A plethora of decarbonisation pathways have been suggested over the last few years and it has been generally accepted that substantial progress towards more sustainable transport requires a significant contribution from the freight sector. Deep decarbonisation of road freight by conventional means is difficult, so alternatives need to be investigated. One of the most potentially beneficial approaches is electrification which is the subject of the paper. The challenges of conventional electric freight vehicles for long-haul operations are discussed and then innovative power delivery systems that could alleviate the problems are reviewed. A logistics concept to provide a framework for the electrification of most road freight transport operations is considered and based on that, simulation tools and methods are presented to set the performance requirements for a practical system. Finally, four case studies are developed for assessing the feasibility of electrification of various road freight operations. Overall, it is shown that electrification of road freight is a viable route for more sustainable transportation.
An urban charging infrastructure for electric road freight operations is explored in this paper. The city of Cambridge UK was chosen for demonstration but the same methodology could be used for other cities. The five Park and Ride bus routes, the refuse collection operations and two home delivery operations are investigated. Data about existing operations were collected to define accurate drive cycles. Different vehicles are modelled for each operation and their performance is evaluated over the defined drive cycles. Different charging infrastructures are proposed for each operation to ensure that electric freight vehicles can be used for similar duty cycles as conventional vehicles. The additional power demand, additional load, capital cost needed and the CO2 emissions savings for each case are calculated. The results are scaled up for the entire city and combined with estimated performance requirements for electrified urban deliveries. A complete urban charging network for road freight transportation at Cambridge would increase the power demand of the city by 21.6 MW (20.4% of the current peak) and the energy consumption by 50.6 GWh per year (6.3% of current consumption). The total capital cost is calculated at £149 million which is similar to the cost of other city's projects.
An autonomous taxi service has been proposed as a sustainable urban transport system for current and future cities. A critical review was conducted to examine whether the proposed technology can alleviate the negative side effects of urban transportation. The study investigated issues related to environmental impact, social sustainability and required infrastructure. A methodology was proposed to estimate the levels of demand and define the system performance requirements for an autonomous taxi to serve Addenbrooke's, which is a medical and research campus at the University of Cambridge UK. The size of the fleet, the capacity of the on-board battery and a charging infrastructure were suggested. Implications for the electricity supply network were also explored. A financial analysis showed that such a system is financial viable.
It has been generally accepted that electrification of the road transport sector could be a critical step for coping with climate change. Charge-on-the-move is considered to be a critical enabling factor in moving towards electric vehicles and roads. The development of individual charging devices for implementing in-motion charging has been rapid but their integration with the road infrastructure at national scale is still in need of more comprehensive consideration. This work focuses on the challenges of the technology at the level of the system and aims to outline the performance requirements of a national power infrastructure suitable for implementing charge-on-themove. A UK strategic overview suggests that the installation of a nationwide charging infrastructure of this type is economically feasible. From an estimation of electric vehicles' power requirements in conjunction with UK road traffic data the baseline of the anticipated power demand can be established. Finally, a simulation tool was proposed to investigate the application of dynamic charging and the effects of system design variables on important performance parameters of travelling electric vehicles.
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