Wirelessly Charged Buses Being Tested Next Year 245
An anonymous reader writes "From the article: 'Bombardier's electric transit technology will be tested next winter on buses in Montreal, followed in early 2014 on a route in the German city of Mannheim. The transportation giant's Primove technology is designed to allow buses to be charged by underground induction stations when they stop to let passengers hop on and off.' This technology while impressive may not make it to the U.S. even if proven successful due to the lack of popularity of public transportation. If they could only get my phone to charge wirelessly."
The article says that the induction charging stuff could also be used to charge trains.
free energy? (Score:5, Interesting)
If you carried a coil of wire with the correct circuitry attached you'd be able to charge your cell phone at the bus/train stop as well.
Re:free energy? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you carried a coil of wire with the correct circuitry attached you'd be able to charge your cell phone at the bus/train stop as well.
In fact, slipping a coil of appropriately-wound wire into your buddy's back pocket will become a popular practical joke.
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My guess is that a transponder on the bus triggers the charging field, so you won't be able to charge for long.
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coin a new phrase: 'catching from free e-fi'
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My guess is that a transponder on the bus triggers the charging field, so you won't be able to charge for long.
That's still plenty of free electricity for anyone willing to grab it, just hop to the bus stop if you see a bus approaching and enjoy.
The strongest field will, of course, be under the bus.
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Re:free energy? (Score:4, Insightful)
And everyone would be much happier.
What's wrong with public transportation? (Score:3)
This technology while impressive may not make it to the U.S. even if proven successful due to the lack of popularity of public transportation.
OK, if you live in the U.S., why don't you ride the bus or train to work?
Re:What's wrong with public transportation? (Score:5, Funny)
Because I'd have to sit next to other people from the US! Really, have you seen us?
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I've seen you.
now, please, do us all a favor and turn OFF your laptop's camera. put tape over it or something. please!
j/k. (I think...)
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In to work
Drive: 20 minutes
Bus: 45 minutes, two transfers.
Out of work
Drive: 20 minutes
Bus: 1:30, two transfers.
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Interesting, where I live and work it's more or less the opposite. I take it the transit outfit where you live doesn't use grade separation for mass transit.
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Just for fun I went to our bus trip planner for the phoenix area:
Total trip time: 2 hr 29 min
Cost $7.00
My drive time: no traffic 26 minutes, heavy traffic 60 minutes. Total cost about 1 gallon of gas ~$3.50 here.
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Here is mine before and after I moved and my job moved offices, which happened within 6 months of each other:
Before
Drive: 25 minutes
Bus: 1 hour with no transfers and a bus that came by every 15 minutes during rush hour
After
Drive: 15 minutes
Bus: 2.25 hours with two transfers and a bus that comes by every 45 minutes during rush hour. Yes, that is right. Even though I live closer to my office by a little over 50% the bus trip takes over twice as long and requires more transfers.
Someone made a poor choice of either the location of their home, or the location of their work, or both.
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OK, if you live in the U.S., why don't you ride the bus or train to work?
Me? There is one direct train that would get me to work, and it leaves 2 hours before I'm ready. If I miss the single direct train coming back, I have to change over, making the trip take about 6 times as long as the drive. And then I'd have to leave even earlier to walk over and get the kids at their two separate schools. I'd be able to work for about 3 hours per day, tops.
My wife works in a crappy part of town and often has to leave work after dark.
So yeah, we both drive despite having readily accessible
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and breath other people's exhaust all the way? You must have an interesting definition of healthy...
Trains?! (Score:3)
A distinguishing characteristic of trains is that they run on fixed tracks. The kind of thing that's easy to put a third rail beside or a wire overhead. Why TF would you need to charge them?
Re:Trains?! (Score:4, Insightful)
Putting up a third rail or wire overhead incurs costs too. Plus, it's sometimes inconvenient when a train track has a level crossing with 'regular' traffic.
I'd be more worried about the huge magnetic fields being generated to transfer energy from the grid to the bus or train. You need a whopping amount of Joules to move a train, and to charge it in the short time it's waiting at a stop requires even more current. It probably would make for a very good hard disk degausser... (not to mention the danger to credit cards, RFID card and anything else with a wire loop in it)
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Plus, it's sometimes inconvenient when a train track has a level crossing with 'regular' traffic.
The 'trains' (aka Light Rail) in downtown Denver happily share the streets with regular traffic (out of downtown they have their own rights of way and grade-separated crossings).
Of course, growing up in Toronto we called them 'streetcars', and they even crossed each others' tracks (and wires).
The point is that if you're not loading the thing down with batteries that need to be charged, you don't need quite so wh
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Yeah I would wonder about building a robotic charging plug. Lose less energy that way, or maybe make it inductive but close coupled and robotic. Like an electric toothbrush.
Bad Summary (Score:5, Informative)
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Induction charging, as it is now, is anything but cost effective and green. Its one of the most inefficient charging methods around.
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speaking as a non New Yorker, public transportation in most of the country is non existant or near worthless ... unless you want to go from the ghetto to the mall
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sf bay area person, here. there was a job I interviewed for that was in 'the city' (san fran) and I live in the south bay area. while I don't normally consider public trans an option for me, I would have considered it for the right job. public would be longer BUT you don't have to fight traffic. and so, it seems a lot of people would take public even though its 'yucky' just because waiting in traffic is yuckier still.
its hell on your car and your nerves.
on public, you can 'zone out' with your book, lap
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Speaking as a New Yorker, ...
And there we have it. You're not a typical American. You're a New Yorker. It's quite a different place from elsewhere in the country.
What a waste (Score:3)
Induction charging, that's rather inefficient. Better to fit the trains with connection pads at the bottom, and have them stop along a solid-contact charging strip in the designated stop area, for direct-wire charging.
Much less to maintain, too.
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I see this more like a pork project for Bombardier from the Canadian government. Considering the huge losses from the wireless chargers and the mass of the bus and passengers, this will be hardly viable on commercial terms, even taking into account the cheap hydroelectric energy in Canada.
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"They tried this, but the contacts corroded and were nearly impossible to clean."
Gold plated contacts tend to not corrode and only need a quick wipe.
You'd waste more money just on the induction losses versus a bottle of windex and a paper towel.
Americans love public transport (Score:3)
Americans would like public transit more (Score:2)
with a nice little carbon tax with a "starter" rate of say $5 per gallon of gas imposed.
It would kill two birds with one stone:
1. Put the brakes on the rate of expansion of fossil fuel use and GHG emissions growth
2. Start making a dent in the US deficit and debt
But of course, being a rational, sensible, simple, and effective policy, this would naturally be political suicide.
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I think we should put a special tax on people who assume that everyone lives in a big city like they do, and has access to a public transportation system. 20% of their gross income would be a good start.
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First of all, that would more than double the cost of gas, second of all, that would have no effect on debt or deficit, the bill would have to be written specifically so that the money could only be used to pay debt, otherwise it would all get spent on tax cuts or Homeland Security. Also, any increase in gas prices generally leads to an overall increase in product prices, because it costs more to ship everything.
You really want to clean up the environment? Instead of artificially raising the price of gas ev
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"First of all, that would more than double the cost of gas, "
Yep. That's the idea:
- Disincentivize and decrease usage of harmful thing
- Provide incentive for innovation in newly tilted market playing field to create effective alternatives faster.
"second of all, that would have no effect on debt or deficit, the bill would have to be written specifically so that the money could only be used to pay debt, otherwise it would all get spent on tax cuts or Homeland Security."
or legislate that the
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Alas some people might think that the best way of phasing it out with top priority and haste is to use it all up as quickly as possible.
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It's not really about attractiveness.
It's about intergenerational and global ethics.
The market has failed on this one, because people, en mass, are not long term thinkers enough, nor rational cause-effect and probability thinkers enough, to value what they ought to value. And the market is driven by what people value.
Let me highlight the market problem another way. How much would you pay annually for an insurance policy that would prevent your descendants in 200 years from living in post-civilized chaos, wa
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You have to walk an hour to catch a bus? That's fucked up. Looks like you need more bus routes. I can't say it's ever taken me more than 10 minutes to walk to my bus stop, that's in Europe and in Asia.
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Or you could turn the argument around. This is about poor planning.
If you intended to use a bus to get to and from work, why did you buy a house an hour's walk from the nearest stop?
Carbon taxes can fund massive transit expansion (Score:3)
I agree that the tax would be unfair if alternatives were not funded well at the same time.
As well as transit infrastructure, it could also fund battery and ultracapacitor R&D, so you could buy an electric car that would compete with a regular car on range, performance, and price.
We have to make a fundamental change in transportation and energy infrastructure as fast as turning on a dime, in case you've been living in a cave and haven't heard or haven't done the math. We have the technology and innovati
Doesn't seem worth it (Score:3)
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Only turn it on when a wheelchair is loading. That should give it plenty of time to charge.
(repost) Welcome to falling behind China (Score:3, Interesting)
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one shortcoming would be that supercaps loose a percentage of their capacity every single time you charge them
Re:(repost) Welcome to falling behind China (Score:4, Informative)
I thought the whole point of supercaps is that they DONT lose capacity, i.e they can be cycled faster and more times than conventional batteries.
Just wait I've been waiting for... (Score:2)
Finally! (Score:2)
Tried in California in the 1980s. (Score:4, Informative)
CALTRANS had an induction-charged bus [latimes.com] deployed in Berkeley in the 1980s. It required precise parking at bus stops, so the two halves of the split transformer could connect magnetically. The system worked OK, but wasn't a huge win.
GE once patented a system where an entire lane had transformers, so vehicles could run on ground power. That was too expensive. It would cost like a maglev track.
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> GE once patented a system where an entire lane had transformers
I believe it's called a Linear Induction Motor ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_induction_motor [wikipedia.org] ), and you can see the demo they built for Disney World in Tomorrowland (assuming it hasn't been destroyed to make room for yet another ride based on Toy Story or Cars) -- The WEDway People Mover ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WEDWAY_People_Mover [wikipedia.org] )
It's not quite the same thing, though, because there's no battery-charging involved. AFAIK, you
And the undisclosed bus manufacturer... (Score:2)
It's already in the US. (Score:2)
http://www.proterra.com/ [proterra.com] makes a wireless charging electric bus that is in use in the Greenville SC area. Obama was down here not long ago celebrating its rollout in the upstate, and my little town [youtube.com] was one of many that received federal grant money to help buy and deploy these systems.
So, I don't know why the article poster though this technology "mignt not make it to the US." Perhaps just a lack of journalistic research... who knows?
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For most places, it's because the service is so crappy. And in places like Chicago, they think the solution is to cut services and raise prices. The auto/oil industry also has a lot of say in policy.
Chicago is better then other citys and price is be (Score:3, Informative)
Chicago is better then other citys and price is better then driving in and parking also faster and less stress some times when walking you have to deal with turning cars that can stack up.
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In Chicago, ANY method of transport is faster and cheaper than driving.
I knew someone who managed to get stuck in traffic for 4 hours on 294 while trying to get through that area once.
Re:Chicago is better then other citys and price is (Score:4, Insightful)
Dude. Punctuation - it's your friend. As is grammar and spelling. I still don't know what you mean by the last half of your giant sentence.
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Dude. Punctuation - it's your friend. As is grammar and spelling. I still don't know what you mean by the last half of your giant sentence.
You really shouldn't be giving advice on punctuation or grammar. Your spelling is great, though.
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I would love to use public transportation to get to my job.
A bus nearby would get me to the electric line in the chicago area to board in Richton park. An hour and twenty minutes later I could switch trains and head to naperville. After that hour and twenty minute ride I could walk three blocks to work.
Or I can drive for forty minutes and get to work.
I would love to actually move to naperville, but when I bought my house at a fantastic price (it was worth 40 thousand more than I agreed to pay for it) I can'
Re:Chicago is better then other citys and price is (Score:5, Insightful)
If by private you mean publicly funded infrastructure such as roads, bridges, highways, traffic systems and policing then you are correct. The only thing private are the cars.
No it's not the existence of this vast asphalt and concrete ball and chain that prevents the US from having a good public transportation system.
It is however the fact that land is plentiful outside metro areas and many people prefer to commute. There are a variety of reasons for this. Historically it has been the industrialization of the inner city areas with businesses wanting to be close to the transportation hubs the cities grew up around. This lead to the residential areas moving further away to avoid pollution and activities they wanted to avoid (bars, worker riots, etc). Which turned the inner city residential areas into lower class neighborhoods and eventually impoverished areas.
So now we have huge suburban communities that sprawl across the land and require decentralized transportation as each area may have residents commuting to entirely different business regions. People now choose where to live based on many factors other than where they work (neighborhood, price, schools, amenities like parks or natural environments) but they still need to commute to work each day.
Centralized transportation of any kind is a failed proposition for many US metro areas. At best it could be a long term strategy if attractive housing and amenities can be set up within walking distance so that young workers can have the choice rather than impoverishing themselves trying to afford a downtown lifestyle.
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You made the classic mistake of treating public transport as an all-or-nothing proposition. Public transport is designed to help large numbers of people who make similar journeys, and even in decentralized cities there will still be plenty of opportunities to do that. Maybe it will mean people drive to the outskirts of the city centre and then get a subway or bus, maybe it will mean they have to walk a block or two at either end. It is still more efficient and faster for them if done right.
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Awesome. While you are building Japan's transportation and mini-downtown system complete with pedestal malls supporting office towers, don't forget to build high-priced designer residential housing in those towers (if possible an adjacent tower or private elevator) and the bullet train network that goes with it! I can't see any good reason not to draw people away from the coasts if there are going to be more super storms and flooding anyway...
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You really think the problems in Chicago's public sector institutions are the result of big oil, huh?
Hell no, Chicago politicians have too much integrity to accept bribes from Big Oil, and Big Oil's own integrity (and razor-thin margins) precludes them from offering them. :o)
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Re:Why not popular? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm from Australia, have lived in Japan, and am now living in the US. I think the US is a great country to live in (especially if you're a software engineer) but one of the things that I find strange is that the downtown areas of cities are so desolate, particularly at night. In every other country I've been to, the "downtown" area is the beating heart of the city - it's the center of business, culture and nightlife. It's a desirable place to be and you have to pay more money to live in or near it.
But in the US, urban environments are for some reason associated with crime, homelessness, the smell of urine and human misery, and so most "normal" (middle-class) people avoid the area. People don't want to live there, let alone be in the area outside of business hours. I find it bizarre that inner city neighborhoods are considered to be bad areas - in Japan and Australia, inner city neighborhoods are the most expensive ones because they're so convenient to live in.
Since most of the normal people (i.e. people who wouldn't urinate in a train) have moved out into the suburbs, American cities are usually left with a decaying urban core and endlessly sprawling suburbs. Public transport requires a certain level of density before it is worthwhile, and most US cities don't meet that level of density. That's the reason why public transport doesn't work here. In the few cities where there is a good level of density (e.g. New York City) there is a good public transport system. But New York is not a typical American city...
Australian cities have sprawling suburbs too, but the urban cores are not full of homeless people and does not smell of urine! The dole bludgers are usually living somewhere in the outer suburbs where land is more affordable.
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Many US cities are trying to reinvigorate their downtown but it is a chicken and egg problem. They need the density to make the services profitable and they need the services to generate the density. The crime, etc is just an excuse to avoid investing.
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There's also the problem that zoning departments (in Miami, at least) have this fetish with imposing street-level boutique retail that's economically non-viable due to small size and limited parking. You can walk all over downtown Miami and see buildings with street-level boutique-sized retail spaces that can't get leased (or stay leased, because the tenants go bankrupt within months). But if a developer planning a square-block skyscraper wants to configure the space for one huge urban big-box store in the
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US Cities are inside out compared to Australia. People pay a fortune to live in Brunswick and ride a bike to work in Collins street. Maybe in the US those people just want a nice freeway to drive on.
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Population density, the auto/oil lobby, the universality and the affordability of the driver license in the US, road subsidies vs. low taxes on gasoline, and last but not least: the divide between rich and poor. Those are some of the reasons public transportation is not faring well in the US.
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It is in NYC, but most of the US isn't a major population center.
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In London, a bus ticket costs £1.40 ($2.17). Lots of people there do travel by bus, but the difference is that they are so frequent that you don't care whether or not they are on time.
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About £1.30-£1.40/litre, so about US$2.10/L.
Also, parking for a day in central or central-ish London can easily cost £20, and the congestion charge is another £10. Except at night, the journey is likely to be slower.
[Metro] trains are preferable to buses. The cost is 10-100% more for normal distances, or up to quadruple for long distances (beyond what most people would sit on a bus for, e.g. over 45 minutes).
Anyone who needs to change buses to get to work probably has quite a low i
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cause in most places its worthless
like my city, you got to drive to catch the bus, then it takes what would be a 20 min drive to a 3 hour hostage situation
or how about the train that only goes to between only 2 parts of the city?
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One of the problems in the US is that buses and bus systems are generally viewed as something only poor people use whereas in other parts of the world (London for example or here in Australia) they aren't viewed so negatively.
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Plus the bus schedules never line up with work schedules. Might have to get up at 4AM to catch the 5AM bus in order to work at 7. And god forbid you miss the bus and the next one isn't until two hours later. Then if you have to work on a weekend shift or late hours... Bus? Nope!
There's only a few major metropolitan areas where buses are any good. (Usually about 15 min apart in those cases.) Head out to the burbs or anywhere else and buses tend to really suck. (They're pretty much neglected in the U.S. in a
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Don't forget that, with a few exceptions (transit friendly NYC, for instance!), our inner cities have no shortage of low income housing. In Europe and many other countries, the working poor and lower middle class commute in from the suburbs.
Re:charge trains?? (Score:5, Funny)
That sounds kind of dumb. Why would a train need batteries for propulsion?
Because these days more and more ticket-buying passengers are refusing to help pump the handcar arm.
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That sounds kind of dumb. Why would a train need batteries for propulsion?
Because wires can be unsightly, third rails need to be maintained and secured over long distances, and there is always the occasional flooding or natural disaster that could disable an electrical line at the worst possible location when it's sharing a road with cars, or perhaps being loaded on a ferry. And of course, sometimes electrical trains are chosen over non-electrical trains because they make less noise and less smoke.
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That sounds kind of dumb. Why would a train need batteries for propulsion?
Because wires can be unsightly, third rails need to be maintained and secured over long distances, and there is always the occasional flooding or natural disaster that could disable an electrical line at the worst possible location when it's sharing a road with cars, or perhaps being loaded on a ferry.
Third rails are not a good idea over long distance because they need to be relatively low voltage ( under 1000V) so have significant resistance losses. They tend to be used for metro systems as they need smaller tunnels.
Overhead wires (pretty well standardised at 25kV) are unsightly, but are now more-or less standard in Europe for any new longer-distance line or refurbishment of an existing one. They are not all that expensive to put up and maintain as these things go (less than maintaining a fleet of
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I don't understand your point about "sharing a road with cars, or perhaps being loaded on a ferry". Sharing a road is almost unheard of in the UK (although it was once common when railway sidings reached into factories). As for loading onto a ferry, quite rare, but the main-line loco would not go onto the ferry. Only the wagons or carriages would be put on board, and they would be handled on and off with diesel shunter locos.
I was only trying to come up with possible examples.
I do have a road shared with an active railway with diesel trains near where I live, but I don't have any expertise in that field.
Good point about the ferry. I've never actually taken one with wagons on it. I've only heard about them. It does make sense that they wouldn't load the locomotive itself, but just the wagons.
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I could see a point occurring where it is cheaper to put batteries on a train than to run wires or a third rail for the entire run after maintenance is considered.
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I could see a point occurring where it is cheaper to put batteries on a train than to run wires
I can't. Fuel cells might do it though.
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Because all modern trains are electric? They mostly don't use batteries because they're run off a diesel generator. Obviously, the electrics don't have the generator and just run off wires.
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The tram in Zaragoza is electric, but there are no overhead wires in the centre of the city (the outskirts are all wired). The trams have supercapacitors, and pick up enough charge to get to the next station with each stop they make. Basically, the city doesn't want the overhead wires spoiling the look of the historic centre of the city.
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That's his point. Given that trains can only run on tracks, and that either the rails or the overhead lines already provide power, what is the advantage of having a heavy, inefficient means of storing power on the vehicle itself?
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This article was published recently about research into how to avoid having to equip these lines with overhead power:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/feb/03/battery-powered-intercity-trains-possible-study [guardian.co.uk]
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The overhead is expensive to build and maintain. We would not install one for electric cars for example. Maybe it is cheaper just to charge the trains at stations.
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We wouldn't do it for electric cars because we'd have to cover an order-of-magnitude more ground for a vehicle that doesn't travel on rails.
I guess it might be worthwhile for new lines (do we still build these? My state hasn't opened a new rail station in my lifetime) but I can't imagine any cost savings in retro-fitting existing lines. I imagine the maintenance cost for batteries would be, at best, not better than that of the overheads.
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But the batteries are portable. You could ship them off to China for maintenance. The overhead is fixed infrastructure. It has to be maintained in place by expensive local labour.
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For a given value of portable I guess - the article says they're in the vicinity of 8 tonnes. You'd need additional (fixed) infrastructure just to be able to load/unload them from the engines - factor in shipping costs and turnaround time, and I'm not sure even Chinese labour costs are going to compensate for all of that.
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There are almost no electrically powered freight trains in the US.
Actually they are all electric, just with an onboard diesel generator. Is it possible to adapt these engines to use overhead lines when available?
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Yes, or at least the people behind the Intercity Express project on the Great Western Line from England to South Wales think so.
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Trains are actually either electric(passenger) or diesel electric(freight) hybrids. Both utilize batteries.
Eh?
Yes, trains use batteries like any car uses batteries, but we are talking about main propulsion (traction, to use the railway engineering term) batteries here, not auxiliaries.
There are plenty of diesel passenger trains in the world BTW, and there are diesel locos with direct mechanical transmission too - mostly shunters (switchers in the US?). But diesel-electric is so common that it is usually referred to just as "diesel".
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Only powering the field when the bus is on top.
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The capacitor technology may or may not be great (I'm not able to comment on that part), but they are experimenting with the infrastructure you'd need should that turn out to be effective. I can