Vehicles and infrastructure for heavy long-haul transports fueled by electricity and hydrogen

About the project

A lot of research, development and demonstration efforts are directed towards electric roads and fuel cell vehicles and two of the major demonstration projects worldwide are situated in Sweden: Sandviken and Arlanda. This projects provides an updated view of the technical and economic devel­opment for long-haul road transports fuelled by electricity and hydrogen in a Swedish context. Several main actors involved in the electric road system technologies in the Swedish projects have been interviewed, as well as heavy vehicle manufacturers and hydrogen fuel suppliers.

Three different types of electric road systems – overhead conductive, rail conductive and dynamic inductive – have been studied together with fuel cells. Estimates for the present and future energy, vehicle and infrastructure costs have been derived from literature sources. Some adaptations and assumptions have been made for possible comparisons to the costs of conventional long-haul diesel lorries.

In the beginning of the considered time period (2017 to 2030), the vehicle costs of the new technol­ogies, especially for the fuel cell vehicles, were found to be much higher than for conventional diesel vehicles. Towards the end of this period, the differences were not as significant according to the cost projections. The infrastructure costs of the electric road systems were found to be high and the costs of the dynamic inductive solutions were the highest.