Greening and Safety Assurance of Future Modular Road Vehicles

摘要

In Europe the majority of goods are transported over the road, but road transport also faces future challenges: climate change, growing demand, congestion, urbanisation and scarcity of resources. These trends point towards efficient (intermodal) long haul transport between hubs using multiple, standardised loading units. This vision collides with the current EU regulations on weights and dimensions for commercial vehicles, which has not seen significant change over the last decades. On a national level some countries have already introduced EMS (European Modula System) vehicle combinations with an overall length of 25.25 m. Countries like Canada and Australia use a "performance based standards" approach in their legal framework. It can be shown this approach provides a better indicator for vehicle stability than just prescribing the overall vehicle length and number of articulation points. Several vehicle combinations have been analysed, ranging from standard EU, EMS and future concept vehicle combinations. It can be shown that vehicles with increased size are much more cost efficient (TCO reduction 15-50%), have a reduced fuel consumption and CO_2 emission (4-38% lower) and can operate safely within the existing infrastructure. A road classification system is necessary to control the access of these long vehicle combinations to the road network.