Voyage into the new Mobility
In the context of the energy and transportation revolution, a heated debate is currently taking place around electric drives with batteries or fuel cells and the use of power-based and biomass-based synthetic fuels in internal combustion engines. As a result, a robust dialog between industry and academia is becoming increasingly important.
Tobias Weber, Senior Vice President R&D Mobility at Voith, developed the perfect platform for this purpose – the Voith TechTalk series was designed to bring leading industry representatives and researchers together. The objective is “to recognize what is worthwhile from the company’s point of view and to use this knowledge to develop marketable products,” says Weber, describing the overarching goal. The next event on November 4, 2020, will focus on the current state of research into the mobility systems of tomorrow. To this end, four leading researchers will be speaking in Heidenheim on “The Future of Mobility – Innovation or Disruption?” Some of their key findings and predictions are presented below.
We need openness to technology again
When it comes to road transportation, we are currently seeing a politically propagated paradigm shift towards electric drive systems for both passenger cars and commercial vehicles. EU Directive 2009/33/EC explicitly aims to ensure that every bus service operator systematically and successively migrates to buses powered by batteries or fuel cells (including hybrids), because these are the only vehicles with zero tailpipe emissions.
But exclusively focusing on these vehicles’ use out on the road in isolation – and thereby completely ignoring the other stages of the life cycle – can lead to fatal conclusions. The “zero emissions” generated by electric vehicles in operation can, for example, result in significant environmental drawbacks due to potentially higher emissions during vehicle production or within the fuel supply. This results in the wrong environmental standards being applied to buses used for public transportation. As a technology-neutral researcher, I consider the disruptive strategy of European and German politicians to be irresponsible and call for a technology-agnostic approach based on regulations that stipulate the end result to be achieved rather the technology to be used.
A comprehensive environmental assessment of public bus transportation systems requires that all stages of the life cycle be included in the analysis, as well as local and global emissions from these processes. Then the life cycle assessment would show that with Germany’s current electricity mix, the use of alternative electric drive systems wouldn’t result in any improvements.
Electric bus development is still in its infancy for the most part, whereas conventional diesel and natural gas-powered engines for urban buses have reached a high degree of maturity. Modern combustion engines with exhaust + aftertreatment systems that meet the Euro VI emission standard operate virtually emission-free. The only action needed is to conserve fossil fuels. In the case of internal combustion engines, synthetic fuels (also known as “e-fuels”) are the most promising option, as they can use the existing infrastructure for energy distribution and refueling without any modifications.
Although the energy efficiency of the electrified path is disproportionately higher than that of liquid or gaseous synthetic fuels, it plays a marginal role in the case of infinitely available renewable energy sources in other regions of the world – meaning the existing infrastructure also makes e-gas and e-fuel concepts promising.
Hydrogen is the Fuel of the Future
According to a study by the Institute for Techno-Economic Systems Analysis, reducing Germany’s greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by the year 2050 is feasible from both a technical and economic perspective. Achieving a 95 percent reduction results in considerable additional costs.
Both battery electric and fuel cell vehicles require substantial investments in new infrastructure concepts. For a market penetration of 20 million vehicles, the cost of a charging infrastructure for electric vehicles (approximately 50 billion euros) is significantly higher than for a hydrogen infrastructure (approximately 40 billion euros).
Compared to battery electric vehicles, the energy density of the power generation system is five times higher in fuel cell models. Furthermore, fuel-cell drives are energy efficient, although their efficiency is lower than that of battery-powered vehicles. The fact that hydrogen produced from green electricity can be stored for an extended period of time and is also available when no solar or wind power is generated and fed into the grid is important in power systems with a high percentage of renewable energy sources.
Hydrogen is an excellent transport medium for importing renewable energy from distant locations that produce solar and wind power. This would create a flexible “hydrogen pool” from local and national sources. If existing natural gas pipelines were used to transport hydrogen, pipeline costs over long distances would be reduced by 50 to 80 percent and lead times for planning, approval, and construction by about half.
Hydrogen technologies harbor considerable regional value creation potential. The market for battery technology is largely dominated by China and the United States. In contrast, Germany and Europe have good chances of playing a leading role in fuel cell technology.
Source: Study by the Institute for Techno-Economic Systems Analysis (IEK-3):
“Transformation Strategies for the German Energy System between Now and 2050”
Developing new concepts through open innovation
The mobility revolution requires a fundamental change in thinking. We lack experience for the extremely complex tasks, particularly since a well-established and successful system like the automotive industry is very stable and difficult to change. However the enthusiasm for sustainable technologies and green innovations is growing, and the economic potential is becoming apparent. At the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI in Karlsruhe, we were able to prove that although electric transportation requires an investment in power grids, electricity prices for households fall when there are a large number of electric vehicles on the road. In another study, we showed that plug-in hybrid vehicles have the same potential to reduce CO2 emissions as electric cars powered entirely by a battery.
Looking to the future of mobility, it isn’t enough to limit research and development to alternative drive technologies, sensor systems, and the integration of vehicles into data networks. Societal developments and real-world problems demand new concepts.
Sustainable innovations must, first and foremost, provide solutions to human needs. We need a completely new understanding of mobility – the focus is no longer on the car as a stand-alone product, but on a service, namely mobility. It means self-determined participation in social life. The transformation is not merely a technological and economic challenge, but a social one.
We need a research infrastructure that brings together academia, industry and the general population. This dialog requires open-mindedness and the recognition that knowledge from other areas is valuable and useful. This can lead to achievements such as the georeferencing of worldwide locations accurate to three meters by the London-based startup what3words – within a year the system had been incorporated into Daimler’s mass-produced vehicles.
Opening up organizational boundaries, open innovation, in order to use external knowledge and external technologies or to apply unused internal knowledge outside of the organization’s core field of business, is becoming increasingly relevant. An organization’s ability to combine ideas from customers, suppliers, researchers and startups with internal expertise is referred to as its absorptive capacity. It can be characterized as a dynamic capability that allows companies to react flexibly to environmental changes. Environmental changes, for example, that led to the need for a mobility revolution.
Opportunities for buses and trucks
Artificial intelligence (AI) is still in its infancy in automotive engineering; the completely driverless car is still a long way off because of the countless eventualities on the road. Buses, on the other hand, could operate autonomously and at a higher frequency around the clock in their own dedicated lane. This is equally conceivable for trucks driving autonomously as part of a convoy.
Within the scope of the INTERACT project, we are currently studying the integration of autonomous trucks into the operations of modern, restricted-access container terminals at the Port of Hamburg. In contrast to trucks operating on public roads, vehicles in these closed-off areas are highly automated. The biggest problem is the communication between vehicles of different manufacturers and operators, as well as the insufficient infrastructure – the large amounts of data that AI has to process require a high-performance cellular network that covers the entire area. There is also still a long road ahead in terms of safety and general testing procedures.
I believe automated bus depots have outstanding prospects, as automation can offer major competitive advantages. Operators really only need a small amount of equipment to cut costs. As confined, controlled areas with highly predictable traffic flows, bus depots are currently among the places best suited to the introduction of driverless vehicles.
One of our research teams recently conducted a study at a bus depot in Stuttgart-Gaisburg. Everyday, 150 public transit buses pass through here and stop at several different locations. Apart from cleaning the inside of the buses and maintenance, nearly everything else can be automated. Our projections showed that the depot could save over 100,000 euros in personnel costs annually as a result of automation, while simultaneously increasing throughput and decreasing the number of collisions. Many other depots could achieve even greater savings. We are now working with a select group of German public transportation authorities to implement the concept in real operations.
