Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - AEROFLEX (Aerodynamic and Flexible Trucks for Next Generation of Long Distance Road Transport)

Teaser

The transport sector contributes to about 25% of total CO2 emissions in the EU and is the only sector where the trend is still increasing. Taking into account the growing demand on the road transport system and the ambitious targets of the EC’s Transport White Paper, it is...

Summary

The transport sector contributes to about 25% of total CO2 emissions in the EU and is the only sector where the trend is still increasing. Taking into account the growing demand on the road transport system and the ambitious targets of the EC’s Transport White Paper, it is paramount to increase the efficiency of freight transport.
The vision of the AEROFLEX project is to support vehicle manufacturers and the logistics industry to achieve the coming challenges for road transport. The overall objective of the AEROFLEX project is to develop and demonstrate new technologies, concepts and architectures for complete vehicles with optimised aerodynamics, powertrains and safety systems as well as flexible and adaptable loading units with advanced interconnectedness contributing to the vision of a “physical internet”. The optimal matching of novel vehicle concepts and infrastructures is highly important, requiring the definition of smart infrastructure access policies for the next generation of trucks, load carriers and road infrastructure.
The specific technical objectives, main innovations and targeted key results are:
• Characterise the European freight transport market (map, quantify and predict), the drivers, the constraints, the trends, and the mode and vehicle choice criteria
• Develop new concepts and technologies for trucks with reduced drag, which are safer, comfortable, configurable and cost effective and ensure satisfaction of intermodal customer needs under varying transport tasks and conditions.
• Demonstrate potential truck aerodynamics and energy management improvements with associated impact assessments of the new vehicle concepts, technologies and features developed in the AEROFLEX project.
• Drafting of coherent recommendations for revising standards and legislative frameworks in order to allow the new aerodynamic and flexible vehicle concepts on the road.
• To achieve an overall 18-33% efficiency improvement in road transport / long haulage by 2025+.

The new innovations developed in the AEROFLEX project will show their first results by Mid-2020. In summary the innovations will show:
• A complete new layout of powertrain, a distributed powertrain along the complete vehicle to enable splitting the vehicle in driving units.
• An advance energy management to optimize energy management, reduce emissions and ensure safe operation of the vehicle.
• Aerodynamic features for the complete vehicle to reduce emissions at all conditions keeping maximum operational use of the vehicle.
• Smart devices for the loading units to connect them with a cloud service and improve the utilisation
• A front-end design to improve survivability in case of crashes
In the mix of innovations results of efficiency improvements can be expected around 10%.
In one wave, an opportunity and challenge knowing the current way of daily operations and legislative restrictions hamper implementation. It is obvious that an in-depth discussion with policy makers and logistics industry is needed to have a discussion how to implement a new performance based legislative framework, as Australia and Estonia apply, to enable the implementation of the innovations and the wider use of the EMS concept. It became clear that only by having this performance based legislative framework supported by the SIAP the efficiency improvements and reduction of emissions will be achieved! For this reason 2019, intensive workshops are planned with stakeholders to discuss the challenges and opportunities regarding the performance based legislative framework supported by a Smart Infrastructure Access Policy system.

Work performed

In October 2018 the first phase of the project was closed and first results were shared and agreed with the Sounding Board, representing all stakeholders. The main statements out of the first phase are:
• A wider use of Higher Capacity Vehicles (HCV) in road freight transport can provide contributions to the EU CO2 reduction objectives in the segment of road freight transport.
• Regarding the defined vehicle concepts, the recommended enhancement of the EMS (European Modular System) concept further improves the efficiency of road transport in a multimodal context.
• Regarding the logistics operations, the variety in transport stays large; low & high density goods and from long to short haulage that determines a different potential of CO2 emission reductions.
• A precondition is the need of consolidation of freight.
• A transformation of the assets (semi-trailers, boxes, wagons, cranes, locomotives) into smart devices will be a pre-condition for the future role of the vehicles and loading units in the logistics.
• Smart Infrastructure Access Policies (SIAP) for optimal matching of novel vehicle concepts and infrastructure is highly important.

These results and statements are based on the current technologies. First customer use cases evaluations show efficiency improvements up to 30% and beyond

Final results

The strategic aim of AEROFLEX is to achieve an overall 18-33% efficiency improvement in road transport / long haulages by 2025+.
Results achieved until end of March 2019, the first reporting period, are based on the current technologies, and are very promising. First customer use cases show efficiency improvements of up to 30% and beyond. The new innovations developed in the AEROFLEX project will show their first results by Mid-2020. In the mix of innovations results of efficiency improvements can be expected around 20%.

In one wave; an opportunity and challenge knowing the current way of daily operations and legislative restrictions hamper implementation.

It is obvious that an in-depth discussion with policy makers and logistics industry is needed to have a discussion how to implement a new performance based legislative framework, as Australia and Estonia apply, to enable the implementation of the innovations and the wider use of the EMS (European Modular System) concept.
It became clear that only by having this performance based legislative framework supported by the SIAP (Smart Infrastructure Access Policies) the efficiency improvements and reduction of emissions will be achieved! This was confirmed at the ACEA / DG Research stakeholder event in May 2019.

Website & more info

More info: http://www.aeroflex-project.eu/.