Presentation of the “BEV goes eHighway” project
The “BEV Goes eHighway – BEE” project was launched in January 2022. The aim of the project is to further develop overhead line technology for heavy-duty road transport in order to establish fully electric drive alternatives for this sector in the long term.
The “BEE” project focuses on the construction of a catenary truck, testing within dedicated test fields as well as in real traffic, the preparation of user studies on customer acceptance and the determination of potential user groups, technology and potential analyses and an analysis of the essential vehicle interfaces with the final development of a standard proposal.
Within the project, the integration of overhead line technology on the basis of two battery-electric series-production trucks is being investigated and evaluated. The focus is on the viewpoint of the vehicle manufacturer, for whom the duration of the conversion phase of the series vehicle is particularly relevant. However, the vehicle manufacturer cannot currently use any set of standards as a guide to simplify the installation of the pantograph system. During the conversion phase, possible interfaces for a later standardisation of the system will be identified in cooperation with
the pantograph system manufacturers. This will simplify the conversion process in the future and thus create the basis for higher market penetration. Within the project, the research vehicles enable a direct technology comparison of a pure BEV truck and a catenary BEV truck and thus offer the possibility to evaluate the CO2 avoidance potential based on real driving data. The real driving data are determined by field tests.
Another outstanding feature of this project, in addition to the direct comparison of vehicles with and without overhead contact line, is the execution of extensive test drives on the premises of several test facilities in Germany. This will allow the technology to be evaluated on a route-specific basis, thus demonstrating its potential for application on public roads. The expected high volume of recorded data provides a meaningful basis for the technology assessment. On this basis, further studies will then be conducted on, among other things, the necessary battery capacity, vehicle range and payload.
