Railway electrification and wireless power: Geopolitics and regulation

China's swapping boom and Europe's abandoned electric roads

Rail electrification is helped by climate policy but held back by construction cost and stop-start funding. China is scaling up battery swapping, while Europe's electric road projects were cancelled or switched off in 2024-2025; only small inductive trials continue.

Tailwinds

A national safety standard for swap stations was issued in 2021 and in June 2023 a vice minister backed common battery sizes, connectors and protocols. By mid-2026 NIO had over 4,000 stations and CATL over 2,000, and CATL formed a joint venture with Octopus Energy to build lorry swap stations in Europe.⁹²⁰²¹

Coils were fitted on 1.5 km of the A10 in early 2025, with results from live-traffic tests published in October 2025.¹⁴²⁴

DARPA set the distance record in May 2025 and launched a second phase on relays and vertical transmission.⁸

The Railway Industry Association's June 2026 report argues a steady, decade-long electrification programme could cut infrastructure costs by about 30% (range 16 to 37%) and urges restarting Midland Main Line electrification.¹⁸

Headwinds

Trafikverket cancelled procurement for the E20 Hallsberg-Örebro pilot in August 2023 over rising costs, put it on hold in 2024, and the government removed it from the national plan in February 2025, ending it.⁷

All three German eHighway trials (A1 in Schleswig-Holstein, A5 in Hesse and eWayBW in Baden-Württemberg) ended as scheduled at the end of 2024 and the A5 line was switched off; the federal ministry saw no grounds for further testing.¹³

Some UK schemes cost £2 million to £2.5 million per single-track km, against £350,000 to £450,000 for overhead-line-only work in Switzerland and Germany; Great Western estimates rose from about £1 billion (2009, to Swansea) to £2.8 billion (2016, to Cardiff).³

The Railways Bill (introduced November 2025) will bring 17 bodies, including infrastructure manager Network Rail, into Great British Railways, scheduled for 2027 subject to Royal Assent.¹⁹²⁵

Stop-start funding for rail electrification raises costs, because skilled teams disperse between projects. Swapping and in-road charging both depend on agreed standards across carmakers, which China can set centrally but which Europe and the US have not settled.

Sources

1. Electrification Cost Challenge Railway Industry Association (RIA), 2019
2. Electric road E20, Hallsberg-Örebro Trafikverket (Swedish Transport Administration), 2025
3. DARPA program sets distance record for power beaming DARPA, 2025
4. China is betting on battery swaps to tackle EV chargers shortage Rest of World, 2024
5. Stecker an der A5 gezogen: Auch letzter deutscher eHighway ist stillgelegt electrive.net, 2025
6. World's first dynamic wirelessly-charged motorway shows highly promising real-world results Electreon and VINCI Autoroutes (PR Newswire), 2025
7. Electrification Cost Challenge 2.0 Railway Industry Association (RIA), 2026
8. Great British Railways and the public ownership programme UK Department for Transport (GOV.UK), 2026
9. Nio tops 120 million battery swaps as 4,000th swap station goes live CnEVPost, 2026
10. CATL's Choco swap stations top 2,000 as roll-out speeds up CnEVPost, 2026
11. Vinci Autoroutes tests inductive charging while driving electrive, 2025
12. British government outlines key milestones in journey to GBR International Railway Journal, 2026