**1. Introduction**

There is a drive to increase the pace of electrification of the vehicle fleet in response to global and national policy objectives [1,2]. Improvements in technology, user education, new business models, etc., are all supporting the rapid transition to electric vehicle technology. The challenge is that the road transport system is far from a homogenous entity. Those sectors of the road transport ecosystem that have high energy requirements and/or high use intensity are negatively impacted by the transition to electrification—whilst battery technology is progressing rapidly, the amount of energy that can be stored is still limited compared to existing fuel types [3]. Hence, it is increasingly being recognised that innovation in the charging infrastructure will be the key enabler towards wider electrification. Electric road systems (ERSs) that allow charging on the move, thereby overcoming the inherent limitations of the battery as an energy storage medium, are one innovation.

**Citation:** Gadgil, S.; Ekambaram, K.; Davies, H.; Jones, A.; Birrell, S. Determining the Social, Economic, Political and Technical Factors Significant to the Success of Dynamic Wireless Charging Systems through a Process of Stakeholder Engagement. *Energies* **2022**, *15*, 930. https:// doi.org/10.3390/en15030930

Academic Editor: Adel El-Shahat

Received: 7 December 2021 Accepted: 25 January 2022 Published: 27 January 2022

**Publisher's Note:** MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

**Copyright:** © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

Electric road systems is a term that covers a broad range of solutions, including catenary systems, conductive tracks and inductive tracks. Whilst there is an advantage to these systems, their role in a transport system is unclear—the current focus of the research activity is responding to the technical challenges and whether they supplant or complement existing solutions or establish new, yet to be identified niches is an underresearched area. What is clear is that concurrent developments in static charging are reducing vehicle downtime during recharging, whilst developments in battery technology and a reduction in cost are both contributing to improvements in vehicle uptime, thereby negating the need for ERS or, more appropriately, limiting its market potential. To be successful, an ERS will need to provide a valuable contribution to the current vehicle charging ecosystem. This value will be based not only on the technology, but on how that technology meets the stakeholder requirements across a broad range of criteria that may include targeting a specific cost-point, increasing convenience or meeting other, yet to be determined, utility functions.

The purpose of the research reported in this paper is to determine the factors that would contribute to the success of an ERS, specifically a dynamic inductive charging system from a social-technical perspective—as these systems have a wider market reach compared to alternative ERS solutions [4] and is an under-researched area based on the literature. The approach adopted to achieve this was to engage with the stakeholder community within the UK. The following sections provide: a background to the challenge associated with road transport electrification and a basis for the research question (Sections 1 and 2); the approach adopted in this research (Section 3); the results (Section 4); and the interpretation of those results and what they may mean for inductive charging system development (Section 5). This is the first stakeholder engagement of its kind undertaken in the UK that brings together viewpoints of a veritable and diverse group of attendees.
