Technology
Telescopic Current Collector (TCC) for ERS
ERS – Electrified Road System – is a well-known concept that is now being revived due to the transportation-electrification revolution. Deploying transmission lines over dedicated lanes in-order to charge electric vehicles on-the-move has been implemented inside city-centers and between suburbs.
eLinkAir has been developing new system – Telescopic Current Collector (TCC) – for buses, midibuses and Large Commercial Vans (LCV’s) to connect to the transmission lines of ERS. PrIor art technologies included “Pantographs” or “Trolley-poles”, which were simple mechanical devices. However, their limitations were obvious: Pantograph was used only above rails, and trolley-pole cannot engage or disengage automatically to the transmission lines. Hence, the traditional technologies are used solely on dedicated electrified routes, and do not allow the vehicle to move in and out the route freely.
The Telescopic Current Collector (TCC) of eLinkAir will be equipped with modern electro-optic vision device that will enable it to engage or disengage with the transmission lines automatically. The bus will be able to drive hundreds of kilometers on ERS (example: eHighway by Siemens) without a need for big and expensive battery. It will not need to stop for re-charge either. When the bus will leave the ERS, eLinkAir’s Telescopic Current Collector (TCC) will just fold down on the bus’s rooftop, and the rest of the journey will be done as a regular electric bus with a much smaller battery.
So will be the case with Large Commercial Vans or Light Trucks that spend most of their driving time between cities on highways.
Additional use for the Telescopic Current Collector (TCC) of ElinkAir will be the option to electrify BRT (Bus Rapid Transit) systems inside cities around the world, thus cutting the pollution of thousands of buses in the most densely populated areas.
eHighway Test track motorway A1 near Luebeck, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, June, 14, 2019.