Take the electric motorway, then continue on the road to ruin
July 19, 2021
By Paul Homewood
The Conservative Woman on the government’s latest loopy green plan:
AFTER the advent of the ‘smart’ (aka killer) motorway, stand by for something else to make your travelling experience more interesting . . . the electric motorway.
In the Government’s demented drive for ‘net zero’ carbon by 2050, sales of diesel lorries are to be banned from 2040 in favour of (yet-to-be-invented) electric versions.
And to power these eco-compliant heavy goods vehicles, one plan being mooted is to string thousands of miles of overhead high-voltage cable lines above the inside lanes of motorways, similar to those bordering railway tracks.
Full story here.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
How about a better idea. Use ICE powered lorries ?
Overhead HV cables on thousands of miles of motorway? Come down out of that tree and we’ll talk to you? They still haven’t managed to electrify the railway lines West of Bristol after heavens knows how many years, so what chance have they of a vastly bigger project?
The f-ing idiots haven’t electrified the railway past Bath … the catenary posts are partly installed up to Box tunnel which they spent millions lowering the track and then some clowns seemingly hadn’t run a track gauge through “listed, world’erritage” Sydney Gardens in Bath (won’t fit) so the leccy trains are snookered getting to Bristol.
It’s an amazing balls-up that nobody wants to talk about.
Stonehenge underpass – no problem
Pave the tracks and run ICE buses on them. Cheaper and more efficient.
Has anyone calculated the current needed to power the number of lorries on the M25 or M6.
It is one thing to have a train running down the tracks every 10 to 15 minutes, but with a continuous flow of lorries on an e-motorway lane the power needed must be enormous.
Translated to the current needed to provide this energy, which seems to be about 2kWh per mile for a medium sized lorry, what voltage is proposed ( too high and there will be a risk of sparking, the public are kept away from railway lines by high fences ) and how big a cable will be needed to carry the current?
If the cable has to be copper then what tonnage will the whole scheme require?
What would the voltage losses be along the cable?
How will the electricity be fed into the cable, and how will it be generated, wind?
It seems as if we are back to batteries again to cover the times when wind doesn’t blow, as is happening now. See gridwatch.
I can imagine the fun when power is lost on a section of motorway with long queues of lorries waiting for power to be restored.
Trolley Trucks? Sounds like an intercity version of the old inner city trolley bus and tram technology. Limited use and inflexible operation for trucking operations. It will never work.
Some US based enterprises claim to have developed ‘quantum glass’ battery technology. Some sort or silicon core instead of lithium, claiming 100% charging in a matter of 5 minutes or so, many times more range and endurance and far more safety and stability from the charge reservoir than that provided by lithium.
California also claims to running thousands of ‘blue gas’ powered vehicles. An ammonia based fuel emitting only water and offering comparable flexibility, cost and performance to petroleum based fuels.
If either of these two ‘holy grails’ prove to be anything more than pipe dreams from their supporters and investors, then anything else proposed by Britain or any other national government will just be more hot air. The very thing they claim they are trying to eliminate.
They are rushng into this idea when it may well be feasable to put induction pickup coils UNDER the road surface.
Only feasible if they allow nuclear power to be built to supply the electricity needed, and it will only be for a few of the main roads, too expensive given the technology we know today.
But why would we even consider doing that, there is plenty of oil for the next several 100’s of years, again, given the technology we know today.
But the climate ‘emergency’! Planet killer! 😎
David,
it is possible, but hardly feasible.
Induction coils are far less effective than direct transmission and far more expensive than the crazy idea of installing overhead lines.
railways are 33,000 Volts, rails are the return circuit……so going to need 2 wires above, Anyone remember trolley buses…they were a pain. Trucks have 6 to 12 litre engines so 125kW to 250kW. lets say we go for 1000 volts (still classed as low voltage just) so need 125Amps to 250 Amps…. going to build up pretty quick. I think they just make things up.
Er…just go back to rail freight then.
There was a good reason why road freight was better. Cost and efficiency.
But hey, in the brave new eco world what does it matter if the never ending stream of idiotic government policies supported by all main political parties makes everything less efficient and therefore hugely more expensive. I mean, what’s that compared to saving the planet?
Mr Scientist,
rail is excellent for bulk goods but in the days of palletisation, it is not a workable idea. The amount of handling and short distance truck use would not make it practical for most goods that are carried by road transport.
They’re not really interested in saving the planet, They just want to mop up as many of the green votes from the liberal lefties by stealing their agenda. Well, it worked for a Blair and Cameron, so maybe Boris is following the same line. Electrical or otherwise.
Note to government. We have electric motorways. They are called railways. We stopper using steam some time ago.
Still getting them off their diesel habit. Finish that process first? There is a reason we use ICE trucks that can go anywhere, within reason. Bulk road freight on motorways is the very best solution to a cheap and flexible distribution infrastructure with current technology. Railways, Trams and Trolleys are not. The Swiss put cars on trains until they could afford tunnels through the mountains, then they stopped. Remember overnight car sleepers? Back to the Future is a stupid way to go. It’s interesting why long haul car trains have not returned……
Does anyone actually think about the reality of what they are suggesting before speaking in this government? A PPE degree makes you are good for nothing, except politics where knowing things is not a requirement, rather the facts of reality get in the way of their “Imaginative thinking” instant ideology – and a good argument. Facts and physics are so inconvenient. And you can pay a “scientist” to “prove” your idea to be good, then distort the market by subsidy so the best idea becomes unprofitable versus the delusional one.
Hence the MO for good for nothing politicians.
Could I just add: If putting lorries’ cargo on to the railway, what will be needed at the termini for all these goods trains? Will we go back to suburban goods yards with many hundreds of (medium to large) lorry transfers per day so that goods can be delivered locally? How much delay will that cause the goods delivery industry?
The French city of Limoges still has trolley buses for public transport.
It is one thing to ‘still have’ but a completely different one to ‘introduce’.
I have re-read this a couple of times now. I’m not going mad am I?
The government’s message has nothing to do with trucks. The message is:
“Net Zero is possible.”
It’s not. Monthly announcements like these are intended to get people to believe the impossible.
One keeps thinking “politicians cannot get any more stupid” and they always prove you wrong.
Hear, hear!!!!!
Shapps?
I knew it.
I think some research physicists should be deployed to see if he really can bend light.
I’m guessing that his SPADs tee up things to embarrass him – but they’re wasting their time -he’ll say just about anything put in front of him.
Readers might be interested in this bit of history regarding electrified travel between places, including to recreation places. This one is about Liberty Lake southeast of Spokane Washington. Lat/Long: 47.6472, -117.0794
Note all the long white (summer) dresses in the photo.
http://www.libertylakesplash.com/news.asp?id=22693
Apologies to my more sensitive fellow travellers on this site but, in a nutshell, the idea is complete bollocks.
If the UK was an individual or private company it would have been declared bankrupt long ago. We simply can’t afford to string thousands of miles of astronomically expensive electrical systems across the country in order to make transportation even more inefficient than it is already. And this would be on top of all of the other green spendthriftery, whilst, palpably, doing diddly squat to change the weather – which, apparently, is the sole reason for embarking on this farrago of nonsense in the first place. The plan, alongside all the other phoney electrical wet dreams coming from HMG, and their green acolyte NGOs, is complete bonkers.
“AFTER the advent of the ‘smart’ (aka killer) motorway,”
..Nope Henry lost me there
that is a lazy libmob line
It is sad that some people died on smart motorways, but they are not killer motorways
I have not seen stats that say the per mile death toll is worse
rather there are less deaths than the old way.
In my experience the “smart motorways” haven’t made much difference to congestion in many (most) places and road throughput (the prime raison d’etre). If they had – we’d never hear the end of it ….
M4-M5 interchange just generates more speed fines when they arbitrarily drop the limits.
The M4 at Reading is a farce – the road there needs 2 more full time carriageways each way between Reading west and Bracknell.
The Department of Transport should be able to evidence their plans and claims – they don’t – what are we to make of that?
Trolley trucks? … they need to have a clear out at DoT
“the road there needs 2 more full time carriageways each way between Reading west and Bracknell”
I was up in Charlotte yesterday. First time in years. I noticed on I-77, they had 2 “express lanes” going north, in addition to the other lanes. The express lanes were empty. All traffic was concentrated in the other lanes. Government spent enough money to fix the traffic problem, but restricts use of the solution because reasons.
I forget the exact words but Arthur Bryant described one autocratic “saviour of his country” as possessing the ability “to start with a shaky premise and argue with impeccable logic to a dubious conclusion”.
All that is happening because no-one in government or the public service ever examines the shaky premise of AGW, but head off with what they think is logic to a very stupid result.
The electric vehicles concept is fine,. The concept just needs a little development, like changing the power unit to something. More flexible.
Also easy and quick to refuel with minimal infrastructure changes?
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/highways-england-lays-out-roadmapto-net-zero-by-2050?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=govuk-notifications&utm_source=9cfb1029-de62-450c-aab1-e01c3b5f31c8&utm_content=daily
Yet another thing occurs to me: At the moment, if a juggernaut runs out of fuel on the m-way he pulls over and waits for the AA (whatever); if a fleet of E-juggernauts are on the m-way and the power goes out….
(Fast-fwd to a dystopian future. The MOD has converted all it’s supply trucks to EV/’Trollies’. War breaks out and munitions and supplies need to be moved quickly and easily. The enemy blows up the power substation for the trollies. Surrender. Learn Mandarin.)
The BBC has been hyperventilating repeatedly over the last 12 hours:
“Met Office has had to issue its first ever extreme heat warning.”
(Barely said or buried in the small print – the MO only just made the warning up.)
It’s mind-games, like naming depressions like hurricanes.
To paraphrase the weather man on R5Live, well it’s not really that unusually hot for the UK summer, the hottest areas are perhaps a bit more towards the West, it’s usually hottest in the S.East (sounds of a struggle, muffled “get out…. you’re sacked” – might have made that bit up. )
Mac, earlier in the comments, makes the only point that needs making on this.
This is supposed to be done because weather. Or because global warming.
And it can have no effect whatever on either one. Particularly not weather.
This concept is being trialled in Germany:
https://www.power-technology.com/news/germany-launches-first-electric-highway/
The idea is to enable battery-powered trucks to recharge on the move for the sections of their journeys where they move onto local roads.
It addresses a couple of EV truck challenges: the need for huge batteries and the consequent charging time (imagine the cables needed…!). So the trucks can have much smaller batteries, saving cost and weight, while still being able to travel long distances and make local deliveries.
The catenaries do not need to be continuous as the trucks can use their batteries for sections where overhead wires are not practical: bridges, tunnels, etc..
It does have potential (sorry!). It would be interesting to see how the economics stack up as it is obviously expensive but the fuel savings would be huge – at least until they start to tax EVs like they do ICEVs – so operators may accept fairly hefty tolls.
Of course there’s no mention of the power demand and how it would be met: moonbeams and unicorn farts, probably!