The Netherlands must decarbonize long-haul freight on some of the busiest highway corridors in Europe while keeping logistics reliable and costs under control. The most promising electric road systems (ERS) options for heavy-duty freight in the Netherlands are the overhead catenary system (OCS) or in-road inductive charging (IRIC). This thesis evaluates which dynamic charging technology is preferred for deployment on Dutch highways when judged through a stakeholder-weighted, multi-criteria lens. Decarbonizing heavy-duty road transport demands infrastructure choices that are technically robust, economically viable, environmentally responsible, and socially/institutionally legitimate. Because these choices are inherently multi-actor, the analysis explicitly embeds stakeholder priorities into the technology comparison, moving beyond purely techno-economic ranking toward a decision support tool that reflects how Dutch actors actually weigh trade-offs.
The study adopts a Multi-Actor Multi-Criteria Analysis (MAMCA). First, a literature-based indicator framework defines a common evaluation space across four categories, technical, economic, environmental, and social/institutional, covering criteria such as energy efficiency, technology readiness, grid and power integration, safety, deployment speed & constructability, CAPEX per kilometer, economic feasibility, environmental and visual impacts, social acceptance, and interoperability. Second, semi-structured interviews and a Best-Worst Method (BWM) elicitation capture how five stakeholder groups, the road authority, regulatory authority, energy providers, ERS technology providers, and logistics operators, assign technology-specific weights to those criteria for both OCS and IRIC. These weights are aggregated by stakeholder group and combined with normalized baseline performance scores from the literature to produce stakeholder-specific totals and an overall ranking.
Across stakeholder groups, OCS leads IRIC by +0.04 (Road authority), +0.14 (Regulatory authority), +0.20 (Energy provider), +0.08 (ERS technology providers), and +0.57 (Logistics operator), for an overall advantage of +0.20. Due to the only slight difference this points to broad convergence rather than a decisive winner. Both technologies appear viable under current assumptions, and small shifts in a few high-impact factors could change local preferences. Diving into more detail, OCS demonstrates stronger performance on the criteria deployment speed & constructability, grid & power integration, technology readiness, and CAPEX per kilometer, while IRIC’s key preferences lie in lower visual intrusion and perceived social acceptance. Environmental impacts are broadly comparable under dynamic charging assumptions, with differences driven more by implementation context and energy mix than by the transfer technology itself. Second, stakeholder prioritization is not uniform. Authorities and regulators systematically elevate interoperability, permitting, and cross-border alignment; energy providers emphasize grid-fit and CAPEX; logistics operators prioritize constructability and operational practicality; and technology providers prefer grid integration for OCS and economic feasibility for IRIC. These prioritization patterns matter because they amplify precisely those criteria where OCS tends to lead in the Dutch motorway context. Third, when weights and scores are combined, OCS emerges with a clear, though not absolute, aggregate advantage. Profiles that heavily privilege visual impact and interoperability can narrow the gap, but they rarely overturn the overall ranking given the concurrently high importance placed on grid integration, deployment speed & constructability, and cost.
The policy and implementation advice is concrete. For near-term national rollout on Dutch trunk roads, OCS aligns better with the priorities of the most directly responsible public actors and the operational needs of energy and logistics stakeholders. Sequencing early corridors where grid connection architecture is straightforward, construction interfaces are mature, and costs are minimized will maximize early certainty and learning benefits. At the same time, the analysis identifies the conditions under which IRIC could become competitive at corridor scale. Credible evidence of faster, less disruptive deployment and accelerated standardization for inter-operator interoperability will shift the preferences more to IRIC. Targeted pilots that directly test these leverage points would be the highest-value investments for maintaining optionality.
The thesis also clarifies risks and limitations. Results are conditional on the indicator set, the literature-derived baseline scores, and the observed stakeholder weights at the time of study. While sensitivity checks show the overall preference for OCS to be robust, strong shifts in CAPEX assumptions, grid reinforcement costs, or permitting regimes could materially change the ranking. In addition, social acceptance remains locally contingent. Visual impact is a downside for OCS in sensitive landscapes, and inclusive design, corridor selection, and mitigation measures will be decisive for legitimacy.
Furthermore, the thesis advances Electric Road System evaluation by turning qualitative stakeholder views into a transparent, quantitative decision frame for the Dutch highway context. The result is a stakeholder legible, evidence anchored ranking that clarifies which criteria drive the overall preference and under what conditions the ordering could change, providing usable decision support for ministries, road authorities, grid operators, technology suppliers, and logistics firms.
In sum, when evaluated through a stakeholder-weighted multi-criteria framework tailored to Dutch highways, OCS currently scores 2.50 versus 2.30 for IRIC at the overall level. This makes OCS the more favorable near-term option for Dutch roads. The margin is not structural. It could narrow if IRIC can prove faster deployment, deliver credible interoperability, and achieve cost certainty in Dutch corridor conditions. Targeted IRIC pilots that specifically test those levers keep strategic optionality alive. By making the weight-score trade-offs explicit and actor-legible, this thesis provides decision support for ministries, road authorities, grid operators, technology suppliers, and logistics firms.