Energy-aware Time-optimal Routing of Battery Electric Trolley Trucks

Catenary overhead lines have recently drawn attention as a means of extending the range of battery electric trucks. In order to characterize the potential stemming from such an infrastructure, our paper presents a framework to optimize the routes of battery electric trolley trucks jointly with their driving and charging strategies, whereby both static and dynamic charging is possible by either stopping at a station or by connecting to the catenary line, whenever present, while driving. Specifically, we first devise a drive cycle convex optimization model to obtain a Pareto front of optimal strategies in terms of energy usage and travel time. Thereafter, we compute such Pareto fronts for all road links present on a given road network, and leverage them to frame a time-optimal routing problem accounting for battery consumption and charging as a mixed-integer linear program that can be efficiently solved with global optimality guarantees. Our results for the BeNeLux highway network show that catenary lines can significantly reduce the travel time of battery electric trolley trucks, making them a promising alternative to internal combustion engine trucks.