The eHighway system on the B 462 federal highway between Kuppenheim and Gaggenau has been successfully completed by the consortium of Siemens Mobility and SPL Powerlines Germany, handed over to the customer, and was officially opened in a ceremony today. The eHighway technology provided by Siemens Mobility supplies trucks with electricity, via an overhead contact line, that is used to directly power the truck and charge its batteries.
“The overhead contact line, which has proven itself on highway pilots, can serve as the backbone of climate-friendly freight transport on the road. Functioning as a dynamic charging infrastructure, the eHighway system supports various electric drive technologies and supplements stationary charging. The new system installed on the Murg Valley highway is an important milestone for proving the operational maturity of the system and for gaining further practical experience prior to a broader system roll-out,” says Hasso Grünjes, Head of eHighway at Siemens Mobility.
The highway system in the Murg Valley, known as the “eWayBW”, makes it possible to test the overhead contact line technology for the first time on a federal highway with tight curves and bridges. Five trucks will be used on regular test runs in both directions along the roughly 3.4-kilometer route.
Siemens Mobility’s eHighway technology is currently being tested in three public field trials in Germany. In addition to the new system installed on the B 462 federal highway, pilot projects are running on the A5 federal autobahn between the Zeppelinheim/Cargo City South junction at the Frankfurt Airport and the Darmstadt/Weiterstadt junction, and on the A1 federal autobahn between the Reinfeld junction and Lübeck interchange.
The eWayBW field test, like the other two pilots in Germany, is funded by the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety. In addition, the Federal Ministry for Transport and Digital Infrastructure supports the scaling of overhead contact lines for long-distance traffic in so-called innovation clusters. The National Platform for the Future of Mobility (NPM) recommends equipping 300 kilometers of autobahns in Germany with overhead contact lines by 2023 and electrifying a total of 4,000 kilometers by 2030 to help the country reach its climate target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the transport sector by 40 percent.
SOURCE: Siemens
