Scania and Siemens have entered into a partnership which involves the integration of Siemens technology to power vehicles with Scania’s expertise in the electrification of powertrains in trucks and buses.
The partnership means that Sweden may become the world’s first country with electrically powered trucks and electrified roads for commercial use.
Scania says it has for a long time explored the possibilities of electrifying the powertrain in buses and trucks.
Scania continuously strives to reduce heavy transport’s environmental impact, and the development of electric vehicles will be an important part of the transition to a more sustainable transport system. Scania’s powertrain technology with a hybrid powertrain (a combination of electric and internal combustion technology) can be supplemented by electrical transmission through a line in the air (conduction) or powered through the road surface (induction), thus becoming completely electrically powered on electrified road sections.
Siemens has been working with technology, in which vehicles receive power from a wire in the air via a pantograph on the roof. The two companies have now teamed up to develop electrically powered trucks for commercial use.
At EVS26 in Los Angeles in 2012, Siemens introduced its ‘eHighway of the Future’ concept, involving the electrification of trucks and selected highway lanes via overhead electrified wires similar to how modern day trolleys or streetcars are powered on many city streets.
The eHighway solution is an environmentally friendly, sustainable and efficient solution for today’s truck transport. It will use less fossil fuels, substantially reduce CO2 emissions, reduce pollutant load in residential and agricultural areas, and, most importantly, will be very easy to integrate into existing highways and infrastructures.
Siemens has developed the supporting technology necessary to make the eHighway a reality: infrastructure, software, hardware and drives.[wzslider height=”400″ lightbox=”true”]
