Many trains of 100 cars are pulled by a single 4000 horsepower locomotive engine. Each rail car weighs 250,000 to 287,000 pounds giving a power to weight ratio of about 7000 pounds to 1 horsepower. That about as much power as 4 Tesla S Plaids. Not fast acceleration, but once moving on the almost completely flat rail road, trains are amazingly efficient. The most amazing thing to me is actually the road bed. Imagine how much punishment it takes since each rail car can weigh as much as 3-3.5 times the weight of a fully loaded semi, or a fully loaded triple axle dump truck or a fully loaded ready mix concrete truck, or one of each all at the same time. WOW!

Growing up, way back when, my next door neighbor drove locomotives in our local steel mill. I was able to see the system of tracks from the top of the hill we lived on overlooking the great complex of buildings and tracks. Every day they had to take the slag, the impurities founding molten steel, and dump that into heaps that were later turned into gravel and concrete after it had cooled and was crushed. It was fascinating to watch and listen to. At night, when they dumped the slag, the entire valley would light up in orange flames as the top, cooled layer was tipped off showing the still molten core. Daily fireworks for free.

@LDJSFGKJSFDOUKJ

6 ай бұрын

Great story.

The Chicago, South Shore, and South Bend Railroad has been electrified from the start, running on highish voltage DC produced in their own substations (at least back in the day). Carries passengers and freight to this day throughout the 130 mile or so course around Lake Michigan and east to South Bend, IN. The realizations of the applicability of BEV to this application are amazing and encouraging.

@lavectech

9 ай бұрын

I like the idea of dual purpose electrified lines. Even if just part of a line was electrified you could top up batteries while in motion when there is cheap power available. I like mainly charging during the day when there is solar power available and driving them at night. If all electric, the normally loud cargo trains could operate throughout the night even through cities like Sydney Australia from Botany to Lidcombe. That line is partly already next to an electrified passenger line which is transitioning to be a driverless Metro line. Meanwhile the cargo line is not electrified even though the poles go over both sets of tracks but with no wires above the cargo lines.

Thanks for having us on guys!

@lavectech

9 ай бұрын

You're onto a great idea. These would be great in Australia NSW where the government thought hydrogen would be good and we know that was not the case and they are all still running old diesel engines with very loud breaks to slow down through cities like Sydney in the middle of the night.

If you have a 100 cart train with 20 of those EV, with regen you can retrieve a ton of energy back. At speed, rail is super efficient

😊 Tremendously interesting. So much more to green technology than EVs and the variety displayed on the NYK channels is very refreshing.

As someone who spent his entire career in transportation and logistics, I find this technology to be game changing. If it's done as well as the ceo presented it, this can definitely be massive.

@ConrailQuality775

2 ай бұрын

As someone who actually worked for the railroad in the field, this is incredibly stupid.

Amazing interview. Twiggy Forrest could really use your (Tim) skills to optimise his iron ore train set. He is thinking wrong way, brute force ugly. If this could work for autonomous urban, could have more frequent small trains at suburban end, but link into long trains at congested city terminus (where frequency already near limit). Tim is one smart man.

Rail + autonomous carts seems a no brainer

@ConrailQuality775

2 ай бұрын

until you actually see how the railroad works, and then you realize just how stupid autonomous railcars actually are.

Even as a kid I always believed in the "concept" of trains with 1 in 10 or 1 in 20 intra-train locomotives! When this happens we can have trains de-couple & re-coupling without the entire train coming to a stop! FANTASTIC to see someone finally get this "drone locomotive" working but I would not be at all surprised if the Chinese with 42,000km of HSR already working on this too except the Chinese also have the added advantage of superior signalling... I think USA is about 100 years behind! Absolutely LOVE the name Intra-Motev. We will have a team in Kansas City-Overland Park-Shawnee so it makes sense to cooperate! In Australia, we are "so smart" that we removed overhead electric replaced with diesel - I was hoping to do a "save diesel system" along the lines of Intramotev but we already have 50-60 projects already! I will definitely approach Tim Luchini

if ever there was a mode to work out how to make piezoelectric work, this would be it . plus - capacitor/battery combination

AWESOME discussion...

Regenerative braking is a huge issue, I'm surprised that locomotive manufacturers have never pursued this energy savings.

@Jack-pd4ps

9 ай бұрын

They have and it didn’t work out well

It’s easy to see how downtime could be used for battery recharging. Also you could install a few miles of downhill catenary for cheap electricity. Building track used to require a lot of manpower. They now have big machines which remove and replace ballast, and install ties with a process that is largely mechanized. The installation of catenaries could benefit from much of the rail laying process. In Europe lines were electrified at a time using either electrified rail or overhead catenaries. The use batteries and mechanized catenary construction could completely change the approach to train construction and their construction economics. The continued use of #2 diesel can’t continue. Autonomous vehicles in conjunction with purpose built car carriers and autonomous rail operations might result in Chunnel type operations. Imagine if AV vehicles loaded themselves on to car carriers that offered food and sleeping accommodations. Train operating speeds at 175 mph with cars onboard that would autonomously unload themselves would largely remove the need for train stations and associated personnel.

This might be your most interesting interview, for me. I really hope this concept works as well as explained and takes over the industry.

@ConrailQuality775

2 ай бұрын

Trust me, you don’t want this taking over the rail industry

Scheduling trains is a complicated affair, most lines are single track, head on collisions are best avoided. So dispatching single or double cars every which way at will is not said and done. Add to that the fact that railways are owned by a handful of companies, which makes them a deep moat business.

This concept is a game changer in many ways. Having the regenerative braking means that the trains should be able to descend steep hills (Saluda?) with safety, while at the same time recharging batteries. Next, depending on how the consist is set up, it would be a matter of someone pulling the pin and taking the section of train to a client, rather than going past the client then going back. Limited local shunting could also be done with this system, thereby saving time and money for both the railway and shippers / receivers. A further point to look at: Could the Dynamic braking be channeled to the batteries, if these wagons were behind the motive power, thereby reducing load on the resistors and adding further charge to the batteries? From what has been told to me, if the resistors get too hot, the Dynamic braking cuts out. One thing that needs to be mentioned: One of the European train builders has done away with air brakes on their trains. This was due to a fatal accident in one of the major cities in France where the train crew knocked a stop cock and purged the trains brakes. Coming downhill into the station, they discovered that they had no brakes and finished up in the second coach of a departing passenger train. It is noted that you have a hand / parking brake attached.

Portugal is electrifying their Algarve rail line that’s about 150km with overhead infrastructure. This cheaper option would have it up and running quickly and save millions

Such a great idea even for people carrying carriages!!

we know what happens to battery backs sitting out in the cold for days on end...or in a very hot desert environment....sooooo??

Not understanding the value proposition. In a captive situation at say a mine, you need to get the ore from the mine to be processed at an on the premises facility to extract the mineral from the rock dug out of the mine. So you would have five, ten or a hundred of these EV freight cars for transportation of the ore a mile or two from the mine. I assume in a traditional mine situation, you have robot controlled locomotives transporting the ore. So what is the advantage ? Also in a regular full feature rail company, do individual EV cars complete the last mile autonomously. This seems awkward to have a EV railroad car or cars on the public tracks clogging up the system. Final question, assuming an EV rail car is in a longer group of traditional freight cars, can the EV car either assist the locomotive and run on it's own or can it switch on regen to recharge the car thanks to the power of the locomotive ?

if a million cars are just sitting around, it makes sense someone adds batteries and solar panels, so each can add to any of his systems, just need to be plug and play.

What is the cost to make one, and when will each one start to pay for itself 🤔. It could be too early to say exactly, a ballpark figure would be helpful ❤❤❤

It is a simple and straight forward solution of making each car into its own self-powered robot. A robot that can share its battery pack's capacity with other cars up to a certain limit, and then work collectively towards getting each car to where it needs to be in the most efficient manner. I'm not sure why the interviewing hosts are having a hard time grasping the idea.

would really like to view a segment on Precision Fermentation any possibility please

This would have solved the UK HS2 using batteries rather than expensive overhead infrastructure

You would certainly have to make sure that the signalling systems are pretty robust with PLENTY of redundancy to communicate adequately with these trucks if theres no human on it to use visuals.

Put a generator on each, keep the batteries charged.

'Electrified solution'

Is there a market for Amtrak?

@vijayanchomatil8413

9 ай бұрын

If you can automate single car passenger service like this, it will bring back profitability in that area.

@ConrailQuality775

2 ай бұрын

@@vijayanchomatil8413dangerously unsafe but ok

I think the problems of integrating this in the general rail network are overwhelming. Think about the charging infrastructure required. Efficient computerisations would provide better efficiency.

@danharold3087

9 ай бұрын

I think they can solve the charging but wonder about what happens in the switching yard.

@laughinggas5281

9 ай бұрын

​@@danharold3087I think he was trying to describe the autonomy concept in the video but it was sort of Lost in the conversation. The difference here is that the railroad owns and controls everything on the rail as opposed to on a highway every car has its own mind and has to sort of guess at what the other vehicles and people are going to do. They can easily build this so that every single car can talk to every other car, and know their locations speed Direction content Etc. This information is probably already available to the control room for the railroad, but now the intelligence of what to do with the data has to be pushed out to the Railcar

@vijayanchomatil8413

9 ай бұрын

The Charging and switching can all be automated in the yard. Not a problem at all. They have to have redundancy..

But with 5 cars with each 20kw of solar panels why cant they charge at 100kw??? and constant daytime self charging? sounds good to me!

There’s always someone trying to take someone else’s job.

👍👍

EV Train + Battery car swappable is better and is just like the old "Coal or Wood" train with a Coal Car. Just quickly swap out the Battery car for more range and to put the Battery car in position to charge for next use. EV Train would also have a battery onboard and both would have regen breaking.

The economy of scale on this is horrible. Autonomous individual cars will move way less freight per hour than one long train, in every single scenario.

Two parts, if you dont own the rail these are running on, it is a nice shine toy sitting in place. Second, large corporations in the LTL and small parcel world have been looking into the electric transition for over a decade heavily so they can claim they are green, yet only care about getting massive tax payer funded subsidies taken from one person to give to big corporations. The part no one ever talks about is the grid and the infrastructure required to charge something more than a small Tesla battery compared to a Rig or god forbit Rail battery. The main reason the world will not be electrified is actually not the batteries, it’s the grid behind it and economy of scale actually works very bad. So then people will say next, well then lets just upgrade the grid n matter the cost, yet have no idea what they’re talking about. There’s a real reason our power grid is nearly a century old in many areas. My issue with all these types of ideas is, Yes you can have a solid idea, yet also have no idea what it actually takes in all the things no one thinks about to scale it up beyond proof of concept. And please don’t say as every good Demo(crat now is we just need money as all government programs do because there already beyond massive grants and funding available to businesses and insane incentives, funded by the taxpayer for carriers to switch their fleet, no matter if more efficient or bad for the planet, just as long as labeled Green.

How to invest in intramotiv

@user-yn5sk5ru5g

9 ай бұрын

Have you done a company analysis before investing? Dont invest in a company you dont know

@marsmotion

9 ай бұрын

look for their ipo...atm they are venture private funded....

@ApteraEV2024

9 ай бұрын

Ohhh ELON!??😅😅🎉

what happens when one car breaks down and paralyses a whole trunk line? what happens when an unmanned car catches fire with no one there to put it out...or runs through a RR crosssing and hits a bus full of kids?? why not just use them as assist vehicles on a large train and use the train's weight for regen breaking

@I_Dont_Answer_Questions

2 ай бұрын

Awww... look at you. Showing everybody you collection of bogeymen. So proud!!!!

I hope they get as bug as Tesla one day

This is fantastic! Such a great thing for our air quality, which means less illness and death and a cheaper healthcare system

I cannot help but be very sceptical about this proposition. Perhaps there might be usecases in the USA (3% utilization sounds shockingly low to me), but as a railway engineer with more than 10+ years of experience in western Europe, I cannot see this system being used over here. The (western) European railway network has very high usage, with almost always mixed traffic (goods and passengers). All the available trainpaths are already used by regular train traffic (eg long freight trains with a dieselelectric or fully electric locomotive and passenger trains). There is simply no time/space available for small autonomous trains running around between these normal trains. In short traffic management will be bottleneck here. Next to that large portions of the network are already electrified, with a large push to further electrify the track (installing catenary). This removes the usecase for batteries. For the less intensively used lines there are already pilots with hydrogen locomotives.

@cordrann

9 ай бұрын

I don't know why that makes you skeptical. Based on this presentation this is very clearly targeted toward the US market where public transportation is anathema and the middle of the country is just empty land.

@That-Guy_

9 ай бұрын

In the long run an overhead power system would be better than batteries for rail.

@thomasarts603

9 ай бұрын

I have given it some more thought, and you are right that I should not have assumed them to be (also) targeting the European market. However, this concept seems to me to be most useful in railway networks that are intricate and (inter)connect many different locations/factories that require only a small amount of freight per month, e.g. small scale industry. That means many small stations, and lots of railway infrastructure (more or less a track to every town with some industry), as is the case in (western) Europe. My understanding of the US railway network is that it is more long-haul based, and connects mostly mayor hubs. It therefore lacks the intricacy and interconnectivity to fully support this concept, as most smaller scale industry deos not have a railway connection nearby. For long haul 'empty land' hauling it is cost effective to use regular trains.@@cordrann

@cordrann

9 ай бұрын

I think that is one of the main points of the system though. It can be part of a regular train crossing the country and then disconnect at urban destinations that have more developed rail networks and make the logistics of switching trains for distribution in that more complex system an automated process. @@thomasarts603

@vijayanchomatil8413

9 ай бұрын

He did say it will be short lines or proprietary lines.

I think that's dumb... Why not make a smaller engine that is able to pull one to 4 cars? Instead of a powered hopper or box car or intermodal flat car. Sorry.. Not a good idea.

Esg score is a black rock manipulation tool, i hope thats not innthe discussion a few yrs from now.

What about coupling, uncoupling, brake hose connection? Short distances of cantenary for recharging rather than trying to electrify thousands of miles of track? @intramotev

You lost me at ESG.

In a bit of a skeptic when it comes to self-driving cars when we don’t even have self-driving TRAINS yet and they ride on effing RAILS!! Even diesel trains are electric.

Another grift

Wow I can't believe what a waste of resources these individual rail cars are...... Not green at all ..... Disgusting.......

@That-Guy_

9 ай бұрын

We should be doing overhead power for rail not batteries.

@KingAquariumJunkie

9 ай бұрын

@@That-Guy_ or get rid of the diesel components in the locomotive

@danharold3087

9 ай бұрын

@@That-Guy_ I have to wonder what the cost of overhead + the electric engines would cost.

@earnmyturns6305

7 ай бұрын

@@That-Guy_Up in the air lines are increasingly costly with this climate weirding we are witnessing. I feel the existing power lines and telephone lines should go in the ground. They don’t knocked over by trees, ripped by frozen rain, they don’t start forest fires nor electrocute ospreys. And the landscape looks so much more tidier. You look at the videos of Tesla Bjorn over in Norway, you seldom see power lines on poles along where he drives. Alpine villages are picture perfect uncluttered by those unsightly power lines.

@ConrailQuality775

2 ай бұрын

@@KingAquariumJunkieyou’re pretty dumb, aren’t you?