eHighways present an opportunity to electrify heavy trucking, by conveying medium voltage power via overhead steel catenary lines, through a pantograph, to an electric or hybrid-electric truck. This data-file captures the economics of eHighways, covering capex costs, returns and sensitivites, both for road operators and truck operators.
The CO2 intensity of trucking can be reduced by considering alternative truck types that combust gas or hydrogen, by fully electric trucks (albeit with limited range), via biofuels such as renewable diesel, or as explored in this data-file, via providing electricity directly to trucks, via overhead catenary wires and a pantograph.
This latter technology has existed for over a century and has been trialed out for eHighways around Europe and North America, including across pilots and proposals, whose costs are tabulated in this data-file, into eHighway economics (chart below).
eHighway econonics are thus built up in this data-file, from first principles, based on other TSE models, including for new distribution lines, transformers, interconnections, steel for poles, EPCI margins, truck costs, EV batteries, motors and other vehicle components.
Hence our base case for eHighway economics sees a 10% IRR for an eHighway costing $2.5M/km, buying power at 10c/kWh and selling it at 25c/kWh to 200 trucks per hour; which in turn achieve 10% IRRs through the lower costs of input energy versus $5/gallon on-highway diesel (or renewable diesel), modest CO2 savings, and across half of all of their annual miles driven, to amortize a $50k higher vehicle cost per truck.
This eHighway system avoids 150,000 gallons of diesel per kilometer of eHighway per year, or around 10bpd of diesel per kilometer per year, which is equivalent to avoiding 1,500Tpa of gross CO2 per kilometer per year. If grid CO2 intensity is 0-0.4 kg/kWh, then the net CO2 savings are around c20-100%.
Numbers can all be stress-tested within the different tabs of the model, in order to show the sensitivities between eHighway costs and different economic inputs (example below). The most important variable is achieving high utilization, both on the electrified routes, and on the the trucks that are capable of harnessing their electricity.
Please download the data-file for our numbers into the economics of eHighways. The eHighway concept, pros, cons, opportunities and challenges are discussed in our recent research note.