* Los Angeles, California, USA: The first public highway in the world with overhead wires to run electric lorries
-- In California the German conglomerate Siemens has been given green light to equip the first public highway in the world with overhead wires to run electric lorries. The project, worked out in Siemens research centre close to Berlin is set to realise the multinational`s eHighway strategy. A 3 kilometre trial section is in use to test the initiative, and subject to successful operation, the infrastructure will be extended to service a full length of highway, the Interstate-170. It is planned that the first trucks will be run on a fully commercial basis as early as 2015... The planned intervention involves a route segment of almost 40km, known locally as the Long Beach Freeway or the “Seven-ten”, which carries heavy volumes of traffic (more than 30,000 trucks per day) between Los Angeles and the port of Long Beach... Authority concern is increasingly directed to enforce measures which can reduce emissions - particularly to tackle the negative pollution impacts from particulate matter and oxides of nitrogen produced by HGVs... The overhead technology is in itself not new, trolley bus networks are currently in operation in some 43 countries around the world, with still some state of the art versions introduced in recent years. Even in terms of accommodating “trolley trucks” or “freight-trolleys, there are many examples to be found across our global industrial history, notably in Russia in the 1950`s or in applications for the mining sector. However these fixed line infrastructures had obvious limiting factors and clear disadvantages in terms of functioning in mainstream traffic situations... The Siemens solution introduces a hybrid truck which can use the overhead cables to run on electric power like a tram or trolleybus. It has no battery and conductors on top of the truck rise or detach from the overhead line at the push of the driver`s button. A power control unit in the vehicle senses when it is receiving electricity from the wires and shuts off the diesel engine. On leaving the route the “conventional” diesel motor takes over again to allow the vehicle to operate in a “normal” traffic environment. As a result vehicles can also move in and out of the trolley lane on the highway to pass slower traffic, reconnecting when the route ahead is once again clear. Quite apart from the potential environmental gains this mobility option is also interesting for long distance freight transportation systems, especially in vast continental conditions characteristic of the USA or Russia...
(Photo: Siemens test met trolleytrucks) -- Berlin, Germany - Urb Act, by mnoon - 27 April 2015Labels: green technology, techno trucks
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