Trains are quite good at carrying weight though, why do you think so much bulk material goes by rail?
Comment on Whoever wrote this headline has never encountered a passenger train before in their lives
Thorry84@feddit.nl 3 weeks agoBesides the first all electric train bit, which is nonsense, it also touts the capacity of the train. It has 120 seats, which may be mind blowing to car heads, but for a train is rather on the low side. Regular passenger trains often have over 200 seats and many have more seats for the same length. For busy pieces of track 600 seats per train aren’t unusual.
It really is like the author has never heard of trains before and has his mind blown by the concept.
Personally I think putting in batteries is kinda dumb, trains need so much infrastructure already and it’s fixed in location. Adding a power delivery system (like overhead power lines like most electric trains have) is really easy. That way a lot of weight is saved, thus making the whole thing more efficient. You also don’t need any special materials to make it, compared with huge batteries. And the wear components are a lot less expensive to replace.
Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
Letstakealook@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
The article states 500 passengers…
scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 3 weeks ago
So I’d say still hardly “MiNDbLoWINg”
Letstakealook@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
That is probably in reference to the tech used, it is exceptional for a battery powered train. This just seems like negativity directed at tesla/musk (they do such for myriad reasons), even though they aren’t the manufacturer, just the operator.
scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 3 weeks ago
Nope. UK already has battery powered trains in operation. Trust me, I’m a full blown train nerd. The only remotely interesting things is that it happened in the US, and even then the better option was electrification.
Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
There’s room for batteries in the rail industry.
Diesel electrics rely primarily on dynamic braking. To save wear and tear on friction brakes, they convert kinetic energy to electrical, and then to heat in a giant resistor bank.
Add a couple battery cars, and dynamic braking becomes regenerative braking.
Theoretically, you could back feed the grid with that electrical energy, but if you do that, the train’s primary braking system is now dependent on a connection to the grid, and that doesn’t seem like a particularly good idea to me. All of the “stop” systems need to be far more reliable than the “go” systems.