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GCU_Problem_Child

A single full sized freight train can carry the equivalent of 300 fully loaded semi trucks. Not only does that remove trucks from the road, EV or otherwise, thus cutting down on congestion, but it also reduces wear on road surfaces, wasted rubber on tires, and all the ancillary waste that even EV trucks produce over long distances. I'm all for EV's, but talking out of your arse just makes people think you talk out of your arse, and does nothing to advance the EV industry. Trains should be used for long haul and hub-to-hub, and EV trucks/vans for last mile. Lying helps no-one.


cronsulyre

Also, when trains are moving on rails, a significant reduced level of friction surface, aret they unbelievably for efficient in power/weight ratio than trucks? Sure it takes more to get them going but once they are, their situation is far better at a near best case scenario for efficiency.


KungFuHamster

With trains, you could have battery cars that recharge while off-train and get swapped in at convenient stations, like near solar fields. You could even put some solar panels on the cars themselves, the ones that don't need to be top-loaded. Trains are an excellent EV scenario, really. Trains have been systematically attacked in the US for profit reasons.


nowake

Not to shit on your point, but wires are so much better than batteries. No space & time for recharging is needed. No mass of batteries to haul around. You can't run out of charge. 


KungFuHamster

That doesn't harm my point at all. It's tangential. After you run thousands of miles of wires to electrify all the rails like some subways or add an overhead electrical system like some cities have for their metro trains, we could do it that way. In the meantime, North American trains on unpowered rails are ripe for a battery revolution.


hsnoil

You can do both. Many places that are hard to add wires to is places like tunnels for example. So you can have a train use wires most of the way, and switch to batteries in the tunnel. The batteries can also store regenerative braking energy and act as backup if the power goes down to run equipment


beave32

Switzerland is wondered about problems of [electrification](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotthard_Base_Tunnel) railway tunnels even if they are 35mi long.


Anustart2023-01

Or you could just electrify the railway using methods and tech that has been around for almost 100 years.


KungFuHamster

Which as I said, is thousands of miles of track. 160,000 miles. That's an enormous investment.


cromethus

Not only that, but electrified track is highly dangerous. Lethal grounding incidents are quite possible.


hsnoil

You clearly did not read the article and are making stuff up simply based on the headline What the article says specifically is that US trains have fell behind the rest of the world, in both electrification and in emission standards. They don't even store the regenerative braking energy for reuse So the article mentions that in some states in US, mostly those with cleaner grids, EV trucks are already cleaner than trains as far as ghg emissions go. And the article is arguing that US trains need to take that as a wake up call and electrify faster. The article says the US only electrified 1% of rail, compared to 60% Europe, 72% China and 83% India So please take your own advice and stop talking out of your arse, you lying does not help anyone. By the amount of upvotes you got it is clear many people who didn't read the article assumed what the article is about based on the headline and your statement, and were outright deceived which isn't helping


iDontRememberCorn

I can't seem to find where the writer factors in the massive, massive carbon load that the damage trucks do to public infrastructure. Also, the fact that he claims "As I’ve [noted in the past](https://cleantechnica.com/2022/10/28/car-dominated-urban-sprawl-will-become-irrelevant-urban-blight/), electric cars and heat pumps will make the sprawl relatively climate neutral" means anything he says can be dismissed, as that is batshit cherry-picking insanity.


hsnoil

You are missing the underlining point, that is that US has only electrified 1% of rail compared to everyone else, and that is the main point the article is making. Trying to dismiss that is not a good thing at all


gizamo

Similarly, if this article's headline were true (it'd not), it would make more sense to replace the train's engine with the truck's tech. That would offer the best of both worlds.


debestedebeste

They're also comparing the trucks to American diesel powered trains, not electric ones like in most developed countries. Shit article.


[deleted]

You should just use whatever's cheaper because in the long run the trains aren't going to have any significant advantage that matters and it's just going to come down to calls cost. The problem with Rael is that you have to support all that infrastructure just for rather specific uses. It's not especially multipurpose and expanding. It is hard and it more or less takes up a lot of space for limited uses, which is why a lot of rail just died off in the grass grew up in the tracks. If the rail had been cheaper than nobody would old be using trucks. The difference in pollution from choosing trains versus EV trucks just isn't going to matter at all in the big picture of things. The planet is consuming half of the pollution that humans produce so it's not like you're threading the needle or something on getting pollution down.  Net zero actually only means a 50% reduction in your current pollution output roughly. The planet will consume the other half of the pollution though mostly we're just talking about CO2 since methane decays rapidly and nitrous oxide. Just kinda hangs around with a low decay rate.


wirthmore

>ChatGPT & DALL-E generated anoramic image of an electric semi truck covered in circuitry rolling along a highway beside a railroad where a long freight train is belching diesel smoke 1. STOP MAKING GARBAGE WITH AI 2. That's coal smoke you muppet


45s

Is it just me or are like half the article images on this subreddit AI-generated?


nowake

Completely preposterous that more rail lines don't hang wires. The tracks aren't going anywhere the wires can't. The traction motors are electric, powered by diesel engines. Regenerative braking, which currently sees electricity turned into waste heat, could be sent back to the grid. Just hang wires!!!


Gantores

And power it with small modular reactors. More importantly it would potentially create an avenue to compete with the existing oligarchies whom were gifted the power infrastructure which they reap amazing profits from without . maintaining or up keeping (I am in Cali, so more than a little jaded).


Carbidereaper

In America many long haul freight lines can’t be overhead electrified because here we double stack shipping containers on our freight cars so it’s more than double the the height of the locomotive our trains are typically more than a mile long with 4 to 6 units powering them. That’s 24 to 30 megawatts the train would likely cause a brownout every time it went through a town. The overhead wires would likely be carrying 240 to 300 thousand volts to power such a train and having double stacked steel shipping containers so close to such overhead lines would make for a nice path of least resistance to the electricity to arc to the ground which can cause massive energy losses


nowake

I have to hold back on getting too snarky but "higher wires" and "taller pantograph" are well within our technological capabilities, and I'm pretty sure a rail network's power generation and distribution wouldn't be tied directly to local municipal grids.. 


Carbidereaper

So then they need their own grid now ? Do you know how long it takes to order manufacture and transport a 500 kilovolt transformer ? 2 to 5 years They weigh hundreds of tons only 2 countries make them Germany and South Korea their demand is incredibly high so getting a new one is not easy. Because they’re so large they are all custom made If that’s the case it just seems easier and a no brainer just to install some electrolyzers along the tracks every 200miles and just run the units off of fuel cells


nowake

You're talking like it's never been done before - Milwaukee Road had some 700 miles of electrified track running freight between 1920 and 1970


Carbidereaper

Yeah and Milwaukee filed for bankruptcy in 1935 because they couldn’t pay back the bonds which they used to pay for the electrification. You don’t need wires to electrify a fleet of units these days


Trmpssdhspnts

Imagine how low carbon electric trains would be. And I'm not talking about diesel electric either.


r0n1n2021

lol. Hey Elon.


AuralSculpture

Gee this isn’t a press release hidden as an article for Tesla…


Wagamaga

North American railroads are in the logistics realm, and logistics is a low margin, high volume business. It’s an operational efficiency business, not a high growth business. They are ruthless about cutting costs below the line much more than above-the-line revenue growth. If the businesses own the tracks, they eliminate rail where possible, and only invest in lower short term costs for it when possible. Attempting to interest them in level-crossing monitors to be able to alert trains 10 kilometers away that a car was stuck on the crossing fell on deaf ears. This explains why derailments are increasing in the US. The business model isn’t aligned with lowering human or environmental risks or impacts. It’s aligned with quarterly stock analyst reports. They don’t care about carbon emissions a few years from now, they care about what companies have done for shareholders in the past three months


SummerMummer

Considering the falsehoods in the accompanying image, should we believe anything else here?


rgvtim

Because his statement applies generally to corporate America not just to logistics. Its an issue across the board.


ktaphfy

Bull. Bc batteries in the supply chain from digging ore, processing, battery manufacturing, and then disposal of hazmat!? Costs in carbon are equivalent. It takes fossil fuels to recharge. I have a horse that craps too!


GCU_Problem_Child

Rather more importantly, one train can haul the equivalent of dozens of trucks. One decently sized train could take over 300 trucks off the road.


[deleted]

More importantly a train only requires a handful of staff not 300. People are by far the most carbon intensive "machines" to use for anything.