Comparative Study of Freight Traffic Electrification Technologies: Electrified Highway and Hydrogen Fuel Cell

Freight transport with heavy trucks has emerged as a significant energy-intensive sector and a major contributor to carbon emissions in China's transportation industry. The diesel consumption in this field represents approximately 40 % of China's total annual diesel consumption, while the CO2 emissions account for approximately 50 % of the total annual CO2 emissions in the transportation industry. Under the background of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals and energy revolution, it has become an inevitable trend to build a green, secure and efficient road freight mode and promote the low-carbon and clean transformation of heavy freight transport. So far, the electrification options of freight transport with heavy trucks mainly include charging, battery swapping, hydrogen heavy trucks, and electrified highways. This paper mainly introduces the hydrogen heavy truck and electrified highway options. Based on a dedicated coal transport route, the economic efficiency and application scenarios were compared and analyzed between these two options from a perspective of cost estimates. The analysis results show that, for this dedicated coal transport route, when the annual traffic volume is greater than 2.0483 million tons, the electrified highway option is more economical, while on the contrary, the cost of the hydrogen heavy truck option is lower.