Project ELISA – electrified, innovative heavy traffic on highways

The state of Hesse is geographically located in the middle of Germany and in the middle of Europe, thus facing high traffic loads and especially transit traffic. Hessen's roads are high-performance traffic routes. With an average daily traffic of 2 million vehicles on highways, Hesse has the highest traffic congestion of all German federal states. The pollutant emissions are enormous and half of Hesse's energy consumption flows into the transport sector.
ELISA shows the way in which the transport sector can make a significant contribution to achieving the national climate protection goals. This is scientifically proven by a comprehensive field test.
In the first part of the ELISA project, the eHighway Hessen was built over a distance of around ten kilometers on the A5 highway. Within two years, the project partners set up an overhead line system that can supply overhead line hybrid trucks with energy. This created the technical prerequisites for the field test.
In the second phase, the eHighway system will be tested on the infrastructure side over a period of four years until the end of 2022. Traffic, energy, technological, ecological and economic aspects that are relevant for such an expansion of the system are researched together with science and logistics partners. The Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety provides five trucks for the field test in Hesse. These are used by the logistics partners in their real transport processes.