Comment by beAbU
3 days ago
You can further optimize the setup by not installing engines/motors in all of them. So maybe you have one car providing locomotion, with the rest following behind and designed for carrying.
3 days ago
You can further optimize the setup by not installing engines/motors in all of them. So maybe you have one car providing locomotion, with the rest following behind and designed for carrying.
That’s actually getting less common; pretty much all rapid transport and commuter trains are multiple units these days, as are an increasing number of intercity trains.
In Ireland, there are precisely two passenger routes still operated with locomotives, and there’s a tender offer out to replace one of them with a (really wacky; diesel, battery, _and_ overhead lines in two voltages!) multiple unit.
And all the power could just come from a few large centralized facilities that are super efficient. We could just use thin strands of metal to get it to the vehicles over head…
Of course, the maintenance on those wires outside of the city means that you'd make electric trains with large batteries on them instead.
https://evmagazine.com/articles/tesla-launches-first-all-ele...
I don't think I buy BEV trains to be honest. I'm struggling to think of a proper reason why they might be better compared to normal electric trains.
But the linked article is pretty light on info, so I'll reserve judgement till more info comes to light.
4 replies →
Expense is correlative to scale, likely it's cheaper to deploy pantographs than battery factories.
Why did India build a high speed freight corridor with overhead power when they could have used batteries instead? Because the quantity of battery to power the trains doesn't exist, and overhead wires do.
If we do all of that, then we won't need to train them to know how to operate in traffic. Perhaps we can give them a name in honour of that fact?
untrains!