I saw This Electric Highway In Germany

Travelling on the A5 to Frankfurt a few days ago I saw this.

I didn't know what to make of it, eyesore ? it's certainly not pleasant, imagine all the power cables ?

Good idea, Bad idea ? I can see the point but in fairness what's the point lol if ye know what I mean ? unless it's on all Autobahns , I know it's a trial but is there a future to these electric highways ? Less batteries needed is a good thing of course but for HGV I can really see a future for Hydrogen if generated from clean sources such as Nuclear and the reason I say Nuclear is because it's an abundant source of energy, wind and solar can hardly power the grid as it is but indeed , in Germany wind and solar is well beyond ours.

https://www.powerengineeringint.com/articles/2017/08/siemens-to-build-electric-highway-in-germany.html

0lddog

Got it for free from the EU ? ( The Krauts are demons for taking anything that costs them nothing )

0lddog

0lddog wrote: »

Got it for free from the EU ? ( The Krauts are demons for taking anything that costs them nothing )

Now now, no need for that ! lol

No idea who funded it. Probably Government + Siemens ?

Lots of the Autobahn is so straight , Jesus you'd think we could design a straight road at this stage, look at all our new motorways, narrow lanes and bends everywhere.

Shefwedfan

Deleted User wrote: »

Now now, no need for that ! lol

No idea who funded it. Probably Government + Siemens ?

Lots of the Autobahn is so straight , Jesus you'd think we could design a straight road at this stage, look at all our new motorways, narrow lanes and bends everywhere.

Nothing we can do about that.....Ireland is like that because of the ice age. Germany and central europe do not have that issue.....

Unless we go back to ice age and turn on a room heater Ireland will never really have huge straight roads like other countries. It is cheaper to go with the flow of the land that try and go through it.......

In Ireland we don't need anything like that, we are too small. Sure the Kona will more or less go from one end of Ireland to another on one charge....

In Germany you could have trucks going for Eastern Europe to France non stop....so charging on the move would make sense......

Sweden I think has open a version as well, it is charging from the road surface

tedpan

0lddog wrote:

Got it for free from the EU ? ( The Krauts are demons for taking anything that costs them nothing )

Don't they own the EU?

One of these:

Electric Highway for HGVs

zilog_jones

This isn't too different from trolleybuses which have been around for a long time, though generally they aren't hybrids and can only run on routes with overhead lines. They tend to use poles rather than pantographs, though pantographs probably make sense for higher speeds. There were trollybuses in Belfast until 1968.

Yeah, the idea is to initally use Diesel to run where the iines don't exist and slowly upgrade the main routes with wires at which stage the diesel is only needed between the warehouses and the motorway. And then at that stage the diesel can be replaced with a small onboard battery.

cros13

It's a terrible idea.... making already expensive infrastructure more expensive and maintenance-heavy for little benefit.

The math works out for 700kWh - 1.4MWh battery HGVs... they have many more advantages with reduced maintenance (3rd biggest cost after fuel and labor) and electric operation on every route... not just equipped ones.

Less battery required though, on this scale I reckon Hydrogen is a lot more feasible for HGV, Germany has lots of Wind and Solar PV energy.

Nuke power would be a good way also to generate Hydrogen.

I don't think batteries are good for HGV at this point in time, too much raw minerals required. Hydrogen would be better imo even if it's inefficient to produce, excess wind and solar PV can go to it's production and Nuclear is an almost limitless supply of 0 emission energy available 24x7x365.

cros13

Methane is better than hydrogen.... easier to store & handle... easier to convert exist ICE engines into range extenders.
Easy production in the form of biomethane, the ability to use mixed fuel sourced from fossil and non-fossil if required.

But that's pretty unnecessary, if we have sufficient battery production sub-$150/kWh a long range battery-only HGV is within spitting distance of current ICE HGV purchase prices with an order of magnitude lower fuel and maintenance costs.
The economics are actually way better than for passenger vehicles, and legally mandated rest stops line up nicely with rapid charging for cross-continental travel.

For Cars and vans Batteries are perfect but on the scale required for trucks I think small batteries and hydrogen fuel cells are the way to go, I'm not sure we'd have enough methane on such a scale but we potentially have a limitless amount of Nuclear power in the form of Uranium and Thorium and if Fusion ever becomes reality then we got a few billion years worth of mega cheap energy.

Anyway back to reality, Batteries on the scale required for trucks would mean massive amounts or raw rare earth minerals hydrogen would cut this down enormously. E-Highways too but they do look quite ugly but would be much more efficient that hydrogen production but if you have Nuclear then you could produce it at off peak times.

Ideally you get Heavy goods on rail in the first place but they have to come off the trains to the shops , no easy solution.

gctest50

Should work well, trucks can use it when available