It sounds as if electric trucks are great for long-range land transport.
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Two reasons why not:
Road vehicles can't share the same rail track as cars;
Double-tracking to allow trains to go in both directions at once gets really expensive.@barbra @david_chisnall If you have enough traffic to double track and it pays then the cost is irrelevant, if not you use dynamic loops.
Road vehicles can share tracks with rail btw - we have these things called trams
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It sounds as if electric trucks are great for long-range land transport. But they require heavy batteries, so rather than putting them on the road (where they'll damage the road surface), why don't we build special metal tracks for them to go on? And, on long trips, join a bunch of them together so that you only need one motor and driver for a load of them travelling in a convoy? I bet you could make freight transport a lot more efficient if you did that.
@david_chisnall I like your train of thought!
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It sounds as if electric trucks are great for long-range land transport. But they require heavy batteries, so rather than putting them on the road (where they'll damage the road surface), why don't we build special metal tracks for them to go on? And, on long trips, join a bunch of them together so that you only need one motor and driver for a load of them travelling in a convoy? I bet you could make freight transport a lot more efficient if you did that.
@david_chisnall That's called Railroads.
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@david_chisnall The logistics sector here is adopting electric trucks at accelerating rate. These are 40 to 60 ton vehicles that move the stuff to grocery stores etc. They typically do two driver shifts per day. Interesting thing is that this is all beancounter operations and it's the cheaper option.
@liiwi @david_chisnall Friends I have in trucking tell me the upfront cost is way way higher (but improving) however the operational cost in the UK is something like 25% of the cost of running a diesel truck. Partly that's fuel and partly down time. Trucks do enormous mileage so they spend a surprising amount of time in bits having things replaced due to wear and tear.
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@david_chisnall
Trains are already diesel-electric. Australia has road trains: a transport truck with many (I saw 7) reefer trailers behind. Why not add electric wheel motors and batteries to the reefer tires to have electric road trains. Canada, with the terrific long-distant transports and at-capacity railways, would be a great place to implement. Add in rolling charging embedded in the highways every 500 km and toss some solar panels on top of the reefers. But the oilmen would buy the patent and then bury the idea like GM did with electric cars.@NMBA @david_chisnall Is Canada like the USA though where the trucks and reefers are owned by different people ? That's always been a problem, as well as the fact many trailers spend most of their time parked so it's a very poor return on investment.
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@david_chisnall decades ago, was flabbergasted to learn my first coding job’s employer (a grain co) usually got $30/ton rates for rail shipping across 5 states. Trucking was 6-8 times that, and the inefficiencies of small-lot (not full rail car) really soar from there.
… tell me we couldn’t engineer a way to let folks hook into this: little bins in boxes in pallets in railcars. Matrushka, and a dollar plops something weighty like a pile of books or preserves or etc anywhere across the country.
@InkomTech @david_chisnall We used to do that in the UK. Our rail companies had parcels services, as did nationalised rail. Then we got a right wing nut job government under Thatcher and they broke it all.
There have been some attempts at doing smaller scale intermodal at stations ("minimodal" the obvious one) but it flopped.
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It sounds as if electric trucks are great for long-range land transport. But they require heavy batteries, so rather than putting them on the road (where they'll damage the road surface), why don't we build special metal tracks for them to go on? And, on long trips, join a bunch of them together so that you only need one motor and driver for a load of them travelling in a convoy? I bet you could make freight transport a lot more efficient if you did that.
@david_chisnall I'd be happy to see a high-speed passenger version of said service.
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Two reasons why not:
Road vehicles can't share the same rail track as cars;
Double-tracking to allow trains to go in both directions at once gets really expensive.@barbra @david_chisnall Good points, but worth noting that (1) trams exist, so road sharing is possible (if not always practical!), and (2) rather than double tracks all the way, you only need to have passing loops at the points where opposing trains cross, which can reduce the cost greatly (in the right situation).
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@david_chisnall M hmm... I see where you are going with this. If I could make a note?
You are providing dedicated paths for these electric vehicles already. Why not include one of the "charge as you go" designs, like an electrified rail or overhead cable to reduce the required battery size?
@Epic_Null @david_chisnall Big clockwork spring under the truck and a giant winder in the road you stop at every so often. No cables, no electrical interference, no lithium needed.
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It sounds as if electric trucks are great for long-range land transport. But they require heavy batteries, so rather than putting them on the road (where they'll damage the road surface), why don't we build special metal tracks for them to go on? And, on long trips, join a bunch of them together so that you only need one motor and driver for a load of them travelling in a convoy? I bet you could make freight transport a lot more efficient if you did that.
In China, those ideas are operating in a port context, with cargo shunts.
On the same principle, we need a massive expansion of rail freight.
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@david_chisnall can't fix your railways, all the money's going into proprietary CargoRail now!
and make it more efficient by running the cargo through underground/elevated tunnels that are in complete vacuum so they can go 500mph
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and make it more efficient by running the cargo through underground/elevated tunnels that are in complete vacuum so they can go 500mph
@maya_b @david_chisnall I think that's an actual, real-life brain fart you're recounting here, right?
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@maya_b @david_chisnall I think that's an actual, real-life brain fart you're recounting here, right?
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@NMBA @david_chisnall Is Canada like the USA though where the trucks and reefers are owned by different people ? That's always been a problem, as well as the fact many trailers spend most of their time parked so it's a very poor return on investment.
@etchedpixels @david_chisnall
There's some private operators but most are drivers for a trucking company. I'm thinking there would be container depots along major highways at the edges of cities for the EV truck trains to switch loads and charge/rest, and have smaller e-trucks distribute the containers into the cities. -
but if we're making fun of techbros regurgitating ideas it's just a matter of time before it's forgettgn as a dream (just like the old sci-fi stories that dreamt it up previously)
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@david_chisnall decades ago, was flabbergasted to learn my first coding job’s employer (a grain co) usually got $30/ton rates for rail shipping across 5 states. Trucking was 6-8 times that, and the inefficiencies of small-lot (not full rail car) really soar from there.
… tell me we couldn’t engineer a way to let folks hook into this: little bins in boxes in pallets in railcars. Matrushka, and a dollar plops something weighty like a pile of books or preserves or etc anywhere across the country.
@InkomTech @david_chisnall 19th and early 20th century European railways inc UK did stuff like that with chalkboards on each railway wagon detailing what was in the wagon and where it was going. A train would be assembled from all sorts of wagons then would drop some off at a yard someplace and pick up some more to take somewhere else. There were also Mail Trains that did the same sort of thing with letters and parcels. (More)
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@InkomTech @david_chisnall 19th and early 20th century European railways inc UK did stuff like that with chalkboards on each railway wagon detailing what was in the wagon and where it was going. A train would be assembled from all sorts of wagons then would drop some off at a yard someplace and pick up some more to take somewhere else. There were also Mail Trains that did the same sort of thing with letters and parcels. (More)
@InkomTech @david_chisnall They had sorting offices on board and could pick and drop off mail bags without even stopping.
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@etchedpixels @david_chisnall
There's some private operators but most are drivers for a trucking company. I'm thinking there would be container depots along major highways at the edges of cities for the EV truck trains to switch loads and charge/rest, and have smaller e-trucks distribute the containers into the cities.@NMBA @david_chisnall I dream of the day a train pulls up in a station and a pile of delivery robots pile out of the wagons and off down the road
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@david_chisnall
The underlying problem is that rail freight gets to include all the costs associated with the entire rail network; while trucks get to use roads that are paid for out of our taxes.@ocratato @david_chisnall That and they dont pay externalities, pollution, road deaths.
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@InkomTech @david_chisnall We used to do that in the UK. Our rail companies had parcels services, as did nationalised rail. Then we got a right wing nut job government under Thatcher and they broke it all.
There have been some attempts at doing smaller scale intermodal at stations ("minimodal" the obvious one) but it flopped.
@etchedpixels @InkomTech @david_chisnall Red Star parcels
