, the plate doesn't match your account and it gets processed as a violation.

The Volts (and all EV's) have transponder problems and won't have 100% reads like normal cars. So, you'll video toll a lot more in an EV. The Illinois Tollway gives us 5 video tolls a month at the transponder rate (before they kick up to the higher cash rate) to account for these sorts of blips.

The coating in our windshields makes it harder for the tags in the passenger compartment to be read, so there is a Plate Transponder that we can get. (I use one now. I also had the same video toll experience you had.) The Plate Transponders work great in the open road tolling gantries but some of the smaller funnel lanes (and the Skyway) aren't calibrated well for them, so sometimes they will misread and still video toll.

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wssix99

· #29 · Sep 30, 2018

Steverino said:
Maybe it was being video tolled the whole time, I don't know. After a spate of non-read penalties (fixed with a phone call) we now keep it on the glass.

It probably was. The transponder reads aren't accurate unless the transponder is up high in the glass away from the dash.

DMC5180 said:
I also wonder if the Age of the transponder has something to do with it not being read on occasion.

I got a notification letter from the Illinois tollway office a couple years ago, that said, the transponder was due for replacement based on its age and some internal battery timing out.

Yea, there is a Lithium Ion battery inside that wears out over time and the Tollway has us rotate the gear out as that battery expires.

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