That's great! I remember the Kingston Trio 'MTA' song and now I've got new words! On the idea of cordless trains, I'm going to throw out a crazy conglomeration of 1/2 baked ideas. Suppose you think of the best qualities of trains.a) drives on a steel trackb) has low gradesc) restricted air resistance because trains cars draft each other. Suppose you had something like an autonomous train/trailer/car ..maybe much smaller than a regular freight car, more like a truck trailer that had both rail wheels and rubber tires and a smallelectric motor and battery. (They already have pickups that do that for working on the train) Now use the so called "self driving" stuff to allow it to drive right behind another such train-trailer-car at lower speeds (for energy efficiency) and allow these individual cars to self assemble into a "trains", but with several added benefits. a) Tracks are a more controlled environment for autonomous driving. Also in theory you can drive slower on tracks than on the highway. b) Trailers could self drive off the tracks into a parking area next to any track and potentially get hooked up to regular trucks for delivery c) The these auto freight cars could actually stop at signals and wait for cars instead of the other way aroundd) makes it a lot easier separate freight cars allowing more options for delivery, splitting and assembling trains at will. e) reduces the load on highwaysg) Could cover the roof with solar panels...further increasing range....or if it's just sitting, it could charge it's own batteriesh) no driver needed but having a truck driver drive 10 hours a day at average of 60mph is the same as computer driving 24 hours/day at 25mph and far better efficiency due to drafting, steel wheels,lower speeds, etc...My guess is that the solar panels on the roof are not such a crazy idea when you really reduce the energy requirements. And in theory if you need to charge, you could justpull off at tracks at the next opportunity and just sit and wait and let a battery pack charge up.
On Saturday, November 16, 2024, 4:08:10 PM PST, Lee Hart via EV <ev@lists.evdl.org> wrote: > Well, your comparison is kind of unfair. I'd have a corded car if it were > stationary. Here's a story about a man who never needed to recharge his EV. :-) https://sunrise-ev.com/poems/nocharge.htm -- Excellence does not require perfection. -- Henry James But it *does* require attention to detail! -- Lee Hart -- Lee A. Hart https://www.sunrise-ev.com _______________________________________________ Address messages to ev@lists.evdl.org No other addresses in TO and CC fields HELP: http://www.evdl.org/help/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.evdl.org/private.cgi/ev-evdl.org/attachments/20241117/62018e06/attachment.htm> _______________________________________________ Address messages to ev@lists.evdl.org No other addresses in TO and CC fields HELP: http://www.evdl.org/help/
