Accompanying research on catenary truck research in Germany

Background

With the growing share of renewable energies in electricity generation, electric drives can promote decarbonisation in the transport sector. Current forecasts assume further growth, especially in road freight transport. Concepts for electrifying the transport sector must therefore be developed, tested and implemented on a large scale for heavy goods transport as well. In its "Climate Protection 2020" action programme, the German government has therefore decided to test electric drives in heavy commercial vehicles in field trials.

To implement this decision, the ELISA (Hesse), FESH (Schleswig Holstein) and eWayBW (Baden-Württemberg) projects have been initiated to test the operation of catenary trucks under everyday conditions. Technical limitations of today's battery storage systems (energy density, charging power, weight) can be circumvented by catenary trucks.

Project objective

The aim of the BOLD project is to correlate the results of the three field trials and other research projects on the overall system of catenary trucks and catenary infrastructure, to make them comparable and thus maximise the knowledge gained from all projects. ifeu is leading the project in the analysis of environmental impacts. On this basis, political scenarios and strategies for a possible system introduction are developed. Experts from the other projects, but also external stakeholders are intensively involved.

The results of the BOLD project thus form a comprehensive scientific basis for the decision on the introduction of a large-scale catenary system for trucks.