WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

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- As petrol and diesel get phased out

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and batteries become better and cheaper,

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electric trucks are slowly
starting to become a thing.

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But the trouble is you need a
massive battery in each truck,

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plus the infrastructure
to charge them all.

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It'd be great if you could
somehow charge up electric trucks

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while they're on the move.

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Well, the world already has
a proven, tested solution

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for sending power to massive,
fast-moving vehicles.

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Electric trains have pulled
power from overhead wires

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for more than a century.

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So why not put those wires over
the first lane of a highway

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and let trucks connect to it
while they're on the move?

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- So it's been running for 21 months now

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and will be at least for the next year.

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The full-scale scenario for Germany

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would be to equip 1/3 of
the German highway network

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and that could reduce

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2/3 of the greenhouse gas
emissions by heavy trucks.

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But for sure, there are pros
and cons in the real world,

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and we want to be sure

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before we are going into the
future with such a system.

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There were a lot of safety
concerns in the beginning,

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so we had to discuss everything

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with fire brigade and police and so on.

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We have the voltage level of a tram

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and the electromagnetic fields
are lower than on a tram,

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so that isn't an issue.

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Overtaking is absolutely no problem!

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You just set the indicator
or leave the lane

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and the pantograph will
automatically drop down immediately

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and they are free to go.

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So in that part,

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a battery or the combustion
engine will take over,

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and you will have the full
power without interruption.

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- One of the things that's
really obvious sitting here

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is that the technology works.

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Like, we're running off grid power now

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and it's really, really quiet in here.

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There are two main uses
for big trucks like this.

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One is last mile delivery,

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picking up lots of items from warehouses

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and taking them out to individual shops.

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Most of that is going to be away
from the trunk road network,

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so eHighway wouldn't work for that,

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but those trucks tend to
take shorter journeys anyway,

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and they're sitting idle at night.

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So those could charge at the depot.

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The other use for big trucks

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is taking containers
from ports to warehouses,

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or from one depot to another.

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Almost all of that traffic
goes along big trunk roads like this,

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and that could all be converted
to run straight from the grid

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with batteries taking a
couple of miles at each end.

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Roll that out,

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and suddenly you're
replacing a lot of diesel.

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- What you're doing is

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bringing the electrons to
the vehicle in a cable,

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rather than trying to carry
them in a box in a battery.

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It's the most efficient solution,

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the most efficient use of energy.

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We think that it's possible

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for the system to pay for itself.

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It's possible to set an electricity price

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sufficiently cheap for the truck operator

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that the lower costs will pay for
the additional costs of the lorry

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in about a year and a half,
something like that.

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And we think that it's possible to use

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some of the money that comes
back from electricity sales

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to pay the infrastructure provider

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in a way which will make that

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an investment that's
fundable by private finance.

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And we think there is enough
money left on top of that

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to pay a tax to the government
to replace fuel tax.

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Where you've got real difficulties
is some of these journeys

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into really remote parts of the country.

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And there's a strong
case for saying, look,

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in some of those journeys,
let's have a hybrid vehicle.

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But the majority of the
system works very well

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on very efficient electricity,

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and you can do it quickly.

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So I think that's an attractive
thing to do if you can.

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- We've had more than a century
to develop delivery infrastructure

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that's based around
combusting fossil fuels,

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and that's going to end in
the next couple of decades.

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Britain is planning to ban

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the sale of new petrol
and diesel trucks by 2040,

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which sounds like the far future,

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but it's actually only 18 years away.

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The rest of Europe won't be far behind

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and building those
wires above enough roads

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could take up most of that time,

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if that's the solution that's chosen.

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So right now we know the
basic technology does work.

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That's what's been tested here,

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but a lot of things that technically work
can't be built economically.

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If we want to keep to that date,

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then the UK has somewhere
around three to five years

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to figure out if this is just a gimmick

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or whether it's worth
investing the billions

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that it'll take to roll this out.

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Personally, I try not to give
predictions about the future,

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but I wouldn't be too surprised

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if those wires become part
of everyday life on the road

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in the next couple of decades.