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Germany is opening its first electric highway for trucks
- fouronnes3 7y agoSounds pretty obvious when you look at it. I wonder why it hasn't happened earlier.
- fijal 7y agoIt did: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleybus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleybus
- NikkiA 7y agoEh, not really, there's a gulf of inventions involving better pantograph technology, efficient and compact hybrid power trains, sensors and self-driving capability (the trucks will need some form of self 'lane' keeping to stay connected to the power source) and so on that makes the two barely comparable other than at a very cosmetic level.
- _visgean 7y agoMore relevant wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleytruck https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleytruck
- ChuckNorris89 7y agoSo basically they reinvented the trolleybuss[1] that's been around for over 100 years and still popular in some European cities by putting a tram pantograph[2] on top and moving them on highways. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleybus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleybus [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tram https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tram
- chewz 7y agoExactly. Trolleybus had been popular in my city when I was a child. Then declared obstacles and replaced with oridinary buses. Time to bring trolleybus back instead of EVs that as any individual cars have no place in a city.
- mysterydip 7y agoIs there a such thing as a cargo trolleybus, or are they strictly for passengers? Maybe such a thing could be useful in cities?
- dredmorbius 7y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleytruck https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleytruck
- martin_a 7y agoHead over to Solingen, they still have some there. ;-)
- sergiosgc 7y ago> (...) as any individual cars have no place in a city. That's one view. The other is that cities are too dense. There is no reason, in the era of fast digital communications, to pack humans so densely that we are discussing the right to use an 8m² space in the city for personal use. It's an attack on the symptom rather than an attack on the cause.
- mgbmtl 7y agoWhat's the maximum density? I live in Montreal, which is a medium-sized city, not particularly dense, but cars don't scale as well as humans. The city has become gridlocked, noisy and dangerous, with roads full of potholes no matter how much money we throw at the problem.
- sergiosgc 7y agoI'm not a city planning expert, so I have no idea. It's a fun problem, though: From Wikipedia, Montreal seems to have a lower density than my home city (Porto), at 4k/km² vs 7k/km², but higher total urban population (3.5M vs 1.5M). Porto has very decent traffic (rush hour lasts 2h, entry/exit times peak at 30min). It's either the total population that is causing stress in Montreal, or traffic planning. Porto did a very thorough change in traffic in the 90s, to great effect. Outer rings to avoid passing traffic going into the city, an inner traffic distribution ring, channels to have traffic avoid the old city center (centuries old, poor fit for auto traffic).
- denzil_correa 7y agoBerlin ran the first experimental Trolleybus in the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromote
- _Codemonkeyism 7y agoFrom the article "In English language use, the Kontaktwagen was later named the "trolley", giving the trolley car and trolley bus their names."
- hn23 7y agoNot exactly. A trolleybuss will not run at 90km/h.
- mantas 7y agoNor do trucks in the city. Put trolleybus on a highway and it could do 90km/h.
- jessriedel 7y agoDo you know of any existing system of trolleybuses running at highway speeds? Equating the tech here is like equating trams with long-distance trains.
- mantas 7y agoWell, it's city transport so they're installed in cities. But I don't see any technical issues to install them on highways if it proved to be cost-effective. My city got a significant trolleybus network. It's on slow streets only because that's where public transit stops are. But from technical perspective, there's nothing stopping from putting them on a highway. The biggest issue is tight intersections downtown. They go painfully slow at those. Straight line? No problem at all and they can safely floor it. And boy is there a difference between flooring a trolley and a diesel bus...
- jessriedel 7y agoWithout evidence, I'm not at all convinced by your claim that there is no technical issues to doubling the speed and handling heavy freight. There is a reason trains are different than trams.
- mantas 7y agoJust like there's some difference between trains, high speed trains and freight trains, there would be some differences between trolleys and freight-trolleys or high speed trolleys. But the fundamental design is +/- the same.
- yitchelle 7y agoDon't think it ever went away in Germany. Solingen, a German city close to where I live, have been running trolleybuses for many years now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleybuses_in_Solingen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleybuses_in_Solingen
- badpun 7y agoTrolleybuses are operating in a couple Polish cities as well. IMO they’re great - clean like a tram (which are very widespread in Poland), but make less noise and vibrations (as they ride on rubber, not steel) and don’t require the tracks. Also, one tram’s failure causes entire line to shut down, which is not the case with trolleybuses. I really like them.
- qbaqbaqba 7y agoPutting batteries in trolleybuses could help mitigate this problem.
- badpun 7y agoTrolleybusses DON'T have that problem - they can easily pass another failed trolleybuss. Having said that, there are trolleybusses with batteries already (operating in Gdynia, Poland for example) - they're being used to service routes which are not 100% electrified.
- gumby 7y agoStill big in SF. The differences of this proposal are the distances and speeds, and that I assume the trucks are multimode (so can use electric on the Autobahn and then ICE elsewhere.
- SiempreViernes 7y agoYeah, the article states that these are hybrid trucks.
- jessriedel 7y agoTrolleybus cannot operate at highway speeds or handle detachable trailers.
- johannes1234321 7y agoA problem they are solving is that this requires a closed electric circuit. Trams solve that with a pantograph and steel wheels on steel rails. Trolley busses use two collectors tied to the independent overhead lines. This system uses two pantographs with a control system pulling them back when he truck leaves the lane and pushes them up when entering the lane. Doing that on highway speeds is a bit more complicated.
- jlj 7y agoSeattle has had them for half a century or longer too.
- mariushn 7y agoUnfortunately, some still look at immediate costs instead of considering long-term health benefits (and cost savings) due to lower pollution: Doubts have been raised about the cost-benefit ratio of the pilot project. Micheal Kraft, vice president of the Hessian Motor Trade Association, considers the technology, which is already used in Sweden, to be uneconomical.
- gridlockd 7y agoThe doubts are entirely warranted. Health effects are externalities, so unless the government puts a price on it, they have no impact on whether something is economical or not. If something is uneconomical, it simply cannot work unless it is subsidized and then the question is whether there isn't a better use for that money. Cost-Benefit is always relevant. If you just care about the health effects, subsidizing gas-powered vehicles may be more cost efficient.
- fluffything 7y ago> If something is uneconomical, it simply cannot work unless it is subsidized Or alternatively, everything else is made worse. Raise taxes on Diesel, raise taxes on non-hybrid and non-electric trucks, forbid non-electric trucks from autobahns, etc. If you are a government, you don't have to make this solution better, you can just make all other solutions worse.
- mariushn 7y agoThis makes sense. Thanks :)
- Mrdarknezz 7y agoWell since Germany uses coalpower, it will make the environmental gain pretty much non-existent.
- matteuan 7y agoI don't understand how they could justify this investment. Aren't railways cheaper and more efficient anyway?
- tpetry 7y agoYou can think of politics handing over a lot of money to only a few big companies for a research project. Its nothing more than that ;)
- elaus 7y agoI don't think this is meant as a replacement for long-distance transports (where trains and barges are already well established) but for the "last mile" where you need to transport only a few goods to varying destinations (but along an existing highway).
- matteuan 7y agoIt looks like the "last mile" problem is not solved if they have this infrastucture only on highways. Probably this project makes sense with large batteries on-board(e.g. Tesla semi).
- geff82 7y agoThey have a combustion engine on board that powers the truck when not driving on the highway.
- flohofwoe 7y agoIn Germany you're never more than a few kilometers away from the next Autobahn: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autobahn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autobahn Driving the "first and last" mile on diesel or battery and everything inbetween with electricity from the overhead wire makes a lot of sense IMHO, at least in Germany and countries with similar infrastructure.
- NikkiA 7y agoRailways are great for bulk transport of goods, but road trucking excels at smaller loads with finer-grained destination selection. The railway equivalent to what these trucks facilitate would be wagon-load freight, which is largely considered impractical in europe[0] and generally lost out to road trucking post war[1]. To explain why this isn't necessarily the case in america [0], it's important to understand that america didn't have a huge rebuilding effort post-war [1] that relocated industry away from the rail lines that had been servicing them for a hundred years. Post-war europe did have that rebuilding effort, and it saw a lot of medium industry spread out as the costs to remain in denser populated areas near rail hubs increase. Thus road networks became the feeders for these industries rather than proximity to rail freight depots and rail spurs. Maintaining wagon-load rail delivery in that environment became much more expensive as a result.
- reacharavindh 7y agoA few questions come to mind. Can this solution be scaled to higher speeds? (Yes, electric trains reach higher speeds with similar top mounted tech. But, they run on dedicated rails) What about failure of a line? Could people in cars be electrocuted?
- llukas 7y agoTrucks have 90kph speed limit.
- blackdogie 7y agoIf these cables could be used to recharge and power trucks then you wouldn’t need total coverage if they were all electric.
- vinay427 7y agoThis is already being tested and used for buses in cities, where it makes even more sense due to shorter distances on mostly predictable routes.
- dredmorbius 7y agoRight, and gravity can be creatively applied as well. Short-range (100-1000m) off-grid capability, or unpowered downhill segments (relying on regenerative braking to battery storage) can further reduce infrastructure needs. There are battery-powered truck schemes relying on empty uphill returns for quarry and forestry applications. Effectively the load itself is the potential energy source and charges batteries via regenerative braking. Clever, but of limited application.
- PinguTS 7y agoWhich actually isn't that kind of a news. Because the first such thing where deployed in Sweden in 2016.[1] Sweden even has a second prototype project right now, which uses electric rails which can be used by trucks AND cars.[2] [1] https://www.scania.com/group/en/worlds-first-electric-road-opens-in-sweden/ https://www.scania.com/group/en/worlds-first-electric-road-o... [2] https://www.freightwaves.com/news/technology/sweden-gets-the-worlds-first-road-that-recharges-electric-trucks-as-they-move-over-it https://www.freightwaves.com/news/technology/sweden-gets-the...
- _Codemonkeyism 7y agoImplemented by Scania (owned by Volkswagen) and Siemens. The same are now the main partners behind the one in Germany.
- touristtam 7y agoWhen did Scania (and Saab presumably) ownership changed?
- alkonaut 7y agoSaab-Scania (70's-90's) was split into Scania (trucks) and Saab Automobile. Scania maintained independent for a long while but is now owned by VW. Saab Automobile was bought by GM (90's-2000's), who completely ruined the company, sold it for pennies, and now it's bankrupt.
- _Codemonkeyism 7y agohttps://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/05/13/volkswagen-wins-enough-shares-to-take-full-control-of-scania/ https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/05/13/volkswagen-wins-enou...
- dredmorbius 7y agoThey date to the early 20th century, ~1918. It's a sound concept.
- t4ko 7y agohttps://new.siemens.com/global/en/products/mobility/road-solutions/electromobility/ehighway.html https://new.siemens.com/global/en/products/mobility/road-sol... For those wondering about not electrified sections, trucks equipped with the system use hybrid drives. There are some points that would need more explanation for me: - I don't see any billing system described here. According to their page this system cut in half the energy consumption so there is still a significant electricity consumption that will be paid somehow. - What's the durability of the truck attachment and the cables ? Cable replacement/maintenance would mean blocking at least one lane for a significant amount of time so I hope it's not a frequent operation. More specific to Germany, I really don't want to sound like I am against EV but it's something I genuinely wonder about : Say this system becomes popular and tens of thousands of trucks start sucking electricity out of the grid, the electricity demand will skyrocket. Is Germany going to raise the electricity prices to import or build clean plants or just restart a few coal plant ?
- biggerfisch 7y agoIn regards to billing, it wouldn't surprise me if it was a combination of strict regulations/registrations about efficiency and then semi-simple toll roads. If you know how much a given truck consumes and the distance it travels, that might be close enough math to not need more detail. I could also see a potential factor of registered load mass having an effect too, but that should be possible to include. Germany also already has high electricity prices compared to a lot of the world, but I doubt this would be a rapidly adopted thing that is going to cause a massive price spike
- dunefox 7y agoIf you want to have EV on these roads, pay a fee.
- PinguTS 7y agoThis is a prototype. The billing will be added later, when it is deployed for real. That is the same with billing at public charging stations for electric vehicles. In the past, you basically got the charge free of charge. The billing, if there was any, was more about the parking. That was to encourage to build up a charging network. But now, new charging stations are regulated by the calibration rules, like every by law calibrated weighing device you find in shops. That means they now measure the charge and this will be billed. The requirements are strict, because everything as to be reliably recorded, so the proof would stand in court. That makes those systems expansive. That means electric charging at public stations seems to be more expansive than fueling your ICE.
- gridlockd 7y ago> Another benefit is a sharp reduction in emissions of CO2... Yeah... no. Half of the German electricity is coal-based, so electric vehicles in Germany are worse in terms of CO2 emissions than Diesel-based vehicles: https://news.slashdot.org/story/19/04/27/1842245/electric-vehicles-in-germany-emit-more-co2-than-diesel-ones-study-shows https://news.slashdot.org/story/19/04/27/1842245/electric-ve... Combined with the total stop of nuclear energy and the unsolved problem of storing/distributing renewable energy, it's going to stay that way for a while.
- marak830 7y agoDoesn't Germany import a fair bit from France(who is oversupplied from their nuclear reactors). I may be wrong I heard about that a while ago.
- imtringued 7y agoThe imports/exports are balanced.
- xhgdvjky 7y agoThe nuclear fear is annoying, but this is still a step in the right direction
- cmutel 7y agoThe cited study is not peer reviewed, nor does it provide any supplementary data. Simply put, as it is not reproducible, it is not science. The best studies will be completely open about their assumptions, data sources, approximations, and uncertainties. They generally report (and I find similar conclusions in my research) that in most places where people are buying EVs, given the uncertainties in our supply chain models, they are at par with hybrid gasoline or natural gas cars. And it is difficult to construct consistent scenarios where the electricity grid does not get cleaner over the lifetime of an EV built today and used for 15 years. A good starting point when exploring these calculations is the GREET model: https://greet.es.anl.gov/ https://greet.es.anl.gov/.
- 7y ago
- learc83 7y agoThere's a Civil Engineering professor at Oklahoma State University who's pushing a similar concept to improve America's infrastructure. It's called the Autonomous Trucking Corridor. https://youtu.be/_ev6hIQYKYY https://youtu.be/_ev6hIQYKYY
- wink 7y agoI apologize on behalf of our government that is enthralled by the automotive lobby.
- GhostVII 7y agoIt seems like it would be to expensive to build and maintain this kind of cabling over a significant portion of the highway, but it would be interesting to have it over smaller sections so trucks can re-charge without stopping.
- jessriedel 7y agoNaively, the ability to re-charge without stopping seems of limited value. Given predictable routes and the existing network of specialized stops for trucks, I expect that battery swapping and overnight charging of trucks is sufficient, and does not require maintaining expensive overhead wiring infrastructure stretching over miles. Just consider what is going to require more hardware: a single battery swap station, or miles and miles of overhead wiring necessary to recharge a truck battery given known limits to battery charging speeds.
- Reason077 7y agoBattery swapping is an inefficient use of resources. Batteries are expensive assets and make up the bulk of the cost of an electric truck. You want to have all your batteries inside trucks, working as much as possible, not sitting around stored at swap stations waiting to be used. Fast charging infrastructure beats battery swapping, and recharge times aren’t really an issue. In Europe, truck drivers are required to take breaks every 4.5 hours anyway.
- jessriedel 7y ago> You want to have all your batteries inside trucks, working as much as possible, not sitting around stored at swap stations waiting to be used. Batteries don't sit at swap stations just waiting to be used, they sit there charging. (The big difference is that the vehicle, which is also an expensive asset, doesn't have to be attached to them while doing this.) Stations will have the minimum number of batteries on hand to ensure there is always one available to swap in. Insofar as you need extra capacity to handle fluctations in usage, leading to charged batteries sitting around, you have a a strictly worse problem if the batteries are permanently attached to vehicles (since vehicle demand fluctuations don't go away, and you have the additional problem that you can't remove batteries from vehicles that aren't going to be used for a while). Another way to see this is that swappable batteries is just an extra ability; you can always charge the battery attached to the vehicle if you want. If you have a link to a technical argument for what you're trying to gesture at, I'd love to see it, but the argument you've given doesn't hold water. Arguments relating to the cost of the swapping infrastructure are at least plausible. > and recharge times aren’t really an issue. In Europe, truck drivers are required to take breaks every 4.5 hours anyway. In that case, there is no point to the overhead charging system discussed in the OP article.
- greendestiny_re 7y agoUltimately, self-driving vehicles require maintenance on the road, meaning a human riding along; if the self-driving capability fails, the human will take over the wheel. Logistics companies want to minimize maintenance costs, meaning the self-driving truck ends up just a regular truck, except the driver now needs to have a PhD in electrical engineering to do maintenance. Self-driving vehicles don't seem scalable.
- _visgean 7y agoDoes the article even mention self driving vehicles?
- bdamm 7y agoEh, the human won't be for maintenance, that's a solvable problem. Truck drivers do basic stuff just because they're there to do it, but logistics companies can replace brakes on a schedule too. No, the main reason for having a human along will be as a security guard. These trucks are going to be vulnerable to piracy without a hired gun.
- dmortin 7y ago> Ultimately, self-driving vehicles require maintenance on the road, meaning a human riding along; if the self-driving capability fails, the human will take over the wheel. Maybe in the first several years. After that the technology will mature and maintenance won't be needed that often. And if there is a problem the truck can stop at the roadside, like in case of a failure today, and call for help. I guess logistics companies will keep teams on the road which can respond quickly if a self driving truck has problems.
- Digit-Al 7y agoI wonder how many miles you have to drive one of these new trucks before you offset the carbon used to make it rather than continuing to use the old diesel truck?