Surprise: it’s on an Autobahn.
05.12.19 in Transportation
Germany is joining the ranks of those countries betting on “electric highways” to foster eco-friendly trucking. The country has started real-world tests of an eHighway system on a 3.1-mile stretch of the Autobahn between Frankfurt and Darmstadt, with an electric-diesel hybrid truck merging into everyday traffic while it received power from overhead cables to keep it from using its combustion engine. Earlier tests in the country relied on either slow nighttime tests or the safety of an unused military airfield.
The very first eHighway launched in Sweden in 2016. The concept here is the same — the trucks use pantographs (the pickps on their roofs) to latch on to the overhead cables and draw electricity. Trucks can feed electricity into the grid when they brake, making the system particularly useful if there’s ever a jam.
The system won’t have a major impact for a while. Just five trucks will run the electrified stretch each day where roughly 10 percent of the road’s 135,000 daily vehicles are heavy trucks. That reduced emissions footprint could scale up as more trucks support the system, though, and could encourage trucking companies to go electric knowing that their cargo haulers could drive longer on a charge.
Germany is joining the ranks of those countries betting on “electric highways” to foster eco-friendly trucking. The country has started real-world tests of an eHighway system on a 3.1-mile stretch of the Autobahn between Frankfurt and Darmstadt, with an electric-diesel hybrid truck merging into everyday traffic while it received power from overhead cables to keep it from using its combustion engine. Earlier tests in the country relied on either slow nighttime tests or the safety of an unused military airfield.
The very first eHighway launched in Sweden in 2016. The concept here is the same — the trucks use pantographs (the pickps on their roofs) to latch on to the overhead cables and draw electricity. Trucks can feed electricity into the grid when they brake, making the system particularly useful if there’s ever a jam.
HT/macusn
What a great idea ! Presumably the vehicle operator will be responsible for the upkeep of the pantograph? No problem there as they are all totally responsible with tyres, brakes and tachos, aren’t they? And when the inevitable happens with a live high voltage cable snaking across the road there will be an awful lot of other road users taking emergency avoiding action at 70mph. Me? I’ll be hogging the outside lane!
This is going to work out poorly for Germany because they’ve already shut down most of their nuclear plants and have committed to killing off all their coal-fired power plants by 2038. When the Russians get cranky and turn off their natural gas spigot, they’ll have whatever windmills and solar panels can produce, which won’t be enough to power their existing grid PLUS a bunch of electric trucks.
Leaving aside any other considerations, I once read that 48 tonne trucks cause 136,000 times more damage to the road surface than a car. I tried to research it but most of the information seems to come from green groups so whether this is true or not I don’t know.
There is no doubt that trucks cause a fantastic amount of damage to a road that their licence/tax doesn’t cover and the damage is worse on more minor roads such as those that lead from the primary route to something like a supermarket.
Anyone with actual engineering knowledge able to confirm or otherwise this road damage?
tonyb
The usual rough estimate is that road surface damage/wear at tear is related to the 4th power of axle weight. So for example a 2 ton car compared to a 3 axle 30 ton truck. The damage caused by the truck is 10x10x10x10=10’000 times greater.
A USA research study quoted by the UK Transport Reesearch Lab.
“an extensive series of pavement tests were conducted by the American Association of State Highway Officials in 1959-60 2. Despite many limitations and much criticism they remain the most widely used and authoritative basis for assessing the pavement damage caused by commercial vehicles. The results of these tests provide the basis for the so called fourth power law which states that pavement damage is roughly proportional to the fourth power of axle weight: ”
https://trl.co.uk/sites/default/files/SR720.pdf
Many thanks for that paper. I am not sure how those calculations would pan out for a common scenario these days of a one ton car, which have got lighter over the years, compared to the ever heavier trucks at say 48 tonnes.
Tonyb
Many years ago an engineer then involved in autobahn construction told me that pavement wear rises with the 4th power of the axle loading.
Rainer Facius
Here is a study by a rail company confirming the 4th power of axle weight mentioned above.
http://www.freightonrail.org.uk/ConsultationsORRDraftdetermination.htm
A 44 toone truck truck causes 136000 times more damage than a one ton car. They also emit a huge amount of pollution by way of brake dust and debris from tyres.
Tonyb
Tony, “They also emit a huge amount of pollution by way of brake dust and debris from tyres.”
It is actually for those reasons that I am FOR electrification of vehicles, but there sure are some difficult engineering roadblocks to overcome, many of which have been discussed in these comments and at length historically on WUWT.
I have read, however, that an unfortunate side effect of regenerative braking is actually an increase in tire wear, specifically the axle operating the regen system — I assume this is due to that axle’s tires slowing at a different rate from the other axle(s), but I am open to studying this more.
Still, the brake dust issue could be significantly reduced by regen converting kinetic energy to heat, even without capturing to extend range, etc.
Depends where you are.
Here (AUS) axle loading limits are set according to tyre size and hence ground pressure. Therefore my old farm truck – over legal load at 12 tonne gross, , despite the fact that it has functioned happily (if slowly) at 16 – will cause significantly more damage that a fully loaded Semi.
I was especially touched by this line –
“Trucks can feed electricity into the grid when they brake, making the system particularly useful if there’s ever a jam.”
The brakes can be sued to generate a small amount of electricity, WHEN THEY”RE SLOWING THE TRUCK DOWN”. They don’t add anything while sitting in a traffic jam, or creeping along, and while electric cars tout this as an energy recovery, I doubt they get very much from it, it’s a pretty inefficient thing, if I had to guess.
Brilliant idea from thereFormula Racing guys. They are always slowing on curves, have no lights, Engines replaced after the race.
Maybe they tested an eTruck race?
And the additional electricity for electrifying heavy transport comes from what generation energy source? Germany is still shunning nuclear.
Right now it would be neglible at a few trucks. But in 25 years? So they are not only going to have to dramatically expand winds farms, but all those in service today will have to be re-furbished/replaced. No wonder the Green blob exists.
The reality is these would be Brown Coal-powered trucks! With internal diesel back-up!! Nice.
What a lost of public money. Some politicians were scammed into it and that’s what you end up with. Don’t they know about multimodal transport!?!
It’s grotesque to come up with that kind of solution in order to mitigate CO2, even when you believe CO2 needs to be mitigated. Imagine when you do not agree…
This is really going off the rails!
perhaps this small scale test is just to show the eco nuts how stupid it is
then they can spend a few more million d-marks on another stupid idea without having to spend billions of d-marks
€uros.
Load is load is load. Road beds flex under the weight of a passing vehicle. They are not rigid or they would be failing faster. You can observe this by watching a freight train pass. Watch the rails and ties flex beneath each passing wheel bogey. Of course the train cars are much heavier than road trucks, but this example serves to demonstrate the principle. Similarly the road beds flex and deform under passing tire loads. This is why many municipalities post “MAXIMUM AXLE WEIGHT LIMITS” in the attempt to restrict of prohibit tucks from damaging road beds. This is also the purpose of Truck Weight Stations.
As to the relative magnitude of damage of trucks versus cars, that is dependent on the road and the traffic.
This is easily felt by walking across bridges while heavy traffic crosses the bridge.
The national security nightmare this would create should war ever come knocking… Imagine how easily the entire system would be stopped dead.
“…Trucks can feed electricity into the grid when they brake, making the system particularly useful if there’s ever a jam.”
No, that means they will use more electricity starting and stopping than they would otherwise use.
Oh, it works. A braking train can put quite a bit more Amps back into the wire than it takes out accelerating since braking is faster. Imagine what will happen when there is a jam and a couple of hundred trucks brake simultaneously. BANG! There went the transformer….
This is not my area, but this sounds like a perpetual motion machine. Just accelerate and brake, accelerate and brake, accelerate and brake, and soon your batteries will be charged for free.
Put some windmills and a bunch of solar panels on top of the train, and it is perpetual motion machine!
This is not my area, but this sounds like a perpetual motion machine. Just accelerate and brake many times, and soon your battery will be charged!
No it isn’t. You only get a smallish part of the energy back.
This:
No it isn’t. You only get a smallish part of the energy back.
contradicts this:
quite a bit more Amps back into the wire than it takes out accelerating
Please pick one position and stick to it. Thanks.
Oh, it works. A braking train can put quite a bit more Amps back into the wire than it takes out accelerating since braking is faster
More energy breaking than accelerating? – egads man, you’ve just discovered perpetual motion. Quick patent it and you’ll be perpetually rich!
Wellington, NZ, has a network of trolley busses. They used to be trams, but someone thought pulling the lines up was a good idea. Personally, I think trams and trolley busses are a good idea in a city. For major transport routes of hundreds of miles, not so much.
One problem I haven’t seen discussed – have they sussed out how they lorries would overtake each other. Would there be some form of automatic switching of the pantograph from one set of wires to another. Or would the lorries just have to stay in line and go at the speed of the slowest. In that case I can see some pretty irate, frustrated lorry drivers. I remember the trolley bus drivers in London had to get a pole out and manually swop the pantograph from one set of wires to another if they wanted to change lanes. Hopefully they have progressed since then.
They have an onboard diesel engine, like any hybrid car. Change lanes, power changes from overhead electric to diesel engine electric drive, accelerate and pass (teeth-grindingly-slowly, as others have pointed out), then merge back over and switch back to overhead electric and shut off diesel powerplant. The drivetrain does not know or care from where the energy is supplied.
[Again, I’m not supporting this idea, just providing engineering support to readers.]
Now, meter the cost of that electricity according to the current grid price and make that cost available to the drivers / trucking companies in real time. For example, during a period of surplus power when the grid price goes negative and Germany is PAYING other countries to take power to stabilize their grid, make the road grid free. When there is a shortage of power and the grid operator is having to pay high prices to purchase power from other operators, the road grid price goes higher than average. What you will find is trucking operations that can do it operating more vehicles when power is abundant in order to keep their costs down and avoiding operations when costs are high. This helps stabilize the grid by allowing demand to more closely follow supply.
Er… ever heard of time tables and schedules? Trucking (and railway) companies could save a lot of money by only operating 9-5, five days a week. For some odd reason they don’t. Operating only when the wind blows is probably not a better idea.
The odd reason is surely that a ‘just in time’ philosophy has become embedded in everything from industrial production such as cars through to supermarket deliveries
Tonyb
Many things must run on a specific schedule, yes, but others do not. For example, doing runs between a distribution center to individual supermarkets could be moved to nighttime hours if the savings in energy costs are sufficient to justify it. If, for example, the cost of the electricity is 1/2 on average during late night hours, moving transport of some items to those hours would be profitable.
The overall point here is that using regular market principles to make demand more closely follow supply based on the self-interest of the consumer works. We know it works. Same principle could be used in all areas having a widely variable source of electricity supply. For example, imagine if during periods when the grid operator must pay neighboring grids to take electricity (negative price), the local cost of electricity to customers goes to zero. Customers could pre-load their washing machines and dishwashers before they go to bed and if during the night the price becomes free, the appliances get started. This saves the grid operator money by finding a local source for the power. Every watt given to a customer for “free” saves the grid operator money by not having to bribe a neighboring grid operator to take it. It also potentially shifts load away from times when the grid operator might otherwise have to purchase power from neighboring grids.
Same could be used for home and business owners to charge local storage batteries resulting in using market principles to cause the decentralized storage of power when it is abundant and a corresponding reduction of load when power is scarce.
On a day when a grid operator is short on power, say a very hot day with no wind, the cost of the “electric highway” power could rise causing some operators to possibly delay a trip for a few hours in order to save money.
Nobody seems to like the notion of supply-based pricing at the consumer level, though, because it removes the need to micromanage behaviors (behavior will self-manage based on cost) and that is what most of this is really all about.
It’s not simply a case of supply-based pricing or timing use for lowest demand. Off-peak hot water services have been a thing for decades.
But to use your own example, supermarkets have to time their deliveries so that transports can be unloaded and the contents placed onto the shelves by opening time. Make it more expensive to do that, and the prices will be passed on to the customers, many of whom are in the lower income bracket.
“Just in time” is not a philosophy. It’s a way of keeping costs down, so that you can keep prices down which typically means attracting more customers…… because customers are odd people who dislike paying more than necessary.
Businesses that don’t have time constraints use overnight transport a lot. The nearest inter-capital freeway has a section that is notorious for truck accidents, because it is where so many trucks are at 2:00 AM after leaving g either capital on an over-nighter. Really handy for me, because I can phone my supplier and if he doesn’t have the spare part I need, one phone call and it is loaded on a truck at close of business (when the day’s order list is complete) and is on his doorstep at opening next morning.
Crosspatch, *applause*.
My interpretation from these replies is not that they think you are necessarily incorrect, but that you are onto something… something complicated.
Allow me to add a layer: semi-autonomous semis / IoT appliances / Powerwall / etc. that embark when the computer tells them the price is right. If a preset price-point is not reached by X:00am, depart anyway, and possibly even show preference to onboard diesel usage, rather than grid supply. All doable.
How dare you, sir, imply we could avoid micromanagement of behavior by those who clearly know better than we.
OK. Earlier comment is not posting. No idea what the delay is for.
I just wanted to point out that trolley-lorries won’t be able to overtake.
(Wonder how long this will take to post…)
Took 30 minutes for that comment to appear.
Yup Harry – it does tend to kill the debate
The reason why systems like this works for trains is that the driver cannot change the “lane” the vehicle is in.
Why Trains in Europe Function So Badly
The Antiplanner | February 7, 2017
According to a Pew study, freight shipped by truck uses about ten times as much energy, and emits far more greenhouse gases, per ton-mile than freight shipped by rail (see page 2). Because rail cars weigh more, per passenger, than automobiles, rail’s comparative advantages for passengers are much smaller, and unlike trucks it will be very easy for cars to close the gap: a Prius with a average of 1.67 occupants, for example, is more energy efficient than almost any Amtrak train. Thus, to save energy, it is better to dedicate rail lines to freight rather than to passengers.
This is what the United States has done, but it is exactly the opposite of what Europe has done. According to a report from the European Union, 46 percent of EU-27 freight goes by highway while only 10 percent goes by rail, while in the U.S. 43 percent goes by rail and only 30 percent by road.
Trains are more efficient shipping freight than people. The Europeans are doing things exactly backward.
The efficiency of shipping by any means is dependent on how much, how far, how much time you have. Choosing the right method(s) is why logistics professionals are paid very generously. (Another profession that I should have looked into when I was younger. Sigh…)
Amazon happens to be putting in a distribution center just down the road from me. I note that it is in a place that 1) has a rail spur already in place going right by it; 2) is only two miles from Interstate 10; 3) is less than five miles from Tucson International Airport. They’ll undoubtedly ship most high demand / high bulk things in by rail, less demand things by truck, a very few things by air – and ship out by whatever means is the most efficient (read “cheapest means that meets the quoted delivery time”).
Just-in-time delivery needs trucks. Trains can deliver but not Just-in-time.
So what would happen if a truck had a tyre blowout, and swerved off-course? Would it bring the infrastructure down, or does it auto-disengage?
How are they generating the electricity for the trucks?
I’ve got nothing against them trying something new.
One of the major failings of rail systems is that they cannot offer door-to-door delivery in the same way that roads can. And one of the major failings of roads is inefficient handling of high density traffic that results in worse jams due to disperse individual drivers/decision makers, as seen in large cities.
I don’t think the problems necessarily require an electrical-grid solution, but something must be attempted in the future if we are to retain a high degree of personal transportation freedom. At the moment cities like London are seemingly just approaching it by finding crude new ways to price poorer drivers off the roads entirely, which doesn’t strike me as the most honest solution for governments which often claim to be operating on ‘higher’ principles.
Technical issues aside, this development seems to mean, in my view, that the German ruling class doesn’t have much faith in the all-electric concept, nor in hydrogen as fuel. Instead, they prefer to fall back onto an old and well-tested technology.
Windmills and trolley trucks (busses)? Seriously? Mankind is walking backwards?
Their renewables cannot supply the grid so they’ll be replacing diesel for coal PLUS A GODAWFUL EXPENSIVE DELIVERY SYSTEM.
This only halfway works with Nuclear energy…which the fools in Germany are decommissioning.
Maybe simply add a few hundred square miles of solar panels and run these trucks during the day.
Do they have no engineers over there that can use a calculator?
Renewable transportation fuels will only ever come with High Temperature Gen 4 Nuclear producing synthesized liquid fuels…maybe Nuclear produced H2 in 50 years.
Those Germans. So ably led by Ms Merkel.
I wouldn’t mind betting that they are close to reinventing the wheel.
Trucks not being naturally connected to ground as trains, this is a potentially very dangerous system.
I guess that is why there are two pantographs, one is probably just for grounding. It would be insane to have non-grounded vehicles.
I am not seeing the issue you are describing, as I would think grounding would be easy in this case. One of the contacts to the supply lines can be a ground, no? On a smaller scale here in the Midwest, many work trucks have onboard generating capability (which serves nicely for tailgating outings), which they ground with a small wire that drags on the pavement. Sure, it requires periodic maintenance due to friction, but it gets the job done.