Design of an electric motorway - Social-economic assessment

The author reports an exploratory analysis of the economic viability of a solution of electrification of goods road transport based on the use of electrical motorways, i.e. motorways along which a catenary system would be installed to feed trucks equipped with a pantograph (a German research project). The objective is here to assess whether such a project of electrification (financed of not by users through a toll) would be profitable. The author first assesses market costs and non-market costs of each transport mode while taking hypotheses on the concerned traffic into account, and by using a full costing approach. A hierarchy of likelihood of the different studied scenarios is then built up, which allows technological choices to be sorted. Scenarios are based on a reference situation (thermal propulsion), on the use of a hybrid truck on electric motorway, of an electric shuttle tractor on electric motorway, or of an electric truck on a conventional motorway. Then, the author proposes a real-life simulations based of motorway traffic data, and on the use of the Modev traffic model