Germany opens its first electric highway for trucks

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Peter350
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Germany opens its first electric highway for trucks

Post by Peter350 »

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/05/07/tech ... index.html

Interesting idea well worth a look into. Wonder if it can be expanded to cater for all kinds of vehicles and whether something similar can be trialled over here in the UK.
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Re: Germany opens its first electric highway for trucks

Post by Vierwielen »

A very interesting idea. However, one problem for the UK is our high clearance requirements. The standard for UK roads is 5.03 metres as opposed to 4 metres in many Continental countries. Unless there is pan-European agreement on minimum and maximum heights that lorries can expect, it might not be possible for UK lorries to use the Continental systems and vice-versa.
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Euan
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Re: Germany opens its first electric highway for trucks

Post by Euan »

It sounds like quite a clever system, hopefully there will be more of these to come in the next few years. As for the vehicles it could accommodate, I suspect that it would be very difficult for it to be upgraded in a way that would allow it to be used by lower vehicles. Although many cars will soon switch from diesel to electric anyway.
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Andy P
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Re: Germany opens its first electric highway for trucks

Post by Andy P »

I drive along this road quite often, and had observed this being built and wondered what is was for. The signs only refer to "eHighway test route".

The idea is that lorries load their batteries from the overhead wires, and can then drive for a distance on battery power. What isn't clear from what I have read is, if this system is rolled out generally, what proportion of the motorway network would need to be equipped.

I must say I find the infrastructure very ugly (more so than electrified railway lines) and I think it would be regrettable if a high proportion of motorways had this.

Another point that occurs to me is that a high proportion of lorries on German motorways is foreign-registered, so I guess the applicability of the system would either be very limited or require the system to be adopted in many other countries.

With regard to height restrictions, the wires are above lane 1 of a D4M, and that lane is now marked with a height limit of 4 metres. I think there are relatively few vehicles higher than this, but they must presumably travel in lane 2. This might lead to problems when there are high and slow vehicles.
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Re: Germany opens its first electric highway for trucks

Post by fras »

I do wonder why they haven't used the good old trolley pole, as this allows considerable lateral movement without disconnection.
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Re: Germany opens its first electric highway for trucks

Post by Peter350 »

In regards to the overhead wires, I certainly wouldn’t want them to ruin spectacular views on a road like this:

https://goo.gl/maps/URMKdgw3jr68iThj8

Perhaps a better alternative might be to have a scalextric style groove in the carriageway and have vehicles pick up power from there. Avoids the potential height restrictions of having overhead lines, not to mention the catastrophic visual damage they would cause to the landscape.
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Re: Germany opens its first electric highway for trucks

Post by murphaph »

Hopefully battery technology improvements (rapid charging) will make this hideous system redundant before it becomes widespread.
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Re: Germany opens its first electric highway for trucks

Post by Nwallace »

Presumably the pantograph can be connected and disconnected from the wires on the go, where as a pair of trolley poles would need to be connected at a stop.

I've seen buses with pantograph for charging at a hält outside the Hbf in Luxemburg so it's not a huge leap to this, are there any pictures of the infrastructure in place?

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Re: Germany opens its first electric highway for trucks

Post by roadtester »

Nwallace wrote: Fri May 10, 2019 07:54 Presumably the pantograph can be connected and disconnected from the wires on the go, where as a pair of trolley poles would need to be connected at a stop.

I've seen buses with pantograph for charging at a hält outside the Hbf in Luxemburg so it's not a huge leap to this, are there any pictures of the infrastructure in place?

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Here - also video:

https://www.hessenschau.de/wirtschaft/t ... b-100.html

Apparently, the trucks are hybrids and using the overhead wiring for 10 km gives them 60 km worth of charge to their batteries.
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Re: Germany opens its first electric highway for trucks

Post by BeenEverywhere »

Peter350 wrote: Thu May 09, 2019 20:13 In regards to the overhead wires, I certainly wouldn’t want them to ruin spectacular views on a road like this:

https://goo.gl/maps/URMKdgw3jr68iThj8

Perhaps a better alternative might be to have a scalextric style groove in the carriageway and have vehicles pick up power from there. Avoids the potential height restrictions of having overhead lines, not to mention the catastrophic visual damage they would cause to the landscape.
That might be OK for 4 wheeled traffic, but it would be deadly for bikes.
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Re: Germany opens its first electric highway for trucks

Post by Andy P »

roadtester wrote: Fri May 10, 2019 08:49 Apparently, the trucks are hybrids and using the overhead wiring for 10 km gives them 60 km worth of charge to their batteries.
So a full system aiming to allow use of only electric power would require this to be installed on one-seventh of the network, or say one-fifth to allow a margin of safety. That would be horribly ugly.

Also, I guess it might not be suitable for use on D2M, which is still a lot of the German autobahn network.
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Re: Germany opens its first electric highway for trucks

Post by roadtester »

Andy P wrote: Fri May 10, 2019 12:08
roadtester wrote: Fri May 10, 2019 08:49 Apparently, the trucks are hybrids and using the overhead wiring for 10 km gives them 60 km worth of charge to their batteries.
So a full system aiming to allow use of only electric power would require this to be installed on one-seventh of the network, or say one-fifth to allow a margin of safety. That would be horribly ugly.

Also, I guess it might not be suitable for use on D2M, which is still a lot of the German autobahn network.
But traffic isn’t evenly distributed, so I think you could probably get the effect you describe by electrifying a much smaller proportion of the network but concentrating on the busiest bits.

Also, trucks in future are pretty much certain to have more battery capacity than the early models involved in the trial.
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Re: Germany opens its first electric highway for trucks

Post by Vierwielen »

One major difference between the lorry overhead lines and train overhead lines is that each lorry has two pantographs - one for "live" and the other for "neutral" (OK - before anybody corrects me, both lines are probably "live", but at 180 degrees phase difference to each other). For the record, the "neutral" connection for trains is the railway track (I believe).
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Re: Germany opens its first electric highway for trucks

Post by Chris Bertram »

Vierwielen wrote: Fri May 10, 2019 22:04 One major difference between the lorry overhead lines and train overhead lines is that each lorry has two pantographs - one for "live" and the other for "neutral" (OK - before anybody corrects me, both lines are probably "live", but at 180 degrees phase difference to each other). For the record, the "neutral" connection for trains is the railway track (I believe).
"Return through the running rails" is the common terminology, I believe.
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Re: Germany opens its first electric highway for trucks

Post by mikehindsonevans »

Was this not meant to be published on April 1st?
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Re: Germany opens its first electric highway for trucks

Post by Pendlemac »

mikehindsonevans wrote: Sun May 19, 2019 01:04 Was this not meant to be published on April 1st?
No, as it is an actual system that has been trialed in several locations.

Regarding the discussion above about how the wires are engergised, it would seem that they are DC with a feed wire and an earth wire similar to a trolleybus and probably use trolleybus / tram voltages ( 600 - 750v ).

The evidence for this is the following quote from the Simens page here.
The overhead contact lines are supplied with energy from substations equipped with:

Medium voltage switchgear
Power transformers
Rectifiers

Controlled inverters (for feedback of the electric energy generated by the vehicles’ regenerative braking).
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Trolleylorries?

Post by Halmyre »

Swings and roundabouts, apaprt from the coast, how much energy would be expended to develop and construct the infrastructure needed to support this idea?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/stories-5 ... revolution
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Re: Trolleylorries?

Post by avtur »

Halmyre wrote: Thu Oct 31, 2019 08:04 Swings and roundabouts, apaprt from the coast, how much energy would be expended to develop and construct the infrastructure needed to support this idea?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/stories-5 ... revolution
I saw that and thought it was an interesting concept. Any new technology is going to come at a cost both financial and environmental. It is innovative and I think it is important to be open-minded as to how we meet our future needs.

Of course, there is a significant difference between this idea and what we all know as 'trolleybuses' from years gone by. In his new format vehicles also have their own onboard power source and are free to move to and from the overhead power lines, that was not the case with trolleybuses.
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Re: Trolleylorries?

Post by Mark Hewitt »

Same as trolley busses they need two overhead lines. With railways the return is through the rails, obviously such an option isn't available for rubber tyred vehicles, so two wires and two pantographs are required.
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Re: Trolleylorries?

Post by rhyds »

As I mentioned over in the EV thread this could work for the "core" trunk networks (M1, M3-6, M20, M25, A14 etc) but would only really be useful for trunking to big regional centres without some kind of decent range diesel engine on board. Also, the extra weight of the pantograph system would mean less usable payload capacity.
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