The highway where trucks work like electric trains
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- Опубліковано 5 жов 2024
- In Lübeck, Germany, there's one of several eHighway test projects: overhead catenary wires, where electric trucks with pantographs can pull power directly from the grid. Thanks to everyone who gave so much time to make this video possible!
More about the eHighway: www.ehighway-s...
Prof. Cebon's work at the Centre for Sustainable Road Freight: www.csrf.ac.uk...
Camera operator: Richard Bielau
Producer: Maximilian Thesseling of Klein Aber kleinaber.de/
With thanks to all the team at the eHighway and at Spedition Bode GmbH
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I'm worried that this feels like an advert. It isn't. This is just a brief overview of the technology, and so far this is just a 2km test track, one of several. But this seems like such an obvious-in-hindsight idea (to me, at least!) that I found it very difficult to frame it in any way other than "I think this is a good thing"!
ok
Wait 1 week ago?!?
Nice
wait what?
Same
It's funny that this 'trolleybus'-technology is 130 years old and now it's suddenly relevant again.
just imagine what it could've looked like if we kept using it for 130 years long, we would be far into the future by now.
Exactly, this should be called... a trolley-lorry? Trolleylorry? Or trolleytruck :).
It was always relevant, just not backed as well as the fossil fuel lobby. Governments and local authorities (and I'm particularly thinking of the UK) will do anything in their power or kick the can down the street to allow anything else to come along in order to avoid putting trolleybuses back.
@@PumpkingsLol trolley-busses are still used around the world. In Ukraine we have plenty of cities running trolley-buss networks. I'm curious if they can be extended to let trolley-trucks to run in them
@Vinícius Carmo Electric cars themselves have existed since then, yes but they were not a viable option at the time due to poor electrical infrastructure and a vast lack of battery capacity. Battery technology has only just moved to the point that electric cars are becoming a real option within the last 10 years.
Can't wait to see this feature in Truck Simulator 3.
more likely on 2 by dlc
You joke but I absolutely don't see why not
ok verified person.
The real question is when the trucks are supposed to fall, do they break from the wire, or do they hang onto the wire.
@@MasterBomer how dare they be verified lmao
03:45 - that pantograph shows a lot of uneven wear already. The difference with trains here, is that the overhead line is constructed to be gently sweeping from left to right, while the train cannot move an inch L/R on its tracks. That looks like a serious drawback here since that L/R sweeping hansn't been incorporated in the powerlines here. I do like the idea though, who knows where we'll end up!
Plenty of trolley busses around the world doing it though.
@@bremCZ no, trolley buses don't uses pantographs, they have 2 long pole directly in contact with the 2 cables above the road, in that way the poles are on a rail
@@NassimOOO No, not all trolley buses use a trolley pole. They exist and have existed for a long time with pantographs.
Just make it cheap to replace, so it will make sense to replace after some milage just like replacing tyre or changing oil.
But if the sweeping rod can move 100kmph forward why can't it serve a bit left or right, what damage can it cause, when it can withstand the forward speed?
Enlighten me more.
What's amazing is that this tech has been used for about 100 years. Not just with trams, but with trolleybuses too, and some in rural areas.
There is a motorway in Sweden (Sandviken) with the same system since 15 years ago.
London also had a system many years ago where buses were powered from overhead cables like this. Lookup trolley buses
Ya everytime when I visit my relatives , I'm impressed by the trolleybuses of Coimbra. Apparently even such a low volume produced type of Bus is still way cheaper than operating a regular bus.
@@thomashoups5926 San Francisco has been doing it for a very long time too. In the 80s we used to like watching the shower of sparks from them when something arced.
@@earthknight60 I can see why London decided to get rid of them but then again at the same time it'll be so much better for the environment because we won't be creating loads of lithium battery's that have a shelf life
I like how not only does this lower emissions, but it keeps trucks out of the fast lane.
with the rest of the idiots
In the UK, HGVs (lorries) aren't allowed in the outside lane of a motorway if it has 3 or more lanes anyway. Not that it always stops them of course.
@@joep4life it's only 20-30% at the moment
@@joep4life It is a pity, but it is still way more environmentally friendly to run an electric motor off a coal plant than running individual geared internal comustion engines at various RPMs.
In Germany they have to stay out of the fast lane anyway.
Tom must have been like "Okay lockdown is over, let's shoot in Germany for 6 months."
But I like it.
Being German, I guess I should like it but Tom is definitely not digging deep enough and is accepting way to many explanations without researching the back story. The end results are usually resonating with the sensibilities of a younger crowd but are only a part of the story - and that's poor scientific reporting by any definition. I don't know all of Tom's videos but the few I saw about German Infrastructure were rather blue-eyed.
@@f.d.6667 are there any unmentioned issues with this one?
Its not over for us tho🤣🤣🤣
@@f.d.6667 naja, es is nich Toms Ding anzusprechen wie scheiße wir digitalisiert sind, sondern was gut is. Fortschrittliche Ideen, nicht Sachen die schon lange bekannt und einfach noch nicht umgesetzt sind
Would be great if we not switch the language, meine Freunde ;) F. D. likely wanted to address other deficits we have in germany, but as Lenyu said (in german): It's not on Tom and also not in his interest to talk about stuff that's shitty in germany. @F. D. Tom simply shows cool technology to the world. I would almost go as far as to say that it's irrelevant to him if this tech is located in germany or in any other country.
The way the power lines engage and disconnect mid drive is smooth as butter.
"[2040] is just 18 years away" was like a punch in the gut
And the average lifespan of a truck is around that same period... Which means unless things change in battery technology today, there's going to be a fleet of perfectly good trucks being scrapped in 18 years that have only had half their life usage. That to me seems worse for the environment than the diesel would have been.
@@tin2001 wait, why would they be scrapped if it is just a ban on making/selling new ones after that date?
@@tin2001 nothing is being scrapped
Did you write that because you thought the ban will be here too soon, or is it the case that you can't wait for the ban?
18 years is a long time
James May and Jeremy Clarkson jokingly discussed this sort of thing about a decade ago - during rush hour, lower the power levels, everyone cruises along slowly. Rest of the day, crank it up, let everyone go 90mph.
I remember that. didn't James May also come up with hybrid cars using an idea from old trains or something?
That's brilliant. And on-board batteries would allow people collect charge when stationary or slowing down, in order to accelerate quickly after stop signs. And some people might mod their setup to use double the connections and use a transformer to transform that power into usable power for the vehicle (in the cases in which the voltage and amperage is not acceptable).
I remember reading about the idea even earlier, it was in the mid 80s, but back then it was seen as just a stupid idea with no merit.
Yes. Exactly what I thought. But his idea was to have a normal petrol engine drive you to the motorway then stick out a pantograph and enjoy mains electricity boosting you along the highway.
Adjusting the line voltage is amusing, but wouldn't be effective. Companies for both commercial and private vehicles would have incentive to suck more current in the low-voltage times to keep going fast.
Simpler and more practical to have adjustable, electric speed limit signs.
Things like this is why I like engineering. It's not always about reinventing the wheel. Sometimes it's about solving a puzzle with pieces you already have laying around...
Exactly.
It is reinventing the wheel, in this case an inefficient train.
Trains exist, yo.
@@patrick_test123 I saw the argument that laying out rail in Germany would be more costly and unloading small freight like what a truck can carry would be a pointless due to time and still having to transport it to a shop or wherever, but I'm not German or even close to Europe so I got no real clue
@@patrick_test123 but this could have a small battery, so that when it gets off the highway, it can drive a small distance to whatever business it wants to go to. It's far more flexible and doesn't need as much infrastructure. It solves the problems of electric trucks, which come from the giant battery required if there's no active way to get power elsewhere like these overhead cables.
The commendable part of this solution is that it tackles the business side of things very well. As long using power off the cables is cheaper than running full diesel, and doesn't require massive investment up front from the trucking or infrastructure companies, and the break even time is short (like they say year and a half), this solution would actually be adopted by the private sector willingly.
Lets put steel wheels on the trucks to reduce friction, link them together to save air friction and a number of drivers and call it a train.
And then lay rails to every location a truck would ever need to go.
And then prevent it from traveling to where the goods start and where they need to finish up.
Then give them a separate road network made of steel rails to reduce wear and simplify automation.
No no... train is too last decade... let's call it e-trans pods... now you have the attention of politicians.
Building tracks where there is already buildings or roads is difficult and expensive. Ideally you're right but getting people to commit to spending that money is really hard.
I am forever ashamed of my local politicians that massively downscaled our city's electric on-grid bus system that had been running continuously since 1949.
Over 30 years it was reduced to a tiny fraction of what it originally covered, only for them to make massive ad campaigns about how green they were while bringing battery powered buses in the last few years.
Trolleybuses are incredibly underrated, and I’m disappointed how few people know about them.
We had trolleybus in Kathmandu. Decades ago. It no longer exists
@@janmelantu7490 We used to have theme in EU as well, but I prefer trams and so do my local authorities :)
Are you in Dayton? Just curious.
Well to be fair those are probably not the same politicians as 30 years ago :D
There is a electric test highway track on the A5 too between Frankfurt am Main and Darmstadt.
I uploaded my Face Reveal.
was geht ab
und 300 m östlich ist die Bahnlinine DA-F...
@@micha0001 danke 🙏
Echt komplett bescheuert
@@micha0001 die jetzt schon mit den Personen Zügen überlastet ist
" well done James you've just invented the electric train"
Richard Hammond - 2013
Much appreciation for the tone and structure of this video.
I study infrastructure projects and I find it frustrating how most new infrastructures are portrayed in media. Videos are either really over optimistic ("This will solve every problem in the world!") or way too cynical ("This is just another fraud").
This is a rare video which hits so many right spots. It's enthusiastic, but tempered with caution, it's nuanced ("it works here, but may not work there"), it asks questions beyond the tech itself (not just asking "is it economical", but asking how and when it can become economical) and it ends with an open question that pushes us to think about what we want for the future (rather than declaring it for us).
Thanks so much Tom. I'll be sharing this as an example of how to portray new tech and infrastructure.
What do u think about the argument that this is just a train on tires? Its build to be more flexible in delivering goods but still can only deliver to prebuild destinies. Like a Train
@@usebrain514 nope there is a battery onboard to allow driving to and from the highway. It's not a trolleybus ;)
@@agnidas5816 Okay. So the last mile should be individually delivered, like a train does work hand in hand with a truck?
@@usebrain514 Exactly - but we (meaning most "developed" nations) stopped maintaining our rail networks decades ago. The "truck that's also a train" uses a modification that makes the existing road system double as our train track, rather than building new tracks. One vehicle that does both parts with one travel network is gold when it comes to "proposals that will actually get serious consideration from politicians."
@@agnidas5816 You seem to live in the past. Modern trolleybuses do have batteries. In Zurich the public transport buses even change during service.
I still think that long-distance transport, where necessary at all (I mean we make decent butter in Austria, we don't need it trucked from Ireland), should be done mostly via train, since that is still a lot more efficient than these trucks, but this system is a lot better than the current one.
As far as I know, there isn't much free capacity available on German railways.
nah take our butter
@@Rebasepoiss Because when the Deutsche Bahn went public they retired many railways
trains can't really do short distant where lots of turns are needed m8. Lorries have a purpose and always will
It's mixed modal transportation. Irish butter is put in a trailer at the factory and trucked some km to rail, where the whole trailer is railed to Wien, then the trailer is trucked to a warehouse in Wien and unloaded and the butter split into Less than Truckload amounts, and some portion of that is trucked to a shop in Himberg.
Industry does tend to prefer the most cost-effective (read: efficient) way of doing something - even to the point of making something TOO cost-effective (i.e. trading anything and everything for 'costs less money')
I like that they have a thought process of making it desirable for truckers, by having highway e-trucking be financially desirable
more like the carrier. In Europe most of the Trucks are owned by the carrier
@@perlsackhd3957 That's even better for adoption, then, because companies with larger fleets are generally more willing to buy more expensive capital since the operational savings add up faster with a bigger fleet.
It's almost like they considered the people whose livelihoods are at stake in all this.
@@nathanlevesque7812 Well when have they ever done that before
We'll have trucks running off of brown coal in no time.
There was quite some criticism for the project, because the money that went into it could've been used very well to upgrade/expand rail lines and their electrification, replacing trucks whole on many of the long-range routes.
Don't worry, this pilot project will probably be the start of a new freight rail corridor.
The source and destination of the payload, both need to be adjacent to a railway line, otherwise guess what - you need a truck for the rest of the journey.
Railways have many systemic problems including significantly higher infrastructure costs and operators which don't share the infrastructure properly. not to mention need for last mile delivery and shunting/railyards.
However, railways are more efficient and I wish it would be done. Governments don't seem to have sufficient political will to do that.
I thought he clearly stated that these routes are use for last mile delivery from warehouses to other warehouses or to customers.
@@KRYMauL no it wont
As an American trucker I think this would be awesome. I primarily drive back and forth between los Angeles and Portland oregon everyday so just putting these up on the i5 should work perfectly.
would be great for up-hill too where most trucks lose or lack power to climb. putting electric trucks aside.
I'm excited to picture this on US Interstates. It's not hard to imagine!
@CAD Thunkin it's because my truck is so long, I want to make sure I get around you far enough and fast enough.
Most of I5 is straight and fairly flat. That bit would certainly work for this system. It is easier to engineer something for a straight line. You only need something like 50KW to keep a loaded truck at highway speed so it needn't be the great big ones for trains.
Saying "the I5" makes me really curious where you're from. It's like an unholy merging of "the 5" and "I5."
Not only trucks, but buses and long-distance coaches can benefit from eHighway as well. This could solve so many technical hurdles electric long distance commercial vehicles have to overcome, namely limited battery capacity and long recharge/downtime.
Why stop there? Why not small car too? It will reduce lithium demands for batterry.
Of course it's kind of dorky to go to a date while riding something that you usually see at amusement park. But ...
I'm wondering, how many vehicles a line can support at a single moment
@@abd4620 A single trains draws much more than a truck. So this supports many trucks already. But if we should still need a higher capacity, you just have to route power to the overhead lines at shorter intervals, so less trucks are in one segment at a time.
but the rubber wheels are not very eco friendly, maybe we could make the E-highway on top of train tracks and give the trucks steel wheels ?
@@heliodorespecht6083 Have you ever consider what will happens if one of those steel wheels goes flat? ... wait ...
I feel like a lot of road transport could and should be moved back to the railways with the entire port-depot network being shifted onto the rails as high speed rail increases free capacity on the legacy rail network. Schemes such as this will definitely help, but there is no question that the same investment and time put into shifting most if not all long range haulage to the rails is a more sustainable move with the "last mile" deliveries then being undertaken by BEVs.
I don't think you realise how large freight trains can be.
@@Sivalente1 thankfully there is a set limit they can't pass on number of cars.
agree. The rush to move traffic from rail onto diesel was short-sighted.
@@Sivalente1 Not in Europe. They are generally shorter where they share usage with passenger trains. In America, if the rail was full of passenger trains, the freight trains would have to be shorter
Rail capacity does not increase with high-speed rail, in fact it decreases, due to braking distance between trains. Unless you want pile-ups in the event of a crash to be inevitable, this isn't something you can just fix.
I think it's a good idea provided it allows sufficient clearance for most oversized loads and assuming that sideways motion of the pantograph is not a problem. Ideally the wires can be used to assist in self guidance. Figuring out how much money to charge each truck will be challenging.
I really enjoy your series from Germany. Being a German myself I often overlook things that might be special here.
I'd love if they'd also make it work for electric cars, the range is my main issue at the moment.
Me too. I was born in Germany
@KY5 [10th Main Account] poor you
The best German era of an Englishman since David Bowie
Cars going to batteries makes far more sense. Smaller lighter.
The pantograph would be like 10% or more of the vehicle weight and if your electric car goes 500km this is more than sufficient.
yep and even more awesome if you already seen it irl
This feels so futuristic even though the tech is actually quite old.
Electric vehicles themselves have existed for centuries.
@@GTAVictor9128 Not two centuries.
trolly bus and trolly truk like ussr
@@GTAVictor9128 What year is it?
Futuristic? Then come to Eastern Europe, it must be like Cyberpunk here.
What I love about this is the understanding that you use the right technology for the application, instead of trying to shoehorn one single technology into every different application because somebody told you that "[electric/batteries/whatever] is the future!!!" You can generate electricity efficiently and efficiently deliver it to large vehicles moving along main roads, but you're not trying the hopeless task of using wires or giant batteries to move dozens of tons of cargo along rural back roads or inner cities.
For sure. This wouldn't make sense for cars but it seems to make perfect sense for trucks. If the two approaches can be combined by the sticking in an adequately-sized battery *as well*, that's a full door-to-door electric-powered journey. Amazing.
Petrol/diesel is the best solution for automobile transport right now. In the future it will be electric when battery technology becomes much more efficient as does building the electrical grid.
as someone who actually lives in Lübeck, I havent seen one truck using that wire stuff over the highway
I haven't seen one on the A5 near Frankfurt/Darmstadt either
probly still in controll testing, i doubt they would build it out so much if they wasent thinking of using it.
For most of the sections not specifically filmed for the purpose here, we don't see them getting used either.
We'll do anything to keep roads, trucks, and cars going. Fundamentally unsustainable modes being constantly greenwashed.
Near Rastatt in BW, they have the same construction running. No one is using it either.
and you won't. it's a stupid idea
“You just invented the electric train”
-Richard Hammond
Thought exactly of that Top Gear episode
Now I imagine James May saying: "yea well at least these trucks don't require a whole rail infrastructure so technically these are trolley busses"
But only far less efficient
@@redhidinghood9337 But with added flexibility. This idea is for this to be supplemental, eliminating the need for use of the combustion engine on the big roads.
@@redhidinghood9337 If these could be trains they would have already been diesel trains at the very least.
"Sometimes the best solution to a problem is one we already have." - someone, I'm sure
This is hardly a "solution"
@@MadScientist267 dis is definitely a solution before we had a perfect battery that cheap and powerful at the same time
@@royk7712 Why the hell did we go thru all the BS to get rid of those damn overhead wires if we're just gonna bring them back
@@MadScientist267 removing what overhead wires? there was never any over motorways?
@@refrigerator9059 I think this person is talking about trains, yet failing to consider how trains and automobiles have different use cases, and that they can still be fulfilled even with overhead wires.
People are likening this to trains, but a closer analogue exists. It's literally trolleybuses except trucks
Hm... Trolleytrucks really rolls off the tongue doesn't it? Kinda like Bendybus
Came here to say this, trolleybuses are fairly common in a lot of places.
@@sidbrun_ And hearing 'trolleybus' in the Russian language is very sweet.
Yep, and we've had trolleybuses for hundred odd years!
Trolleylorries - say it fast 10 times.
It's worked extremely well in Dayton, Ohio for 90 years, and San Francisco for about 82 years. I don't understand why it hasn't been more popular in other cities, or why it hasn't been tried for long distance trucks before now.
You are talking about trolleybuses are you? They are different thing, similar but different. And Germans should know enough about them, it was a German guy after all who invented whole thing in 1800's.
Most countries have decent enough freight-rail that something like this isn't needed.
Seattle too we have trolleybuses as well
@@20quidproblem is here in North America the freight absolutely refuse to have any Electrification at all and they refuse to improve their track at all it's actually a massive problem because there is no room for passenger trains
@@IndustrialParrot2816 which is a darn tooting shame.
Tom: "personally i dont give predictions of the future"
Also Tom: "welcome to 2030"
Ironically, I’ve completed my studies as Energy Engineer with a Graduate and Master thesis about the implementation of this system on a road in my country. As I’ve found during my research, many studies agree that implementing this technology (ERS) is not only technically but also economically feasible.
And, even though many say that trains are more efficient (and yes, that’s true), there is an unavoidable fact about that: Trains, can’t go everywhere, but these trucks can.
Many countries do not have such a vast railway infrastructure that can replace the movement of goods of actual diesel trucks, and the improvement of this infrastructure can be more expensive that simply building these systems on a road.
Maybe decarbonization is not solved by using one promising technology, but rather a myriad of ones that are the best on their places 🤔
Could you rerun your calculations with a battery cost of $100/kWh and $50/kWh at the pack level, please?
This system only makes sense if batteries are extremely limited: if they are heavy, big, costly, or charge very slowly. Neither is true anymore.
Do you think it would be good for cars?
Could you share your thesis? DIO? I would like to read it.
can i read your report? I’m genualy interested in this! i thought of this idea a long time ago but i dismissed my thought based on feasability/costing.
There's another concern I'd have about it that I'd be interested in your thoughts on. It appears as shown here the system uses human-driven trucks, but it would make a lot more sense for automated steering to take over to keep the truck in position under the wires. Manually steering that precisely for any length of time would be exhausting for a driver, and automated is surely the future anyway. This would produce a result similar to a "trackless trolley," a vehicle that automatically follows a precise course, possibly even following a painted line on the road, or super-precise GPS. Such things have been used in public transit for some time. Given that these trucks, like the aforementioned trackless trolleys, probably all have the exact same track width, this causes the problem that they are rolling over the exact same spot of pavement each time. This wears sharp grooves in the road, much worse than manually steered vehicles that will spread the wear out over a wider rut. There are rubber-tire people movers that apparently have solved this problem through specially-designed roll-ways - they have very sharp-edged tire marks but apparently don't wear too much - but that would require rebuilding part of the road. If they don't do that, higher maintenance costs will result as they have to keep fixing the grooves. Either way a lot more cost than simply stringing up some wires.
"2040 is only 18 years away."
Bruh.
*BIG BRUH MOMENT*
Gave me an existential crisis for a minute there.
do you really count these 2 months as a year?
Lmao
Vibe check
2:00 it is a bit weird to call it the most efficient solution, when the obvious comparison is trains.
Additionally the power price for this would be flexible throughout the day just like other grid power is. That would make driving at night cheaper, freeing up highways at day and lowering the difference between the dips and spikes in power demand.
There's also a safety issue there, driving at night isn't great...
I think automated driving will be take care of some of those issues. it's less complicated to drive on highways (only cars, less unpredicatbility), the driver will be an operator/manager/failsafe.
each change is just one piece of the puzzle.
@@Alex_1A No there isn't. Many people work night shifts in all industries. You just have to acclimatise to it.
There is a downside to night driving, increased risk of accidents. Plus having HGV's thunder around at 3am tends to annoy local residents.
@@benjaminshinar9509 that’s still a long ways off.
This feels like an admission that electric trains were the right idea after all - except not so far as to actually use them
They are a great idea. The automotive industry just kinda lobbied the heck out of the politicians to favour them over trains. Especially in US.
There are too many things built in places with road access, but where train access is not possible (without demolishing a lot of other things).
The decline of rail transport in most western/European countries is sad
They were the best idea for the planet but not the best idea for the greedy scum that run the planet.
Both systems have their benefits. Road transport has the flexibility, while (electrified) rail transport has the efficiency (electricity vs oil/gas).
This solution combined the two modes is juuuust the right amount imo to uphold the benefit of the former while increasing the former's efficiency. If we brought in rail tracks, them that's more engineering, more maintenance, and more policy to keep drivers safe.
I know it's impossible to implement rail to all infrastructure but if there's a fixed road (for example from a port to a warehouse) good old train will always win in the long run
Train good, car bad!
Atmospheric Railway BEST.
Thing is, the trucks may all come from the same port but go to a myriad of warehouses. If everything comes from the same wharf and goes to the same warehouse, then sure, train is the answer. The problem is that's often not the case.
Yes, but there isn't, nor will there be much new rail in the populous northern countries. The road system is the most complete transport system we will ever see, making use of it better is the key to success.
It's super expensive upfront and it's hard to even get the permits to build a track, even for the Deutsche Bahn (the German railway company), let alone for a private company
@TheShadowblade it was but lobbyism is a thing, especially in Germany. We hale an extremely powerful automobile lobby here which managed to basicilly kill our cargo railway system in the last 20 years.
“The rest of Europe won’t be far behind” buddy if anything the UK is further behind then the rest of Europe. I live in Poland and visit family in the surrounding countries. Czech, Ukraine, Slovenia and so on. Trolly buses here are so common and so old an invention my great grandma travelled to work in them. And now I commute every day in one to Uni.
Between this, the Schmidt people mover and the paddle through McDonalds, I get the impression that Germans are really trying hard to live their best lives! :)
Having the time of your life while always complaining. That's Germany for you.
@@DeutschlandMapping without proper internet connections and overall bad digitalisation yes
@@DeutschlandMapping without complaining there is no development
eh...
@@DeutschlandMapping we are world-class in terms of complaining.
Wow, we started reinventing the trolleybuses, after phasing them out for diesel ones.
(I know a bus is not a truck, but the difference is not that big)
Well, yes, but these trolley trucks can disengage from the overhead wires and drive on independently, where a trolleybus was attached to them - or at least the ones I knew back in the day and could not go anywhere without those overhead wires. So still an improvement, I'd say.
@@berttroubleyn3475 There are towns where a trolleybus can disengage, I'm not sure how old the technology is though, but it's been out there for some years from what I've seen.
yea my exact line of though. here you can see communist made trolleybuses still driving and transporting people those are decades old. I don't get why are people so hyped about stuff like this when it already exists and has existed for a long time.
Our city (Riga) have these diesel trolleybuses who use diesel generator on streets without overhead wiring on partially electrified routes. Seems suitable solution for trucks too.
@@DynastySheep I can confirm - in my city (Gdynia, Poland) some of the trolleybuses are equipped with batteries, so they can drive several km without overhead wires
I get it that it is just like a train, and this electrified road based transport has been done before (trams). But the hybrid nature of this is a delightfully good idea. The trucks can have back up batteries that allow then to do the last 50 miles off grid and then charge up when they get back on the electrified highway.
...Probably under a cover, to hide the ugly thing the rest of the time
or just have trucks do the last 50 miles and have trains do the rest?
@@kapilchhabria1727 that would be massively inefficient though
@@ObristPlayep why? i would imagine leveraging and existing train infrastructure is cheaper than the overhead power lines for the truck's pantograph.
@@kapilchhabria1727 I guess this is for places where there is no sufficient train infrastructure already present. And there, only building the trucks+overhead lines is significantly cheaper than building trains+lines+tracks+stations, and more flexible
They have been using this system for decades on the extra heavy mining vehicles in open pit mining here in South Africa. Some of those pits are very steep and deep and the diesel saving for this fully laden mine trucks hauling crush from the botton is enormous. If memory serves me correctly, they use regenerative braking on the way back down pushing electricity back into the grid.
It used to be the case that every town had a railway line but most of them were removed in the 60's
True, Switzerland has had success in recent years with short, last mile train transport
@@zacklightning3277 isn't everything super expensive in Switzerland?
@@flopunkt3665 comparatively no. the swiss are wealthy people and even the poor have extensive support networks in place which reduce living costs. They spend more than others in europe but they make even more than that
@@TRAMP-oline that's why they flock over the borders in masses every Saturday to do their shopping.
@@flopunkt3665 ya they flock to other places but thats true for nearly all countries even if you are earning well its nicer to get stuff cheaper if you can, so the same can be said about norway, some places in sweden, germany... Depending what you buy the only people that probebly won't care is the ultra wealthy
While of course I'd prefer an increase in train use and infrastructure, this seems like a viable puzzle piece to help.
@McFlickers That is certainly true. But as said in another place already, last-mile delivery could be done by trucks. But having centralized train hubs could cut down on traffic overall.
I think one major problem right now is the fact that most companies cut down on their depot sizes and using trucks as mobile ware houses. Which is ok-ish if everything goes right, but as we can currently see (and saw especially during panic buying behaviour at the beginning of the pandemic), it's easy now to run into delivery shortages in a just-in-time delivery setup...
@@Djaenzee trains might not run when you need them, they also might not take the amount of cargo you need
@McFlickers Companies do not pop up spontaneously. We can, maybe, consider only planning industrial areas near trainstations?
@@ligametis Well, cargo trains are not like passanger trains. They can be planned to roll when they are needed. And if you need to deliver something to an hour accuracy, a truck will not be better either. And a train can always take more cargo than a truck. If there is high demand it might be posssible to lengthen (or also shorten) a train or plan more trains. But as said elsewhere: Main problem is the lack of railway network, it has declined over the last decades because of low maintenance.
But all your points are solvable problems.
@@Djaenzee usually not more, but less cargo needs to be delivered, however frequently, exactly when needed. Trucks are more adaptable in this regard. You don't need to book a space, wait for a full train, can deliver to a couple locations along the way. Planned means need to work with others, wait for others. Not that frequently everyone needs to go to the same location.
The sad thing on this test highway is, that there are literally just two trucks from one company (Bode Spedition) that are driving with this technic. It was heavily discussed while building, because Mercedes and other companies dropped out of this technic, saying it isn’t cost effective and that hydrogen would be the future.
Also there are some safety concerns, because the street is now to narrow for rescue helicopters to land in the case of an emergency/accident. Not all parts next to that highway are fields, or even close to be useable as a landing point.
Edit: Not from a real study, just my observation from driving everyday beneath these lines: people seem to be scared to drive under it. In those kilometers oh highway many people from other cities/countries, often don’t drive beneath. It feels, like this random stretch with wires seems kinda intimidating and feels forbidden for normal cars. But trust me, it is awesome to drive under it. It feels like being a train driver.
It’s not just helicopters either, highways are often used as an emergency landing area for aircraft, and those wires could be hard to see from the air. I love the technology, but I think setting up electric railroads would work better in some cases.
Whichever ways works, hydrogen or wired, at least they are both Environmentally friendly.
I'm not sure that having only two trucks is a major problem at this point - it's literally just a proof-of-concept right now.
And for the air ambulances - if that's the biggest downside, I'm sure we'll be ok. Germany is one of the few countries who heavily uses helicopters for "normal" ambulance work - most countries only use them for super weird or remote rescues. It'd be a shame for it to be less effective in Germany of course, but shouldn't hold back progress
@ Hydrogen is terribly inefficient and therefore it will be very expensive thermodynamic vandalism. Use electricity for the things that can be electrified. Save hydrogen for the very few things that can't
There are multiple, glaring issues with this. This is a grab for EU grants and nothing more. I like the concept but these people aren't serious.
For everyone talking about how we had tram lines. The combo of big oil and companies that build diesel engines killed the trams. The greed of giant corporations is boundless.
Tom - sees a good idea and makes a video about how interesting it is
Also Tom - "oh dear, did I advertise them too much?"
You're more than welcome to have positive opinions about things, Mr. Scott.
No such thing as advertising something that's just straight up good like this. Show us the drawbacks if there are any
He's probably just being cautious after the recent Veratasium thing lmao
No, I think that's a good disclaimer to have. Thanks Tom!
@@mickmccasker6401 what happened?
@@mickmccasker6401 What veritasium thing?
I miss having a random outtake at the end of the video. Even just an unused soundbite after calling cut. It was the reward for watching to the very end.
Personally, I never liked it.
I didn't know people were such children that they couldn't sit still and watch 3 minute video without being bribed with a treat at the end. Is everyone on UA-cam 5 years old?
@@choo_choo_ It's just a funny quirk. I mean tons of people wait to the end of Marvel films for extra scenes and other films for bloopers. You need to understand that such an occurrence was, for a while, quite the common occurrence on this channel.
@@choo_choo_ Wow, rude much. I just wanted to make a harmless remark about a small tidbit I miss from older videos.
Ironic, considering said postscript bits were common in his videos from 5 years ago.
Oh, hey, cargo-oriented trolleybuses are returning, and expanding to highways. Neat.
Hey, Dresden even has a cargo tram!
@@MegaJK97 used to have* it unfortunately closed in late 2019.
@@h-hhh Oh sad, I didn't know that :/
I occasionally saw some Cargo Trams around June/July 2020, and I wondered why i didn't see any of them this year. Meh :/
@@h-hhh OOF 😭😭😭
Toy versions of these trucks should soon be available in fine stores everywhere. Cheers!
This is a real world problem solution and you can only think of toys?
One of the problems train operators experience with overhead lines is that you get a feedback loop of damage, any damage to the wires will damage the pantograph contacts which then go on to cause more damage to the wires and so on. If this is a problem for trains, which are being run comparatively infrequently (compared to number of trucks using a motorway) and are I presume far more likely to be inspected regularly for damage than some low cost road haulage firm / owner-operator is likely to inspect their trucks, I really can't see this thing lasting long before a cascade of dodgy pantographs tear the wires to shreds.
It's also the sort of thing you don't pick up in trials because everyone has a vested interest in it working so they behave themselves and inspect their equipment.
I didn't think of this but you're absolutely right. I have experience on heavy rail catenary in the Northeast USA. It takes decades of training to qualify linemen & rail car mechanics fully proficient at maintaining & troubleshooting catenary systems, both the structure/ substation/ wire delivery systems, & the pantograph/ transformer / rectifier / traction motor / drive train traction system. So, yes, who is going to train & qualify this vast army of new workers, & pay for their services? Then, how do you parse through the damage evidence to assign responsibility every time a pantograph pulls down a section of wire? (which happens all the time on rail catenary just due to weather & equipment wear & tear, where the trains are on rails & can't just randomly steer outside their lanes?). Then, plus, now you're electrified truck lane is out of service until repairs are made, which typically take many hours by highly skilled technicians & require all power shut off with many safety protocols.
Excellent point. All those risks are present even before considering that this thing is autonomously controlled! They mentioned in the video that it pulls itself down as the truck leaves the lane...
Can't see anything ever going wrong there!!!
I think there's a failsafe for that now. The damage happens because the block of graphite between the pantograph and the overhead line breaks off, but there are systems now that automatically lower the pantograph when damage is detected.
@@sideshowbob think of all the new jobs to replace all the fossil fuel jobs
There systems they could employ to safeguard against those problems.
Contact strip wear detection systems that automatically drop the pantograph in case of damaged or worn-through carbon strips are widely used on the railway already. Shock sensors attached to the pantograph can be used to detemine any snagging issues or "hard spots" in the overhead wires. And I guess you could link that up to a wireless location based system to automatically flag up problems to the line maintenence team.
In the UK, we have the same issue of "who is to blame" on our privatised railways whenever any OLE gets damaged, which is why most trains are now fitted with roof mounted cameras to detemine whether the incident was due to damage wires or a damaged pantograph - I notice that the truck is also equipped with a camera for (presumably) this purpose. The party whose equipment failed can be determined by watching the video log and the party at "fault" pays for any repairs. Obviously you would need some kind of mandatory insurance setup for this to work on a national scale but, I think with some creative solutions it could be made to work.
One issue here is illustrated at 3:02, where you can see grooves in the carbon tracks on the pantographs. On railways this isn't an issue because the rails are fixed and the catenary wire deliberately zig-zags between masts to prevent the groove problem. With trucks naturally varying their lane position slightly this controlled even wear is negated, so it probably wouldn't be long before a lazy HGV operator doesn't change the carbon collector strips and forgets to lower the pantograph, almost certainly resulting in damage to the carrier wire.
Coupled with the fact that rail OHLE experiences less than 400 passes per day (one train every four minutes is way more than even the WCML) and it quickly becomes apparent that it will need to be seriously 'beefed up' to the same grade as the third rail that is used on higher intensity lines such as the underground. Ultimately this has potential thanks to the flexibility of trucks being able to operate on a mixture of mains and battery. but it definitely needs more robustness building in if it's ever going to make it for regular use.
i've noticed that, too, however, trucks have to undergo regular service inspections in germany, so you could technically make the carbon collector strips beefy enough to last 2-4 years so they'll just get replaced ever so often. only works due to laws in germany, though
The pantograph could be made to drop should power ever be lost. If it requires an electromagnet powered from the line to keep raised , for example, this could be automatic. Accidents will happen though and that's why rescue services were involved - what's the plan for when (not if) things go wrong?
Thinking the same, on railways and tramways the wear is negligible, but in highways it will be way more. But on the truck side I think it can be solved by putting a little more angle between catenaries, so it can more easily swipe across the pantograph.
Trolleybus-type poles? The little wheels atop those would surely wear better.
@@marknpm ok, but how do you easily decouple and hook on? Trolleybuses are intended (usually) to stay connected permanently.
So it seems that the weird old “Super Mario Bros” movie with the cars being powered from an electric grid above the road was right about our future after all ;)
Of course they were, as would be anyone aware of a solution devised for trains more than 120 years ago.
Check out North Korea... they've had electric powered buses for decades.
Of course putting powerlines above the highway seems like a good idea until someone needs to move their house
@@crocodile2006 You mean.. literally put their house on a vehicle and move it? Because I assure you that moving trucks are actually shorter than these "box trucks" are. In fact, those are the tallest road vehicles out there, and the wires have a hefty clearance over them as well...
You could probably move a 1 story house on those super-heavy flatbeds and still not hit those wires.
@@crocodile2006 why North Korea? Those literally exist in a bunch of European countries
@@ScarletFlames1 No sweetie, there are movers that will lift a 2 story residence, whole or in pieces and move down the road with it.
Doesn't even account for Over-Sized Loads which would gouge the heck out of these things just from the next lane over.
Really great project.
Resumption of an old solution: truck-trolleybus.
With new technologies, well done.
Can't wait to have to remember to hook up to the overhead lines in Euro Truck Simulator 3
Concerns about the viability of a system like this seems really weird, since I live in a city (Vancouver) with an extensive pantograph bus network. I have 3 different electric bus routes that run just in front of my home. It "just works" using the same basic system from around 1950. The buses share the same lanes as regular buses and other vehicles, can change wires at intersections using basic switches and just fit in seamlessly with the rest of traffic. I've never seen a bus pull wires down, though I know it happens on rare occasions. On occasion you'll get a spark when a bus goes through a switch. The overhead wires have always just been a distinct part of the look of the city to me.
Melbourne：yes
Same in San Francisco
The viability from an engineering point of view isn’t the only issue. The bigger issue is its economic viability plus proving to trucking companies and truck manufacturers that this is a system that works well and is accepted by both road users and emergency services in real world use. There is also the issue that is very different than trolley buses that operate in cities where speeds are much lower - that is operating at train-like speeds but in an environment that includes sharing the carriage way with multiple other kinds of vehicles. Trolley buses already do that, but at lower speeds. Trains have the higher speeds but do it on tracks that are mostly isolated from other vehicles. Combing speed and road sharing is a newer application that needs to be tested thoroughly.
The acceptance issue is a real one. In this test only one truck company was prepared to participate while other companies declined citing their belief that different technologies are better. It will take a lot of testing like this to win-over a reluctant industry in order to make it viable to roll out electrification over long distances.
@@adamajluni7781 There was one incident in San Francisco where a trolleybus driver stupidly backed up his trolleybus. The trolley pole got caught on a switch and went up vertically while pushing up the overhead wires until they broke and collapsed.
@@artistjoh they should be able to retrofit this sort of system to existing Hybrid trucks, or to the small few fully electric trucks.
We have electric buses using this technology running in my city for almost a century now. It's called a trolleybus.
I never understood why there wasn't a bigger push in adopting those wherever possible. Trucks seem like the natural next thing to apply this to.
cost divided by population or population density? I mean in a city like new york, you have a street light every few meters. why not do it on every road in the country side?
Many scoff at the overhead wires! Combine overhead wire with batteries and you get the ability to charge on the go, and service the last mile quite easily.
@@IanBMorris That's exactly what the new trolleybuses here do actuality. Definitely could work with trucks and it's even mentioned in the video.
@@TheAngelsHaveThePhoneBox I've seen that in San Francisco and it seems to work well. I see a lot of people being against ideas like this, they are too different from the current way.
Aguanten la K y la Q
I might have been terribly unlucky but as someone who lives in Germany and travels through this "eHighway" often, I've never seen a single electric truck on there ever.
I'm living in Lübeck and ride often to Hamburg and it's the same.
I remember having this as my 10th grade science congress project back in 2016. Judges were impressed by the idea but the challenges were more than the benefits so I only got to the regionals. Its great to see this implemented in real life and actually working. The child inside me is proud. Shout out to Germany for leading the way to clean energy revolution!
Not to mention that electric motors are just really really good at making things turn. Sure, they are clean, but they are also quite efficient, which is what I like about this idea.
May I propose the idea of "freight trains", where a bunch of unpowered trucks are pulled by one or more powered "trucks"? This is even more efficient for long distance transport…
This is clearly a money laundring blunder, this is coming from the country that declares carbon and gas combustion is a more enviromental friendly energy source then nuclear energy
@@ibimsbodenhansel3230 True, but this is for short transport, from warehouse to store or warehouse to home. This is what a UPS or FedEx van would do.
Otherwise, trains are the way to go.
@@blomgaming6480 I like nuclear energy a good deal. I am going to study nuclear engineering. I hope to see the construction of breeder reactors at most power plants in my lifetime, but that is not why I am going to get the degree.
I want to work on spacecraft and launch vehicles, and nuclear-thermal propulsion is a fascinating concept.
In Georgia, USA, they’re getting ready to build grade separated truck only lanes along an interstate highway here to ease traffic. I feel like that would be a perfect use case for this technology.
grade separated truck only lanes?? why not just use rail, it's a fixed route separated from car traffic! wouldn't that be more efficient than rubber wheels and individual engines per cargo thing?
@@KooShnoo As a train driver I can tell you that rails, switches and the added stuff to control and maintain them are very if not even extremely expensive. A truck on rubber wheels is far less effective, but the pantograph + ev/combustion engine gives you the ability to go anywhere you want at any time instead of getting stuck at a siding when there are infrastructure problems like snowed over switches or power outages.
A crazy solution would be to have both steel and rubber wheels, but that would also be quite complex and would require the driver and vehicle to comply with both road and rail laws.
@@KooShnoo Onload-offload time is a problem, as is having to match with train schedules and the fact that you still need trucks to do the last mile delivery.
Quite a few states need to start considering this. In some places you're stuck going 20+ mph below the "limit" because there is so much congestion.
why have a truck only lane if you can have 4 and overtake?
It's crazy how I live in Germany, and have never heard of this, until now.
Same.
Bruder ich wohne einfach 10 min von diesem Autobahnabschnitt entfernt haha. Auch der McDonalds mit dem Kanal-DriveIn letzt war so random, weil ich da mal nur 200m von entfernt gearbeitet habe. Hab beides instant wiedererkannt
@@seleganttwanty1525 yee, hab ich auch gesehen. Dieser Kanal macht einem richtig Laune das Land zu bereisen ^^
the system was a failure and research discontinued. The test route was dismantled in summer 2023
It's nothing short of ironic that the bus system where i live worked exactly like this, 30 years ago. I think that in some other countries the same happened. This is more like a "well the old system turned out to be more efficient" type of change. :D
Trolleybuses are still very common, especially in former soviet countries.
Buses all through downtown Seattle run similarly. It's almost unnerving when the engine shuts off and it's easier to hear the fans, closed radio circuit, and the homeless guy eating pizza.
Welcome to the future
This would also be a greta idea for long-distance coaches, such as the UK's National Express or New Zealand's InterCity. Coaches carrying passengers long distances often travel mostly on motorways or highways.
Nz is just Infrastructure whise so stuck in the 80‘s, it’s really sad
Nz doesn’t even have a fully electrified main line, and a majority of city’s don’t even have rails passenger services, allthough there is or used to be a railway line there
Greta idea lmao. Greta would be proud.
The Trolleybus's are already the thing implemented around the world, so why not
In England it took them 20 years to finish motorway between Luton Airport and Northampton area. If you give English goverment such idea you won't see end of work on that.
Revisiting this video, i can see infrastructure cost for this project being potentially difficult to swallow in certain circumstances.
In the UK, some motorways have quite low bridges that would have to be rebuilt to allow clearance for the cables.
To use one example, there is a service area near me in west Lancashire that is notable for having a bridge over the M6 with multiple shops and amenities hosted above the road.
The cost of initiating a rebuild of that entire site fit to add such infrastructure to the road would be enormous.
It may be possible to facilitate a temporary storage system that can allow the truck to continue past low-lying existing infrastructure. But, it is definitely something to consider.
Passenger trolley buses have battery storage so they can drive for a few blocks where there is no overhead power. These trucks have the smarts to align themselves with the overhead wires, so it wouldn't be a problem to just drop the pantagraph when it goes under the bridge, and resume. On the static kind of route from a port to a specific warehouse, that will become the simplest way to implement autonomous driving of the trucks. They can just run back and forth 24 hours a day.
Wikipedia - Electric road. Sweden has tried out many of the Electric road options regarding the cost of each one. It looks like an on-road contact system with under vehicle pantograph will see all vehicles private cars and trucks be able to take advantage of this option, and only a 1 metre section under the vehicle is switched to high voltage the rest is return ground.
@@mnipp how does this system avoid having damage from snowplows in the winter? Is the road surface heated?
There's a proposal to trial this system on the M180 near Scunthorpe: ironically not far from the trolley bus museum at Sandtoft!
I'd like to give kudos to the camerawork for bringing the overhead wires into shot just as Tom starts "well, the world already has a proven tested solution..."
Correct Tom, it’ll cost Germany merely hundreds of millions to roll this out. After all it’s just wires and cables. But In good old Blighty it’ll cost tens of billions for some reason.
Blighty?
Most of that will fall into the bottomless pockets of the app designers because it's the UK, so it will need an app.
@@mughil128 slang for UK
Imagine the UK 'elth n safety having a go at this and the impacts on motorway maintenance.
Siphoned off into 'their mates' pockets.
But rubber wheels on asphalt have much greater rolling resistance than steel wheels on steel, so it would be more economical, and then you might not make the entire road surface of steel, but only where the wheels go.
And the wheels can then easily and automatically follow the road.
I think I recognize this from something else...
Also you could perhaps use the steel wheels for grounding the electricity instead of using a second catenary wire
I remember when they tore out all the tram lines here and replaced the buses with clean-burning diesel models. I think they’re CNG now.
GM paid for a lot of those lines to get removed a long time ago. I was told that buy a fellow who would have been 95 this year.
Most buses in the Netherlands are still diesel-powered, but the number of electric ones is rising quickly, with charging stations at important stops/termina (terminuses? no idea) where a small pantograph takes power from a rather sturdy structure.
As far as I know, only a small portion runs on CNG.
I would have to look it up, but can't imagine the bus-lobby in my country to pay for getting rid of the electric trams from the fourties and fifties onwards, when most local tramcompanies ceased to operate as the bus provided a more favourable alternative. Many communities now try to get the tram back as the buses can't handle the number of passengers anymore.
I think trains are still more efficient for transportation of goods and supplies, but this seems like a good solution for "last mile delivery" where rail infrastructure doesn't exist or faces other barriers to being built.
but "last mile delivery" is going to have the highest construction cost, and the lowest reduction in emissions.
Trucks are point to point, easily scalable and competitive. Clearly trains don't work for every case or they would be the solution.
Their also the fact that Europe doesn’t have a efficient cargo rail service. Europe’s trade relies a lot on trucks so this system would technically be more energy efficient than the current system. Plus cargo rail would have to use new tracks or passenger line would need to be upgraded with passing tracks if cargo rail was to be expanded in Europe so this is the cheaper option
Railroads take up a whole lot of space and are solely used by trains, compared to the road networks we have all put in place for both commercial and residential use. Waiting to fill a freight train with cargo before shipping out and then having to wait for an entire freight train to get unloaded would slow down everything. Not to mention our railroads are already in use, to rely more heavily on them would require a massive overhaul and upgrade.
I think of this as a more efficient form of the already existing Schienen-ersatz-verkehr (rail alternative traffic).
You have a lot of necessary trucks with cargo not suitable for rail (in a schedule, multiple stops, short distance of end of rail to destination (meaning the double loading cost would be negating long distance), easier accessibility by truck...), so implementing this system could have a big effect.
This is exactly like a trolleybus but for trucks. That already existed 100 years ago.
The problem they are trying to solve is how to connect and disconnect on the go. trolleybus needed to stop to hook onto the wire.
In China they fielded a similar system on to charge buses bus stops, but it requires the bus to stop. The bus uses super capacitors (enough range to get them to next stop in few minutes)
Electric cars existed 100 years ago but oil won at the time.
The big difference with this time is the batteries get charged while rolling and if they need to leave the power lines ( accident \ road works \ break downs etc ) they can just do it with no issues at all.
Contrary to a trolleybus, these trucks also have large enough batteries in them to stay detached from those lines for kilometers.
but now maybe with batteries that can be charged and then used for roads without them.
@@AaronShenghao Charging trucks on the go would be a big deal. You don't need to cover much of the highway, as long as the trucks can get charged for the rest of the trick.
There is an open pit copper mine in Princeton ,British Columbia that is currently (no pun intended)using a Catenary/Pantograph system for it's giant haul trucks
"we think it'll pay for itself"
Laughs in German electricity prices
Electricity is artificially high up so when the generation of electricity becomes dirt cheap, consumers will still be paying premium to companies and government tax. Just because you can generate cheaper energy, it does not mean it will reach the consumer pockets.
@@bite-my-shinny-metal-ass Generating energy may be cheap. Don't forget about building and repairing infrastructure, it is also in energy bill. And as far as I know right now infrastructure is really old and in desperate need of expansion and repair in most places around the world.
Diesel price here in Germany at time of writing: 1,63€ and probably still rising.
@@hofnaerrchen per Liter
Just build more coal plants, and natural gas plants. Problem solved.
Why not just boost trains and bring goods back on the track, which is even more eco-friendly? The only downside two downsides to this are, that it doesn`t work everywhere. You`ll still need lorrys to bring goods from trainstations to the supermarket. But One Lorry Driving from Naples to Hamburg just isn`t necassary, when you have a train. The other downside is, that the Railway network must receive an large extension, which in the short turn is expensive but should save costs in the long run. But this doesn`t happen because - and thats a sad fact - driving goods on lorrys through half of Europe is just more cheap than by train - which it just shouldn`t be.
I'd prefer the austrian way too where trucks are only allowed as far as the next freight train terminal. But still, especially in Schleswig-Holstein, we'd need to extend the rail network and build more freight terminals.
@@wilfriedklaebe Yes I agree with you. But beeing also from Germany (Bavaria) there is alsways the Problem with local Resistance against the extension, which is partly understandable but also quit sad because looking in the future yuo will always gain from better railway networks.
Train do not go everywhere where it is needed, distances/destinations that trucks already do.
Not every country (even in Europe) uses fully electric trains, some are limited to Diesel/Electrics, which still burns fuel.
For Europe, transporting people by train is more important, but there are cargo trains going from one end of the continent to the other end.
Because trains can't react to changing conditions.
When you build a train track, that is the path goods will take for the next century. The only way you can adjust to circumstances changing every few years (one city growing faster than another, one port expanding to accept larger ships, certain industries booming or dying, etc.), is to physically lay new tracks.
Trucks are more fungible. Every single load can take the most efficient route at the moment, and then take a different route tomorrow, and a different one again the day after. You are going to need a cross country road network anyhow, just to let farmers get into town and townies to visit each other, so the trucks will follow those roads along the most efficient path, and then you can expand the roads into highways as certain routes become more popular.
@@boosterh1113 That's what last mile delivery is about. You only put a train cargo hub in massive cities, for the rest you put one nearby multiple destinations and have trucks do the final stretch. There's no need to have trucks drive across the country when one train can replace hundreds of trucks.
I live near the E-highway in Lübeck, and drive along there in both directions for 1 week. i think it's funny never to have seen an e-truck there and an englishman (great video, by the way) has to come to show it to me.
true. i did drive this part of the autobahn a few times but never seen e-trucks
I travel every day between Lübeck and Hamburg and never seen one. But the reason is obvious: there are literally just two trucks for one company (bode Spedition) that use the technic.
While building the e highway, Mercedes dropped out of the Testprogramm and with it over truck companies. In this regard, it is sadly a massiv money waste.
@@tecmalo6857 sadly yas.
This is perfect idea, and what can happen is also fully automated trucks, so thay can run 24/7, with special lanes so that they do not get stuck in traffic.
So, trains?
@@eingrobernerzustand3741 yes if they can cover all destinations and climb mountains on full load ;)
@@new.handle dosent eletric have issues with full load on hills and such tho?
@Dennan they tested for now only on flat surface, but there is YT channel that makes conversions of diesel to electric for logging trucks. So maybe in future...
@@new.handle aa okay thanks for the information!
People keep comparing this to trains but they are missing the important piece of information that trains can in fact not deviate from their path. These trucks can just go on and off the highway as their route requires.
Whaaaaaaaat!?
That only works under two assumptions:
a) those warehouses have to stay exactly where they are and can't be moved closer to rail depos
b) that money wouldn't be better invested in expanding the freight rail network
So?
Tom said that the usecase for these electric trucks is for port to wearhouse or depot to depot container shipping.
Any distribution center worth it's salt has a rail link, most shipping ports will.
Granted im biased because i work in the rail industry, but seriously one of my upcomming projects in the next few years is to build the rail section of northampton gateway, a Strategic Rail Freight Terminal.
@@squelchedotter keep in mind that this technology is capable to be added to already existing infrastructures instead of potential hundreds of hectares needed for extra rails.
@@VentusTheSox Building railways and stations that can support them will take far too much time for a problem we need to fix quickly,on top of the fact that most freight trains need diesel engines to provide enough power to move all it's cargo, undoing the whole point of this. Putting up wire over highways is cheaper, faster, and more flexible than rail, it saves space, let's car manufacturers advertise that they're helping the planet, and doesn't have to through endless arguing with NIMBYs who don't want a freight passing by their neighbourhood.
Thanks for reading my essay :P
This reminded me of when James May jokingly thought of this back on old Top Gear something like 10 years ago. They were thinking of bumper cars though.
That "2040 is in just 18 years from now" really got me
"Even though The Matrix is a movie from the late 1900s, it's themes still remain relevant today."
Hat ja so im Nachhinein gesehen super geklappt und die Welt revolutioniert.
So great that you did this story. I live near Seattle and that city still has some downtown bus routes with overhead electric wires for their old styled electric buses. Instead of this simple trapeze connection, the driver in Seattle must stop and connect manually a pole from his bus roof to the overhead wire. The driver uses another pole by hand to pick up the power pole from the bus to make this connection.
Electrocution is fun ?
@@JB73691 if only we had some material that could be used to isolate an human from electricity..
It's not only trains running on these wires, trams and trolley busses have been part of our (Czechia) public transport for decades now and the wires are part of various cities roads already. The fact that trucks can run on this is not only proven now, it must've been the logical conclusion for decades.
Serbia, too
It may have been the logical solution for decades but think about costs to realize these wire sections at highway's?
think about the trucks that need to either be modified or built from scratch and bought by companies for their employees to drive in.
i know the guy in the vid talks about this system paying it self back within 1,5 years or so but without concrete figures nothing is set in stone.
Has anybody ever thought about cargo trams?
@@VintageCR I don't think this would raise the price of a Mersedes eActros that much, maybe they could svap one of the four batteries on it with this system as those big Tesla batteries they use are quite expencive.
Also Volvo are building battery powerd trucks and they got an order for about 100 of them a couple of weeks ago.
@@VintageCR The costs to install catenary along highways will be peanuts compared to the stupendous costs of the highways themselves. When road construction costs are somewhere between one and two million dollars per lane mile, the added catenary is just an incremental cost.
We had these in New Zealand for buses. They were slowly phased out as the system got old because the cost to upgrade the system was way too expensive.
Population to small, maybe.
@@rogerjamespaul5528 It's impractical. The only way it works is if government bans more efficient diesel engines and spends billions on subsidies.
@@kilobyte8321 or let power companies run buses and trucks
@@qjtvaddict What's that going to solve? You still have to foot the massive bill for the infrastructure and motors.
@@kilobyte8321 You mean less efficient. Diesel engines are only about 30 to 40% efficient. Electric motors are over 90% efficient.
I see it more as one of transition phase to replacing lorries with trains again. This lorry pantograph does use much less fuel than traditional one (which is great), but wears itself unevenly (due to lorry constantly going slightly from left to right) and tires still wear out - not to mention, that each lorry can only carry one or two containers each, which isn't really a good use of space. I'm certain should this solution be implemented, we will soon have projects to add additional trailers to each lorry (as one powerhouse could easily carry all of them), allowing them to perform large-scale operations and unclogging this lane - and then, finally, realise that it's much cheaper and efficient to do all of this with trains and contiue its development - or even replace these lanes with railway tracks.
I'm not saying this solution is a gimmick - I'm just saying it won't serve as the most efficient solution long-term, and could serve as a way to return to traditional means of hauling cargo. The only places this could somehow manage to still be around would be where it's impossible to lay out tracks, but where roads and this grid could fit.
Yes, I see your point of view as a graded rebalancing towards railway systems taking back their pre-eminent position in a multimodal logistics system. A nudge back to electrification of transportation is sorely needed by government subsidies for e trucks
@@YaduMathur The main problem with rail is that it needs capacity to justify implementation. It takes a ton of space an capital investment to make it runing.Tram or troleybus style electro pickup system may help to bridje this gap in capacity and decrease cost of such shipping.
Until a train can get off its tracks and drop stuff off at any warehouse, store or home, I don't see a train replacing trucks in these use cases.
The question is, does the cost of building out large amounts of these across major roads result in savings in delivery costs over ZEV trucks that don't use this charging system. The more trucks you have using this, the more economical it becomes, but it needs a critical mass to be worth it.
@@jdmspotter Trains don't need to do that. You can have lorries at rail freight depots doing the final deliveries, and also the shorter distance journeys that are not practical to transport by rail, while having trains doing the long distance trips, where they are significantly more effective. This is mostly what we have now, except long-distance trucking is still a widely used thing. This is probably because rail freight is nearing capacity, which means the solution is to increase rail freight capacity, and get more long distance trucks off the road and their cargo on to trains on tracks.
@@bombardygamer4248 So in other words, trains won't replace trucks.
Here in Brazil, they deactivated the electrical network of the rail network that was left over to replace the electric locomotives for those with diesel engines.
🙁
That's insane!
Didn't they do that in Zimbabwe because the electrification equipment was being stolen, and then switch to steam engines because they couldn't import any oil?
wtf
I can't imagine it in Brazil but maybe ridership has dropped so low it is only economic with diesels?
Pantograph of the truck has already weared some deep grooves in it for obvious reason. -They have placed overhead wire in straight line unlike in train applications where wire continuously keeps swiping on top of the pantograph from side to side keeping the wear on flat surface instead of grinding single groove in it.
They used pantographs to give a theoretical gap for the driver to lag steering within. With wire-swipe setup, they'll have to build 2-truck-wide rig and spread the grid further apart.
The concept is already looking like a failure. They'd be better off, building dedicated truck-lanes with steer railings (like Aussies did for their busses), i.e. _make a system, which will hardly make it to and even break,_ financially. *And then* they'll have to sell it to the working class. It'll be amusing to watch, at least.
@@jayswarrow1196 they have those busses in Essen. Or had, since they are replaced at the minute
@@jayswarrow1196 Well just add one or two more things to your idea and you voilá, you rediscovered trains. The beauty of this approach is that you don't need to have yet another dedicated lane unusable by other traffic requiring even more specialized vehicles but you can actually make use of the existing infrastructure (because the highways are already there!).
And after you solved every problem
1: wear put the line in a zig zag pattern
2: the truck has to drive precisely there now -> use something to steer automatically
3: this is financially not feasable -> put more cars on one "engine"
Bam! You have a freight train! Germany invented a stupid version of freight trains…
@@ibimsbodenhansel3230 The problem in a densely populated country like Germany is that you can‘t just build railway lines to every single warehouse. You still need trucks for that.
I remember seeing an idea like this about a year ago for charging electric cars on the road. But instead of a pantograph wire, it used induction magnets embedded in the roadway.
That would be a lot more expensive and a lot less efficient. This is a well tested well working technology.
@@asdfghyter That is all true, but one of the reasons they were looking at linear induction charging was to make road charging accessible to cars too. Both solutions can work well for charging trucks. But considering a car's smaller size, and the unpredictability of drivers on your average highway, a contact pantograph-wire system might not be feasible or safe enough for most cars on the road
@@iliketrains0pwned Cars have different requirements. If the goal is efficient passenger transport - use a bus, and the same Pantagraph tech. Cars are small, because they are also light. And... they usually have ONE driver. Battery tech that requires a 30 min recharge right when the human is getting sleepy is a GOOD idea. Trucks simply can not use the batteries from Cars because they are too heavy - so they need a way to extend their range to usable limits.
That's a shame that Germany's electricity grid is not very eco-friendly...
Agreed, fully. The Germans do a lot of things right, but one mistake they've made was shutting down nuclear plants to back up renewable power at night and when there's no wind.
compared to what country and source please
How about France, which uses mostly nuclear power and has lower CO2 emissions per MWH generated than Germany.@@zznd4754
@@zznd4754 It's neighbour, France
@@pxidr France? The Country with so many Nuclear Power Plants? I don't think so. Before you say that it's eco-friendly, it's not. The Waste it causes is beyond imaginable and will last for thousands of years.
One issue - grooving on the carbon strip on the pantograph. You can see it in the video @3:05
Normally railways solve this by zig-zagging the wire back and forth, as this combines with the predictable lateral position of the train and wears the pantograph evenly.
Here, you can see the wires cutting into the pantograph quite deeply.
Good catch!
From my understanding they are replaceable, so much like tires, they wear down over distance and need to be replaced every so often.
I mean, that's easily solved by simply swapping out the pantograph's carbon strip every so often. I'm assuming they can be recycled, but even if they aren't, it would still be cheaper and better than the gallons of fuel used for the same journey.
You think that a project with millions behind it and tons of engineers don’t already know about this? I’m sure they’ll either move the wire or let the natural shifting of the truck do the job
Oil changes turn into pantograph contact changes then?
I think the bigger issue is the height of bridges compared to the height of the tallest trucks that run through them. Some trailers only clear motorway bridges by inches. Though with this system, only a certain percentage of the road needs to be electrified anyway.
I wonder how big a battery a lorry would need for the ~4.5h maximum they're allowed to drive in one stint anyway?
The more I look at this the more it just seems right.
Trucks are already taller than most vehicles, this reinforces incentives for trucks to stay in certain lanes (and won't be a trouble to lower back the attachment if needed to go around something and reconnect a moment later), the lines can be spaced far enough apart to not be a major concern for birds...
It doesn't even have to be across the entire road, since it loads up the truck's battery until it gets to the next section. Ofc, this could get finnicky and need some thinking to not become obnoxious for the drivers as well as be done safely, but it should allow for easier maintenance as there would be less area to cover, and sections would be less affected by one another.
I'm really curious to see where this develops. As well as perhaps ground solutions!
I can totally see this being used at least in specialized scenarios, such as company that sends dozens of trucks a day through the same route. They could have trucks with relatively small batteries to save initial cost and weight
And also with the smart motorways in the U.K. a lot of the pylon infrastructure would already be there.
Yep, it works great for the day-to-day.
@@wobblysauce Also buses and coaches. Megabus could become Megawattbus
Shouldn't containers be taken by rail? It seems more logical to electrify more of our railways and build the hubs based on the existing rail hubs than electrifying miles of trunk road.
Containers are taken by rail or sea, but they require lorries to take them to their final destination. Rail cannot do that.
Roads exist already in the places you'd need to add those rails.
The problem is that rail infrastructure is even more expensive.
And a lot of existing european rail infrastructure is already saturated (largely by passenger trains).
Imagine that small-scale transport to specific locations would require lorries to being individual cargo one at a time, in a way that trains can't sustainably provide (trains being far more efficient for large scale transport). I do agree though that our train systems (both in the UK and Germany, and in theory everywhere else) need the electric overhaul to take the strain off that large scale transport. Tldr pwease mr government give more public transport funding
@@carolineanderson3341 but this doesn’t do the that it does the job what the rail does.
Our city council here in Wellington NZ just ripped out its overhead wires for the trolly buses and replaced them with diesel because the cost to maintain the wires was apparently too costly. We should be putting as much freight onto the rails, so no need for cables on the motorways, and installing cables on local roads could prove too costly.
It depends... mass production and utilization is always cheaper
We used to have trolley-busses that did the same thing for mass transit in London. I’ve seen a lot of folk asking “why aren’t we going back to that?” Well here is the new and improved version apparently
Trolleybuses still exist in places like Kiev and, what I find particularly surprising, Vancouver.
In the 60's I used to go to school on a trolley bus in Maidstone, Kent, Uk. They should never have got rid of them..
This reminds me a lot of streetcars in some cities, the ones that require overhead power lines. I could see this working on highways too.
There are also busses using this principle.
Ideally, electrified trains would be better for the bulk transfer work, but this would allow more flexibility and reduce the intermodal infrastructure needed to go to and from the rail network for the rest.
we had all that here in Germany but the government shut down about half of the railway lines and stations between 1989-2000, and now everyone says "we need more railway infrastructure"...
That's later than I'd have expected. The UK's railways were shrunk by Dr Beeching in the 60s. (According to wild speculation, this is because of Arthur Harris)
@@vornamenachname727 and the tracks left are also used for people. and depending on the warehous locations you'd need a truck to bring it to a station, load onto train, load on another truck at the destination. with this an electric truck and overhead cables you save on longer transport ways to and from the train.
Trains can not go the same places as a truck can
World has moved on from the days you could use intermodal for normal use. It is all about time now and trains are slow. We could return to that though but most palletized goods would never ever do that due to theft and other risks on trains.
:)
Was thinking about this on highways last week, but I hadn't figured out how to deal with the different heights of cars, MAkes perfect sense to go for the trucks and just 1 lane with it
James May's idea of overhead lines on highways is actually coming true!
The Dodgems idea yes!!
There's still a severe lack of disco music and change falling out of pockets however