Just a few kilometers outside Gävle in central Sweden, Siemens AG, and Swedish heavy vehicle maker Scania AB has thrown the switch, powering up the world’s first electric highway.
Newly installed wiring above a 1.9 kilometer (2.0 mile) stretch of E16’s slow lane makes it look much like an electrified trolley lane. But this wiring isn’t for trolleys or buses. It is for trucks, big trucks used to haul goods and merchandise.
The railroad running parallel to the stretch of road is already at capacity, so the electric highway will act much like a flexible railroad, says project manager, Magnus Ernström, according to Inverse.
The Scania trucks on the #eHighway are hybrid and Euro 6-certified, running on #biofuel. pic.twitter.com/gWCyupCVoX
— Scania Group (@ScaniaGroup) June 22, 2016
Ernström explains that the eastbound route designed by Siemens is a major thoroughfare for commercial shipping. The project hopes to extend the cables to cover 200 kilometers soon. Any trucks equipped with an intelligent connector called a pantograph can connect and disconnect seamlessly from the cables at speeds up to 90 kph. This will allow trucks to pass in other lanes and continue to operate on non-electrified roads.
Engadget quotes Scania official Claes Erixon as saying the project is “one important milestone on the journey towards fossil-free transport,” while CleanTech Canada quoted Anders Berndtsson, chief strategist at the Swedish Transport Administration (STA), as saying, “Electric roads offer this possibility and are an excellent complement to the transport system.”
The two-year project will test the electrified system, or catenary. Siemens hopes to show that energy consumption will be cut in half compared to conventional internal combustion engines. For the project, Scania manufactured and adapted two heavy-duty trucks for use in the demonstration test.
The pair of trucks will be using diesel hybrid drive, allowing them to operate in areas with conventional highways. By maintaining the adaptability of conventional trucks, this will allow for a phased roll-out of this new technology. By running the test project for two years, managers can determine if the system can be utilized on a larger scale.
Sweden is committed to making their transportation system fossil-fuel free by 2030. And while Sweden’s eHighway is the first of its kind in the world, Siemens says it is currently developing another eHighway project to be rolled out in California in 2017.