ITS Mobility Congress in Hamburg: What makes trucks superfluous?

Hamburg The large project of the Hamburg port operator HHLA has shrunk to the size of a model railway: the container station for the Hyperloop tube railway only exists as a model and as computer graphics. The originally planned construction of a prototype in real size fell victim to a corona savings package. HHLA boss Angela Titzrath had to shrink her prestigious project for the ITS mobility congress.

Innovative solutions for freight transport are overdue. There is currently a shortage of truck drivers not only in Great Britain, but also in all of Europe. In addition, trucks and delivery vehicles clog the streets. In Hamburg, the ITS Congress, which takes place annually in different cities, deals with logistics more than ever before. After all, there is hardly any other city where port logistics and inner-city traffic are so closely linked.

Unlike the Hyperloop, two other new types of real-size transport made it to the congress. The southern German start-up Volocopter had its cargo drone soar a few meters into the sky in front of an audience for the first time. And the Upper Palatinate construction company Bögl is showing the container version of its magnetic levitation train in the middle of the port. All three concepts have something in common: A technology almost completely developed by engineers is looking for a meaningful commercial application.

At Bögl, this is particularly evident in the genesis of the project. The construction company, founded in 1929, was already involved in the development of the route for the high-speed Transrapid magnetic levitation train. The TSB train that has now been developed is based on the findings of the time – and should learn from the mistakes. So Bögl does not rely on exhausting the technology for top speeds in a complex and expensive way, but only promises a speed of 150 kilometers per hour. This should keep the costs within reasonable limits. However, this also means that the technology loses its unique selling point: speed.

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Individual containers move automatically

Company boss Stefan Bögl wants to score with other advantages: The route is slimmer than with conventional rail vehicles, the journey is significantly quieter – and Bögl supplies the entire system, including the automatic control, from a single source. This would have particular advantages with containers. In Hamburg, Bögl is showing wagons that are exactly as long as a twelve-meter standard container. Unlike a train on the traditional port railway, you can drive individually and automatically to the respective destination and thus avoid waiting times.

Bögl’s maglev would take over the function of the trucks in the port and transport the containers to a large rail transshipment point, for example. The building contractor promises that his system will be competitively priced with traditional railways at 30 to 40 million euros per kilometer. What is still missing is a first project partner.

“We use the fair to make the topic known,” says Bögl. The response from port operators is great. “We are confident that we will be able to implement a first project in the next two to three years,” he says. His company financed the development itself – with the comparatively low sum of 50 million euros.

“We made sure that we handle the money carefully – because it is our own,” says Bögl. The system uses standard components from suburban trains, for example. The financial risk is manageable: the licensing of the technology for passenger transport to the Chinese partner Xinzhu for the market in the People’s Republic already brings in the development costs. Only 60 employees are involved in the project, which also includes the construction of the vehicles.

A lot of money for drones

The contrast to Volocopter shows how manageable the budget is. According to “Crunchbase”, the start-up has raised almost 370 million euros in risk capital – from DB Schenker, among others. The prototype of his electrically powered flying taxi has already started several times in front of an audience, and the slightly modified cargo drone without a pilot flew under observation for the first time in Hamburg.

Volocopter boss Florian Reuter was lucky: It neither rained nor did the wind on the Elbe blow more than 20 knots. Therefore, the drone was allowed to take off with a special permit for its three-minute performance, on board a European pallet. Reuter hopes that the first commercial flights could not be available until the end of 2022 at the earliest.

But like Bögl, Reuter must first convince potential customers that the technology meets a need at all. After all, the drone with its ten-meter circle of mini propellers lifts just 200 kilograms – much less than a helicopter. “First of all, we had to find use cases in which that made sense,” says Erik Wirsing, head of innovation at Schenker. At the fair, Volocopter will market its drone for special cases: for example for flights to oil rigs, on mountain peaks or to ships. Hope gives the donors the distant prospect of widespread use, for example for logistics in e-commerce in metropolises. The hope is that the drones will then be able to equip delivery warehouses in the city districts and thus replace truck journeys. Prerequisite: The operation must pay off for companies like Amazon. It’s not a deal.

Decreasing hype about the Hyperloop

The hyperloop is still the furthest removed from commercial use. At the same time, the media hype about the transport capsules in evacuated tubes dreamed up by Tesla founder Elon Musk is decreasing. That should have made it easier for HHLA boss Titzrath to shrink her train station. When the idea was presented three years ago, critics already blasphemed: There was little point in chasing containers through a tube at the speed of sound if they had previously traveled a leisurely thousands of kilometers by ship.

More: Hyperloop for sea containers – the port of Hamburg is working on rapid transit

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