Since the end of the 20th century, many efforts have been made to reduce human environmental impact. In particular, the field of “Sustainable transport”, that can be defined as the ability to meet today’s transportation needs without compromising the ability of future generation to meet their transport needs (Black, 1996), experienced a serious growth. The main goal is to significantly reduce the amount of CO2 emissions and the economic impact of new solutions, improving safety. There is no doubt that achieving an effective rate and direction in technological change is an essential ingredient to achieve sustainability (Greene et al., 1997) and, as a result, a lot of new technologies are now available, but they clearly suffer of lacklustre market diffusion (Steinhilber et al., 2013). This extended abstract will investigate this inertia through a socio-technical analysis of eHighway implementation in Italy.
In 2016 a new system was introduced by Siemens and Scania to improve sustainability of truck transport: the “eHighway”. This new concept consists in upgrading existing roads with energy supply systems that ensure a reliable energy supply for the eHighway hybrid trucks, which can run both with fossil fuel or electric power; a pantograph, mounted on the roof of the truck, transmits the energy from the overhead contact lines to the electric motor (Siemens, 2017). The pantograph allows for flexible operation of the truck in all traffic situations: when overtaking or at the end of an eHighway, the pantograph lower itself into a safe position (Siemens, 2017). According to Siemens estimation, if 30% of German highways are equipped with the new solution, 6.000.000t of CO2 can be saved yearly, with zero local air pollution caused by the electric drive; on the economic side, a decrease of 75% in fuel costs can be achieved.
The impacts are remarkable, despite the fact that this innovation relies on a very simple technological system: electric wires and substations, intelligent pantograph and hybrid trucks. Whereas the first two are embedded since decades in the railway transport industry (Siemens, 2017), the last two are very innovative technologies, that are nowadays becoming increasingly popular. Hybrid truck is the result of the electrification process in the automotive industry, and it was first introduced by General Motors in 2003. The intelligent pantograph is the key innovation (Siemens, 2017): thanks to its new applications (e.g. hybrid trucks or electric buses) new chances of environmentally friendly transport solutions can arise.
Several technologies and concepts have been developed in the last few years to address sustainability of transport, such as photovoltaic pavement, wireless vehicle charging, alternative fuels and improved infrastructure. Besides their advantages, these technologies lack reliability and have a huge economic impact; on the other hand, eHighway seems one of the best options available for several reasons: (i) scalability: one important barrier to the introduction and use of new technology is that new technologies often do not fit well into existing transportation systems (Hoogma et al., 2002), but existing roads can be easily upgraded with the eHighway infrastructure and, when equipped, remain fully accessible to all other road users; (ii) flexibility: the pantograph has an open configuration structure that adapts to vehicle type, drive system, onboard source of electricity, size of combustion engine and energy source; (iii) safety: safe, reliable and proven technology; (iv) sustainability: zero emissions transports become possible, minimizing local emissions, significantly reducing CO2 and making transports more economical (Siemens, 2017)
The first eHighway prototypes were deployed in Sweden in 2016 and in Germany in 2017, with the goal to test environmental and economic impact. On September 2018, a new eHighway prototype was launched in Italy, where 5 kilometres of roads have been upgraded with the new system: besides Scania and Siemens, already involved in Sweden and Germany, this new project is supported by CAL (Highways granting authority in Lombardia area), Brebemi (The company holding the highway section) and by Ministry of Transport and Environment (Ronchetti, 2018). All the parties are working together to enable sustainable transport: Siemens and Scania are the technological innovators, and, thanks to them, the new technology is safe and reliable, whereas Brebemi and CAL, supported by funding and policies from Ministry of Transport and Environment, are working on improving the infrastructure. The main goal is to reduce the environmental impact of freight transport with economic solutions that improve road safety in the meantime.
Apart from companies and authorities that are directly involved in bringing the innovation, a larger number of actors will be directly affected by the introduction of the new system: (i) eHighway users, such as logistic firms, can benefit directly from operations efficiency and improved sustainability, but they want to rely on a safe and proven system; (ii) A shift to eHighway would require truck manufacturers to acquire new competencies and new business models (Tongur, 2013), without undermining their market position; (iii) Construction and energy firms, involved in upgrading the infrastructures, compete to deliver road construction based on quality, time delivery and costs (Tongur, 2013), creating new businesses and job opportunities; (iv) Petroleum firms will lose their sale volumes and the number of customers would decrease, turning them into new businesses (Tongur, 2013); (v) Local residents can benefit from air pollution reduction but pretend a reduced visual impact on the landscape; (vi) Other road users expect the new solution to maintain road safety. The whole innovation system is moving towards the goal of sustainability, considering also safety and economic impact.
The eHighway technology is very reliable and its implementation leads to many advantages, but some frictions might arise within its development because of conflict of interests: to address this problems, wide-scale intervention is needed (Richardson, 2005). If eHighway diffusion does not reach a certain target it might results in worsening the whole economy: an eHighway without a considerable amount of hybrid trucks would not achieve the goal of sustainability, but it would only affect negatively the economic situation of those authorities who invested in the solution, causing lack of financial resources for improving and maintaining other infrastructures; in the same way, many hybrid trucks but without a proper infrastructure would lead in difficulties for logistic companies to meet their shipping terms, worsening their market position and undermining job security. Either supply-side, demand-side and infrastructure-side changes are needed to introduce new technologies successfully (Hoogma et al., 2002) and this is why the commitment of Scania and Siemens toward sustainability is instrumental: opening the intelligent pantograph to other truck manufacturers would ease hybrid trucks diffusion, while benefitting from royalties. Transport companies should be pushed to shift to hybrid solutions: an idea might be conceding a hyper-amortization, to obtain a fiscal advantage on the investment; in this way, more hybrid trucks would travel in Italian eHighway. Regarding the infrastructures, the intervention comes to the transportation system through government and industry initiatives (Richardson, 2005): national government should make available public funding for Infrastructure improvement in “2019 Stability Law”; in this way, local authorities would be more willing to invest and the eHighway could spread, enabling sustainable transport all over the country.
Once the conditions for eHighway diffusion are assured, it is important to reduce the opposition of some actors that could slow down the innovation process. Petroleum firms’ political power might seriously undermine the success of the project, because they do not want to lose market position and volumes, but this seems unavoidable: since Italy imports petroleum, is convenient for the government to exploit cheaper alternatives; moreover, petroleum shortage in the near future push the innovation away from fossil fuels: in this scenario, petroleum companies can change their business, exploring alternative fuels and implementing electric-related services in tank-stations. Then, electric wires and substation might represent a threat to safety: for instance, strong storms might smash the wires, causing dangers for all highway users. Construction and energy firms’ commitment should be focused on producing high quality infrastructure and granting authorities should give priority to quality features rather than only cost and time constraints; furthermore, national government should monitor tender procedures in order to avoid mafia infiltration. Finally, local residents often refer to the negative consequences of energy infrastructure planning for the landscape (Batel, 2013), resulting in slowing down the innovation: a solution might be designing thinner wires and substations with a lower visual impact, and narrowing the implementation to only one traffic line.
The Italian eHighway project represents an important challenge for a country where 80% of freight transport is made on the road : achieving high sustainability standards is important to considerably reduce the amount of CO2 emission. The new system allows to reach important results from an environmental perspective, but its deployment could undermine other factors, leading to an unsustainable situation on the economic and social side. The commitment of companies and authorities involved needs to account job security and safety to not undermine the overall economic situation. Only in this way, the eHighway would be completely sustainable.
References:
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- Steinhilber, S., Wells, P., & Thankappan, S. (2013). Socio-technical inertia: Understanding the barriers to electric vehicles.
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- Blanco S. (2017) There’s Now an Electric Highway in California. Retrived from: https://www.forbes.com/sites/sebastianblanco/2017/11/08/electric-highway-california-siemens/#37828a4074c6
- Siemens (2017) eHighway. Retrived from: www.siemens.com/global/en/home/products/mobility/road-solutions/electromobility/ehighway.html