BEV Goes eHighway

BEE

At the beginning of January 2022, the project "BEV Goes eHighway - BEE" was launched. 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 the long term.

The "BEE" project focuses on the construction of an overhead line 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 developers of the pantograph system. 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 BEV truck with overhead line interface and thus offer the possibility to evaluate the CO2 avoidance potential based on real driving data. The real driving behaviour is determined by field tests. Another outstanding feature of this project, in addition to the direct comparison of vehicles with and without overhead line system, is the implementation 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.