To decarbonise road transport and especially that of road freight, Siemens has been developing the eHighway; overhead electrification at 670v DC using pantographs to power HGV’s along routes such as motorways.
This link from Business Insider gives quite a lot of detail into the scheme.
The trucks themselves are hybrids, able to operate both on the overhead wire as well as away from it. This retains all of the flexibility of a truck, but on trunk routes could lead to huge savings in fuel, and therefore emissions.
This will certainly help where road transport cannot be easily shifted onto rail, which is the ideal as even an electric HGV will cause road damage, as well as the obvious dangers of heavy road vehicles to vulnerable road users such as pedestrians and cyclists.
In my view, a standard should then be established at least Europe-wide, allowing for all manufacturers to supply compatible equipment, meaning if European trucks were to operate into the UK for example they would be able to use the same overhead system and vice versa
Non freight use
The second advantage, much like an electrified railway is that a truly useful system would be multi-purpose; perhaps meaning the return of the trolley bus.
Overhead electric buses (normally called a Trolleybus) are a proven technology, many UK cities adopting them after the demise of urban tramways.
Many trolleybus systems were abandoned as more flexible diesel buses (not requiring wires) became widespread; we now know well the downsides of diesel as a fuel.
As trolleybuses are not used in the UK outside of museum sites to my knowledge, perhaps now is an ideal time to plan for a cohesive electrified road network, where freight and passenger transport can share systems.
In my own view, both freight and passengers sharing the network is the optimal solution; freight transport on major roads opens up a connected national network for mid to long distance buses and coach journeys while in urban areas routes built mainly for buses will happily accept the few HGV’s heading to shops and smaller businesses making final deliveries.
We certainly should avoid building incompatible systems, as this inherently raises costs but also precludes shared routes and the economies of scale of one universal system.
Ryan Hogg 