I'm working on a larger video project at the moment, but couldn't pass up this opportunity. Spanish subtitles by: Lucía Gutiérrez Mendoza Check out my Patreon: / adamsomething
It's almost like the locomotive is the part which makes trains so efficient. This concept just combines the disadvantages of trucks with the ones trains have.
We can fix this. A modern double-stack train pulls around 240 40-ft containers. So you'd need 480 of those battery driven units at the same cost and reliability as two to three locomotives plus low-tech flatbeds plus the IT infrastructure for the tracks to deal with 240 times more independently moving parts. And any of aforementioned 480 battery units would be a single point of failure because if one overheats and goes down, your track is jammed. I can't see where this would go wrong.
@@strangelic4234 also, each little pod doesn’t physically connect to the next pod except by a container… so if the container attachment wasn’t literally perfect, you could have an enormous derailing situation where all the little jinga blocks of this train thing smash into each other. Which means more insurance payouts!! It is a profitable idea after all.
To be fair, efficient trains don't *need* a locomotive, electric multiple unit passenger trains work very well. But I don't think (outside of autonomous BEMU schemes like this) anyone has applied the EMU concept to freight rail yet.
I like how they think that the reason that big trains need big loading/unloading stations is because the trains are long, not because the cargo throughput is high.
I mean its ultimately both. Its more efficient to unload as much of the train at the same time as possible, rather than having to have it "scoot" forward repeatedly to fit sections into the station. They ultimately are trying to solve the "last mile problem" of freight on a system that is designed for long distance and high throughput. You don't use trains to deliver single containers, and you couldn't run rail everywhere those containers need to go anyway. Sure, maybe you could have this system run parallel (ha, get it) to existing freight deliveries... rather than replacing existing trains and stations, adding some of these smaller scale systems for local deliveries along pre-existing lines. But why in gods name would you ever put batteries on a train when you can just electrify the rail? Like come on, there are so many things we need batteries for and only so much material we can make them out of if we're going to move away from fossil fuels. It seems that every ten minutes some technologist is trying to come up with another way to use up batteries and make them more scarce and therefore more expensive. Do all these people have shares in lithium mining companies and are just trying to artificially raise the price?
@@albertjordan3249 It's dumb, but those techbros think in the start up mindset, in which you do small scale prototypes instead of whole systems. Electrifying the rail infrastructure is the better solution, but it's a huge national investment, while some cargo pod tests is doable with gullible silicon valley money.
@@booketoiles1600 Tesla should be taking some of their excess capital and lobby the government for more electrification projects which they can manage. Except they have no excess capital, only ("market capital,) and they have no practical experience with anything but batteries.
@@sauercrowder but when you seperate cargo into multiple trains you get much more surface area hitting air and more air resistance, so you lose more energy that way. bad ida
it would be a less terrible idea on water where space is less of an issue. for inland shipping on wide rivers, you could design a ship that can only carry a few containers but is able to travel upstream at a slow speed using solar panels and sails instead of using diesel engines on huge push barges.
@@TheSuperappelflap It would still be a terrible idea. More terrible, even, because there's only so many good places to put a port in. And important chokepoints on shipping lanes are already congested as it is, imagine if instead of one ship with 20 000 containers, there's 1000 ships with 20 containers each.
@@JackPhoenixCz thats why i specifically said inland waterways. in the EU most inland waterways are underutilised and there isnt much space for large ports. for ocean freight it would be a terrible idea. in the netherlands we have a lot of small ports along rivers with just a few cranes where containers can be transferred to land transport. these are currently served by small push barges that generally transport about 4-8 containers each. the canals arent wide and deep enough for larger ships.
Guy is always right. Trains are awesome! Edit: except for Military and politics. Liberals and European-centric Imperialists like him are never right and just spread propaganda that can help the ambition of pan European empire.
Also, US freight trains are so big they do not need to be particularly aerodynamic, as their frontal cross section is pretty small relative to their mass so aerodynamic drag is not a big factor. if you shrink it down to each container aerodynamic drag is going to be a much larger factor.
Also the fact it even considers batteries as a means of power, why not just use 3rd rail or overhead catenary like normal electric trains? (Based on the form factor of the cart 3rd rail is probably easier)
That's exactly what I was thinking...Their genius idea is to make the industry dependent on "Parallel Systems," as every single train car needs two of their battery powered rail cars! Plus building all the infrastructure and taking profits from the manufacturing of the batteries, etc. Creating problems so Parallel Systems can sell us the solution.
These ideas are often very stupid, but they look slick and modern focusing on trends everyone believes in - self-driving AI, and battery powered cars. Thus they get investments, and often big contracts worth millions. The project never works of course, but that's after a state or country has paid them 50 to 100 million dollars. Elon Musk uses this model for his Hyperloop which will never go anywhere.
no, trains are efficient because steel rails and wheels have very low loss, you can look for videos where a car can pull 3 pcs of 60 tonne wagons or one man can pull one wagon. if we replaced roads with rail it woud give extreme efficiency boost to all cars and trucks, but you need to make some kind of dual suspension with extra wheels
@@deltaxcd what do you mean "no"? how does what you say conflict with what the original comment says? they are BOTH points which add to the efficiency of trains...
@@RYNOCIRATOR_V5 the conflict is because original poster claims that efficiency comes from the "economy of scale" as if it is because trains is big, but in reality efficiency comes from the fact that rails are very efficient on their own and size is completely irrelevant in fact vagons are have very horrible aerodynamic so efficiency could be further improved by at least 50% or even more put a plain car on the rail and it will use like 4-6 times less fuel for the same distance
@@RYNOCIRATOR_V5 Both washt? Size has no effect, driving just one wagon woud be almost as much effective as driving 50 wagons and considering that wagons are all standard size and super heavy it is super inefficient if you need to cary very bulky loads.
polygons -> look more sciency -> people who have no idea how these things work like it -> investors have no idea how things work -> investors invest in it -> company stock prices go up -> sell company shares -> make ton of money and run away before investors realize they are dumb
You can still make a video pointing out the errors, without sounding like an asshole. Yes, this is a terrible idea, but it's an idea nontheless. That's how the world works.
I love the "it'll be quieter" argument. Because if anything is quieter than one long train, it's a hundred short trains of equal capacities starting and braking all the time. 🤦♂️
@@bjthedjdutchdude1992 Yeah but then another one comes by... And another... And so on... Depending on the average use of a crossing it would be much more time consuming than, let's say, connecting all cars and running them all at once through the crossing.
If you've ever heard a freight train, you know there's nothing quiet about them anyways...neither are 100s of trucks, but I've heard some freight trains with almost square wheels come by in my days live close to the track.
@@ryos.5974 the problem is trains are not "tech enough". Just let tech bros build 1:1 copies of trains but call them blockcain cool carts and we are good. There will be investment money for it and no one will ruin trains
there are a lot of problems with current trains, you just didn't research them, neither did adam, and he didn't even provide a real critisim or any arguements. It is very shameful video. You're just being a fanboy right now.
@@nerodominus7582 is not like the video offers much substance to be criticized. Plus if you watch then channel regularly you pretty much can figure out why this idea is not great by information contained in another videos. But yeah trains have problems, still are a great way for moving mass ppl and cargo.
So instead of having a handful of engines that can be rigorously maintained, there will be thousands of powered skates and the failure of any one bringing entire lines to a halt. Brilliant.
I think they might be trying to sell the idea, of shipping one single container, or small amounts of cargo. This would maybe make sense for a small company, but that would also block the train track/rails on which they run. One of the main problems of train shipping is, that often the loadup and loadoff spots are horribly maintained, and arent keeping up with the times, leading to massive delays. Including blocked tracks, it causes hours, up to days of delays in shipment. So if the system did ship single containers, it might make that "singular container" part of shipment slightly faster, but will extremely slow down anything else, as train tracks would constantly be blocked by these single container "trains".
Because they are tech bro's so don't understand basic economics, but get everything delivered and wondered how they could get things delivered quickly and didn't think to ask one expert even a train conductor if this was a good idea.
@@gundamator4709 That's not actually a significant factor. With electric engines, it doesn't really matter whether you have one big engine or many smaller engines, the efficiency is the same. Actually having more engines distributed throughout the train has some advantages, hence why it is used in many passenger rail services.
@@kered13 Yeah, but at the same time, more engines is more occasions for one to fail. That's not a huge deal with existing EMUs, since they can easily get off the tracks without it, but with freight trains that do need all that power, it might clog the network up for a bit. Although I guess there are two units per container in this proposition so maybe it's not that big a deal. Another thing I wanted to touch on was maintenance and production, but then I thought that perhaps the smaller size of the units would actually help with that, so I'm not sure about it anymore. Also, running them on batteries instead off the existing wires is simply dumb, though it's a relatively easy fix. Lastly, while I'm no engineer, I'd imagine a single bigger engine would be more efficient than several smaller ones producing the equivalent ammount of power and torque, no? Please correct me if I'm wrong. All in all, very skeptical of the idea, but maybe it does have its merits (transporting perishables maybe?). It seems like an interesting point of discussion for sure.
Here's a complication I see; Railroads operate mostly independently from roads, however, they do intersect with each other. Having a hundred or so cars moving independently, instead of one hundred-car train, would mean traffic would be stopped at crossings a hundred times instead of just once. So I can see this creating more traffic congestion, not reducing it.
Yeah. And the only solution would be to send the individual cars in a cyclic timed schedule, which would be impossible since the cargo won't be the same every time
thats because your thinking in old train logic imagine instead that there's sensors for cars at least on low traffic roads so the micro trains stop and let the cars through and then continue since you no longer have one super long wait. because of this you can maximize the throughput of both cars and train cars.
It all depends on how well cars communicate with central and between one another. The only reason we need traffic lights in an intersection is because human drivers can't coordinate but if I would be able to send my speed an position constantly to cars next to me and my route can be calculated exactly with fine tolerances then speeds can be gradually adapted so I can pass through an intersection 1 second before the other car crosses without any of us applying the breaks.
@@christopheraaron8299 not yet, but if an idea sells well enough to create that problem you mentioned, we will get there faster. The rails are much more likely to implement this first. Roads are a lot more chaotic and people that will protest against their "private" car broadcasting their position to other cars. Cargo on rails has no such privacy concerns.
Imagine driving a car or being on a bus, that has to wait for 30 minutes on a railroad crossing, just because there's a single container on the rail every minute
First statement: Trains are more efficient than highway trucks for cargo transport Second statement: So we split them up into individual vehicles, effectively creating highway trucks on rails!
@@citizen6350 the MAIN reason rail is more efficient is THE RAILS. The rolling resistance is NIL, thus much easier to maintain motion due to lower friction. ANYTHING You put on rails becomes more efficient. You do realize that most train engines use the exact same technology as a truck, namely a diesel engine. And have you ever heard of electric trains? The only thing missing from this proposal is using electric trucks powered not by batteries, but by the rail system itself as any other electric train.
@@norbertfleck812 There is NOTHING precluding those individual carts from lining up and driving in each other's slip stream while they share the same rail route. If you've spent any time on the interstate highway system, you will have seen trucks doing the same thing, getting in a line and following closely to each other to greatly reduce drag. Even easier with computer-controlled trucks that could actually PUSH each other.
@@t00by00zer However, these single carts are complicated, expensive and prone to failure. They might be not worse than conventional trains, but they also do not provide ad advantages worth the extra money, maintenance and infrastructure.
Q: What is the most crucial thing that makes trains efficient? A: The ability to couple hundreds of cars and haul them or rails over long distances with minimal energy losses and cost. Q: What if we took this essential part away and claim it a benefit? A: ...
@@deltaxcd We have short distance transport, the benefits ain't worth the infrastructure, and who knows if by the time the implementation is done it will still be as useful?
@@deltaxcd Are you talking last mile of delivery? You wouldn't want to use normal trains for that, it's not practical. But I can imagine package delivery rails in sufficiently high population density areas.
@@bramvanduijn8086 well if governments decided to replace all roads with rails and tell all cars that from now on they are going to drive on rails rather than roads that woud be totally possible and probably even less expensive than roads. everyone could build a railroad right into their garage or back yard if they want. Also it could be feasible to move truck on rail rather than letting them drive on their own power and on the last mile they get off the rail platform and drive on their own
Imagine the trouble/difficulty of getting the two pod things at the right distance for the shipping container... and what would happen if they didn't get it just right..
I think this is good. Techbros are evolving: first hyperloop, then this piece of crap. They will eventually catch up to the present and learn that modern trains without Tesla batteries are the answer.
I mean to be fair, they do point out a problem of modern us cargo trains (though not in the way the think) : really good for huge loads, but absolutely no flexibility. You can't send a miles long train to a midsized town. Also each wagon is attached manually, which is a problem when you want to change the train composition quickly. For the second problem the cargo division of SBB CFF FFS (swiss federal trains) are looking into automated attachment systems, to save time and increase safety. For the first problem, if we want to actually replace trucking by train logistics smaller and more flexible trains are needed, but I've no idea how to achieve those operations, there's a reason trucks dominate this service.
It's kinda like how Flat Earthers keep proving Earth is a sphere, then come up with a way to disprove that experiment, which only leads to another experiment that proves Earth is in fact a sphere. Someday, that nickle will drop.
this should be the bechdel test of transport innovation "is this worse than the present in every aspect while allowing people to be alone while using it? so futuristic!" the musk test.
I use a variant of that line whenever my friends come to me with one of their pie-in-the-sky ideas. It's disappointing to me how quickly they fold when they consider, apparently for the first time, that the problem they're trying to solve has already been addressed and that any improvements their ideas would bring would be incremental rather than revolutionary.
@@ryang2573 the same with economics, and heck even in politics, everyone think their little progressive ideas are the ushering of a new utopian era, they solved civilization! sigh.
What hurts me the most. Is that I'm sure if you showed this to a group of people high school students college students regular adults in life people with families that are good percentage of them would just take it at its word and be like Yup we should be doing that.
yes of course, if you use it as intentended than it is a great solution. notto replace rail road, but to replace the last mile carrier (the trucks), maybe not battery driven but power line, definitely quieter, cleaner, and more secure than trucks. and no, the technology of a system that can do only 2 simple things (rotate motor clockwise and rotate counterclockwise) is not more prone to failure than systems like a truck with 100s of moving parts, and on top human error of the truck driver. but if you shine the light the right way you can change everything to the bad. like: do you know how much CO2 a Tree produces when there is a forrest fire? maybe we should remove all trees. What kind of argumentation is that?
The solution, hear me out, is highly trained carrier pigeons tied to strings. With merely 30,000 pigeons you can carry a shipping container at least 20 feet to load it onto a train. After the pigeons have loaded each container, their union demands a 15 minute lunch break before tying them to the front of the train and pulling it to its destination where, you guessed it, 700 sled dogs will take over. You're welcome.
I like how the US is an island in their promotional video. I know this is done on purpose to get slick visuals, but this fits so well with the image of Americans being disconnected with geographical reality.
The youtuber’s arguement is actually flawed. Big terminals do have economies of scale except they are also further away from the containers’ final destination. Smaller stations inside industrial parks may provide even higher economics of scale because factory owners can now just dump raw material from the train to the production line. Boeing’s medium-large airplane beats Airbus’ A380 under the same logic of thinking.
Exactly "trains into trucks that require railroads"... but first we'll have to invest billions to modify the infrastructure of the entire network. (not that there isn't room for improvement)
I just want to point out one important safety feature: brakes. *Emergency brakes*, specifically. Almost all modern trains and many semi trailers use a continuous brake system first developed by Westinghouse. Without going into too much detail about its operation, it basically has pressurized air lines running along the entire length of the assembly. When the pressure drops, brakes are applied. This is intrinsically failsafe because if anywhere along the assembly a coupling breaks, a pipe fails, or a valve is opened using an emergency stop handle, the pressure in the whole line vents into the atmosphere, applying all brakes immediately, thus preventing a runaway train. This requires all train lines to be connected - you can't have it on an assembly of individual, autonomous units without introducing many critical points of failure. For example, how do you communicate to the other units that they should apply brakes? Using a radio signal has the same disadvantages as using straight air brakes. Applying brakes on the *absence* of a radio signal also requires the on-board computer to perform an action, which introduces many points of failure. Trains have had HUNDREDS of years to solve these problems, PLEASE don't let those billionaire fuckers introduce them again. I am so unreasonably angry.
If you shorten the train (I doubt getting all the way down to single rail trucks is possible, but they can be a lot shorter) then does not the danger of a run-away train also similarly reduce? I mean, we do have a great many individual road cars running around and massive 100-car pileups are uncommon enough to be newsworthy. Nothing but brake lights to signal those following to also apply brakes. Computer controls are now operating in this environment, with a better safety record than humans, and they will only get better. I fully expect an autonomous systems running on rails, where there are slightly fewer idiots in control, could easily handle the traffic involved. You do have to remember that the rail system's primary problem was with having the smallest crew possible manage the most amount of cargo. The long trains that created caused a lot of other problems that had to be solved. Automation is coming. Rail is much easier to solve than road. This will be disruptive.
@@4Fixerdave Keep in mind that we're still talking about rail infrastructure. You can close one or two lanes, or an entire road section, and cars will switch lanes or find an alternative route. There's no such thing on rails. A single crippled unit can hold up the affected line and disrupt the greater system. It's also much more difficult to get out of the way of a runaway train. One of the critical issues of fully computer-operated vehicles is exception handling. The Boeing 737-MAX, if you remember, had a critical bug in its software that made the plane nose-dive on three occasions. Two resulted in all crew and passengers being killed, one was saved by human oversight when the pilot noticed that the trim wheel was constantly spinning in a nose down direction and physically had to hold it in place. The root issue was a faulty signal from an angle-of-attack sensor that was handled badly. The point of that anecdote is that automation has been a part of transportation for decades, but the vehicles are incredibly complex systems and something could always break. To this day, no safety system has been 100% reliable. One massive advantage of a long train assembly is the redundancy it provides. A car could lose braking power entirely and the rest would compensate (the Westinghouse system would actually apply the emergency brake if even one brake reservoir failed). Make the train shorter and you lose redundancy. Remove the operator and the software could potentially become the single point of failure. Automation isn't coming, it's already here and it was determined that oversight is necessary.
10 years later:"The future of freight is carrying 1 item per drone."(the sky darkens with thousands of drones, some fall and kill people but most get to their destination)
I actually thought that's the direction they were going to go when they said "Two can play at that game." You want modular, do you? YOU WANT TO SEE MODULAR, MORTY? I'll show you TRUE modular!
Why battery power why? Rails already have 3rd rail or overhead power. What kind of scam are they running? I want to know what investment company would give these people a penny.
At least they admitted trains existed beforehand, even if they don't understand why trains are long in the first place. And how a van or truck is a lot cheaper (about 10x-30x at least) than even a single wagon making the economics untenable.
There's a lot of industrial sites that have rail access, but are never going to get a full train to stop there. Instead of taking a container off the rail network, putting it on a truck, and driving the last mile, why not keep it on the rails?
@@RobertSzasz they already use small switch engines for that. There’s not a lot of benefit to change. A factory may only need 20 widgets but a container can have 50,000 widgets onboard for an entire region. Running a single container point to point would take a long time.
Don't worry about it, the system is automated. Our proprietary patented spaghetti code will take care of all the building, maintenance, and scheduling for you. Trust us. We paid for this animation, we can pay someone to figure out how to make it work later.
I just read one of biggest Czech online store start to use trains to transport of goods from China instead of tankers cause it´s faster, cheaper and with more stable prices.
If you've ever lived in a town where trains cross roads, these little battery powered mini trails sound like a nightmare. Imagine instead of a train coming every hour or two, blocking traffic and activating the train crossing signal... it happened every 3 minutes. Good luck ever falling asleep again.
Fun fact: While U.S. passenger rail is a nightmare, the North American freight rails system is one of the most efficient, safe, and productive in the world, and has been for over a century.
Indeed, the American firght train network is amazing (it could be further improved upon of course). I remember as a young boy when I read about the huge Big Boy locomotives hauling cargo over the Rocky Mountains and in my seven year old mind it was absolutely glorious!
It's amazing indeed, but it could always welcome a bit more capacity and extension, it's just better to simply expand it than try to reinvent it with stupid gimmicks
@@sephikong8323 Cant we somehow bring this video here more attention, so the Future-Look-Fetish dies out??? We have to be able to do 'something', right?
@@jacksonlarson6099 Um, how exactly would that be profitable for them? How would sabotaging rail infrastructure PROFIT the rail companies? It wouldn't. You're wrong.
"How about we just reinvent a truck, but make it fucking stuck on rails" "That is a bad idea" "I've already made the advertisement" "Why are you like this"
The advantages of rail are: scale, efficiency, pre-existence. The disadvantages are: non-flexible routes, speed. New idea: let’s keep the disadvantages and get rid of the advantages
Also, batteries are awful for trains. I feel that a methanol fuel cell would work better. :) In simple terms, liquid methanol can produce electricity. Also, the train is highly inefficient only tugging 4 cars. lol ...
@@playtesting2317 "hey america you should replace your entire fleet of reliable long distance GE engines with these remote controlled skateboards for moving cargo because uhh your trains use diesel and diesel is icky. this is the future!"
@@thatguyalex2835 methanol. You know that methanol is highly toxic solution? Imagine one of the trains falling into a river and killing entire biotope by that. We have hydrogen, ethanol, methane. Also octane but its kinda old (same as ethanol and methane but who cares)
In logistics, speed isn't a concern, if its passenger trains then go ahead. Oh wait we have trains that can go as fast as airliners. So no disadvantage there.
It reminds me of the tiny trains they have in Switzerland that can carry a few containers. but they only move stuff within their city between individual warehouses.
Oh wait, but who said that small trains cannot work alongside large trains to achieve different goals? Just like you have buses and also you have cars.
@@homo-sapiensis Yes, personal trains for EVERYONE! But really, that might apply to mining, where they use these small trains anyway without issue, but what would this battery powered nonsense improve there. But for carrying loads of cargo across land (since ships are better when they can be used) splitting up the trains gives no benefit. Relying on batteries only makes it worse. If anything, they could put electric trucks up with those powerlines that trolleybuses use, but batteries and heavy lifting/pulling are a bad match.
@@Notmyname1593 exactly! A small production enterprise could easily own a train for medium-size deliveries to customers. On electrified tracks they could join and hire small locomotives to push or pull them.
@@homo-sapiensis Except train tracks don't go to every home and business. They'd still need to stop at the same terminals and offload onto trucks anyway.
haha, right? there are so many games that are effectively logistics simulators, maybe play a few hundred hours on them before sinking money into a stupid idea.
A man of culture. Factorio is an awesome model for this. Say having 4 trains with 4 wagons probably is much better than having 16 trains with 1 wagon. Because signals start getting all messed up when there are too many trains in the system. 16 trains even in a large system can cause fuck ups.
yeah scale is something very big i cant imagine running 1 wagon on each train why cant i get green circuits oh right because i have 30 trains trying to enter the station and 1 wagon being filled at a time
The fact that they acknowledged that rail is the future of transport as it’s more efficient than single lorries and then completely removed the part of trains that made them that efficient
Frankly, i'm more interested in whether these people are clueless or scammers. Although i'm somewhat confused as to how this scam is supposed to work. No rail company that's successfully doing business should be stupid enough to not realise that the proposed scenario makes no sense.
"Guys ya know how trains are designed to carry large amounts of cargo in a short amount of time? well lets do that except the exact opposite: we'll minimize carge carrying efficiency while maximizing the time it takes all the carge to get to its destination! And on top of that lets replace existing electricity infrastructure with something that no one fucking asked for!
Not entirely a lot of the efficiency of rail is the lack of rolling resistance because steel wheels and track don't flex as much as rubber and asphalt.
Forgive me if I’m wrong but I’m pretty sure that if one of the 4 engines fail it can still run on three, so it’s four points of failure with redundancy of one, versus 140 with redundancy of 0 which is an absolute slaughter.
@@homo-sapiensis i actually didn’t think of that. I’m guessing by the scale of the thing it’s unlikely, but my engineering qualifications are exclusively software so I couldn’t say for sure. Edit: a warning to ye fools who dare venture further this gets so far off topic we end up discussing the economics of a fully automated world.
@@randombrit13 if a container lies on two carts firmly, I don't see a reason why it couldn't work. Also, with two pairs of wheels, why wouldn't a cart have two small engines?
@@homo-sapiensis Even if one cart can power the one in front at reduced speed you're still gonna lose a lot of cargo if two of them stop working somewhere in the middle. Well actually maybe not, if each one has the power to push the one in front then if two or three stop in the middle or front then you'll have a whole line behind them pushing. I still wouldn't trust that system though, things might get dicey with that many engines pushing on eachother.
Hey, at least we're getting somewhere! Now they're accepting the superiority of rails, I say give it a few more years and they figure out that putting several of these together behind one very powerful engine will be cheaper and more reliable. Apparently they're planning to use these in a 'platoon' of 10 units at once, so they're close to figuring out what a 'train' is. On a different note, I think something like this might be useful for fully automated shunting, though it would be extremely expensive. Just use a single powered bogie to shunt one or two cars. This might have also been useful 60 years ago, when more or less all industries still had a rail spur. But not today.
someone obviously saw the little roombas in an ikea warehouse and thought: we could do this on train tracks! autonomous units simply don't work better on rails - they work better with less restrictions. they are also better for sorting stuff or delivering separate packages, NOT massive volumes.
@@alveolate Everything autonomous works better on rail since the autonomy isnt really there 😅 Roomba has to realize that she shouldnt go there... on rail, you just cant take the wrong turn 😄And to have autonomous trains you would need a fucking satelite scanning what is in front of them since trains dont really like fast braking XD
I'm not an expert but I do know that there are already automatic systems for identifying freight cars - all it needs is to put a chip on each car (might have been RCID, it was years ago). So automatic routing and shunting of freight cars shouldn't be too difficult. It might in fact be made easier by adding a motor to each car for the shunting phases, a bit like in the first video,, while still relying on a locomotive for the transport phase. (As I said, this isn't my job so I won't swear this actually makes sense - just brainstorming...) Anyway, postal services and firms like Amazon already have systems for automatically identfying and sorting parcels, so why don't railways integrate such systems to increase efficiency?
@@gerardvila4685 The embarrassing thing is to go and try to sell such a solution to a custumer who has used rfid for decades:-) Good points and great brainstorming. All the best
@@gerardvila4685 As someone who works in the industry, because those systems fucking SUCK. They could be a hundred times better designed but the failure would be critical when they do happen.
@@ImfrAfreak Not only that, but batteries that big will be incredibly heavy and costly (especially on the material side of things) to manifacture, not to mention the loss of performance over time.
Another thing to add to the mix - cargo is often carried by roads because it's essentially piggybacking off the demand for roads to go to houses/businesses. Because they often move people. That's so obvious to everyone, that most never really think about it. We've designed cities and towns around roads for so long that it's normal. Since the days when we were moving horse drawn wagons around. But there isn't a network of rail cars going to every driveway. Nor is anybody going to build one because you'd have to rip up existing infrastructure. And more or less reinvent how humans see cities. So these battery powered railcars "can come to where they're needed", would just be those same freight stations, in more or less all situations. And then just loading onto trucks for the last leg. The same as it is now. The necessary preceding step isn't there. And is already being filled, albeit inefficiently, by cars.
A standard shipping container probably cant handle the forces arise between front and rear carriages underside. Especially when the whole set brakes. One may think, the individual carriages can communicate each other and adjust into that. But the friction between whhel and rail wont respond to any sudden change anyway. So a ladder frame in between 2 carriages seems inevitable. Thus it turns into a standard carriage :)
Yes interesting, it really activates my brain coconut, can you elaborate more on your idea of an overhead elrctrical outlet? Maybe we can get multiple investors to give us money, yes...
-We desperately need a company interested in improving solar power. If we could make solar panels more efficient, we could start putting them everywhere, instead of needing massive solar fields. They could potentially one day be all around cities, built into smart phones, and yes, imbedded in car and locomotive roofs. Then their wouldn't need to be so many plants burning coal to generate electricity that all this "innovative" stuff needs, and our carbon footprint could actually be reduced more significantly.- EDIT: okay so people have told most of what I’m suggesting a company do is physically impossible. I realize Nuclear is probably an option we need more people to support as it has the capabilities to provide power to cities and electric locomotives I was suggesting. I still think experimenting with less resource-intensive Solar diode designs is worth doing so they could provide some extra power, but I get that it won’t solve everything as I had the impression it would. At least my confusion sparked some discussion and will prevent others from being less naive.
@@Bipedalduck overhead electrical connections are difficult to maintain are susceptible to weather bringing the systems down. How about we make a rail car that is powered by electricity, that pulls a lot of rail cars, but the elecrical generator is on the rail car itself! This also doesn’t require expanding power plant capacity which relies on coal to generate electricity
"Instead of a single train with a single engine that we'd have to maintain, we want 4 electric engines that are inefficient and prone to break for each container." (c) some engineering genius
Imagine how possibility of failure this shit will be. Like, you had not one, but 100 separeted train instead. If one of them fails anyware, all you entire system crash. And you cant just simply "drag that train with another train" as we do now, cause, you cant even get to it. What a fcking joke they invent.
That's not how systems engineering and calculating the probability of system failure works with parallel systems. Literally go anywhere that moves water and you will see multiple smaller pumps (ie. 3 but only 2 need to operate) instead of 1 big pump (or you will always see another large pump in reserve). Part of why they do this is for decreasing the probability of system failure. Of course modern pumps can 'throttle' (ie. variable speed drives).
Another glaring thing they left out: Not every train car is carrying a cargo container. Some have cars stacked in them, others are carrying loose materials like coal cars, and then tankers... all those would require redesign from already perfectly functional forms.
i guess they think building special containers for that cases is ok. But how it is different from what we already have, except making new containers and, probably, upgrading infrastructure?
@@Blackwing2345635 "making new containers" = a product for that company to sell you. Their business model is basically: we'll re-invent the wheel just to create a market for "new wheels."
Well, they are using regular ship containers. It's pretty clear, that this system shouldn't replace existing, well established train lines. It is a concept that should replace truck traffic. And there are many valid reasons, why all those companies don't use trains now. The main one is speed. The second one is cost. Trails work, nobody doubts that, but they are neither fast, nor cheap. In most cases, it is *much* cheaper to send 50 trucks with 50 truck drivers instead of one train with one train diver.
What part of "parallel system" you you guys nit understand? This is explicitly explained as a supplement, and the comments are full of fools saying it's not a viable replacement. Duh. It's not designed to be a replacement, it's a parallel system meant to supplement what already exists.
yes and any way i think 6 axle battery locomotives should be illegal but locomotives like a modernised version of the Pennsylvania Railroad E44 should be encouraged
"Routed directly to their destination..." That implies lots of new track. OK, once that's in place , how about installing an overhead electrical supply and connecting the bogies up to a main power unit to haul even more stuff? We could even give the power unit a special name, like "automotor" or "rail tractor" or something.
it woud make lots of sese to lay rails right in the middle of the road like trams so that trains cloud drive on the roads along with cars also cars cloud have dual suspension to use rails and save a lot of fuel. of course all cars woud be required to have dual set of wheels.
@@deltaxcd we anyway have a lot of crashes going on in the crossings, what do you think will happen when the trains and cars will be sharing the same track?
Surely it needs new tracks to everywhere. But plastering cities with ten lane highways also wasn't a problem back then. How 'bout tearing down two or four of those vehicle lanes and put tracks instead, where we can transport way more goods and people? Face the fact: Did 10 lane highways solve the traffic problems in - for example L.A.? No. They're still jammed every day.
Please at least admit that some trains suck. A lot of rail lines have only a few passenger trips per day. For cargo, you no longer can just drive a truck into a random terminal and send a shipment. Automatic, small trains can potentially change that. Sure, it will cost. But you get almost a luxury rail-taxi.
@@homo-sapiensis I think you'll find that for the most part, transportation is cost optimized. As for trains, they're taxpayer subsidized and if they weren't, they wouldn't exist. If you see the mode something is being shipped by, that is the cheapest option. Trains are used to ship large quantities of cargo long distances over land because their strength is economy of scale. Their downside is the limited places they can go. I think you'll find that trains move lots of cargo between hubs and trucks distribute from there.
@@jaye1967 sure, I am aware that trains are build with money forcibly taken from taxpayers. They could occur in the free market though, if governments didn't subsidise roads for cars, trains would be the cheapest option. Especially if governments had our health at heart... They would massively tax air pollution, so that any non-electric vehicle would be prohibitively expensive.
@@homo-sapiensis Now you're artificially altering the other side of the equation. Instead of lower the cost of rail, your raises the cost of cars. In other words, your argument always relies on the government altering the comparison. And now for the subsidizing of roads, that comes from the license fees and taxes on vehicles and gas.
Imagine thousands of grade crossings closing their gates every few minutes as another individual car or block of cars comes by.. Seriously what were they smoking?
They took the road robotrucks and imagined railcars acting like them. When robotrucks drive at platooning distance there is an energy savings for the entire roadtrain it creates but because they are multiple smart units and they aren't all physically coupled the roadtrain as a whole doesn't have to stop when an individual unit needs to take an exit. It is an interesting concept when you imagine railcars behaving like that but it is so logistically hard to arrange all the cargo into continuous subtrains that you end up with this stupidity where every unit has to be a drone instead of just having a few mini loco drones interspersed in the train to allow it to split and regroup while rolling.
I rode the freight network in the USA while living and working on the RBBB Blue Unit Circus Train. It really is quite fascinating. Despite housing around 350 people (and 9 elephants), the RBBB train is actually classified as freight, and we traveled through the network like any other freight train. It was a hard, less-than-minimum-wage job, but riding on the train between shows really was quite enjoyable. Watching the countryside roll by from the vestibules, and playing card-based drinking games with the philosophers in the clown car.
@@chuckles3265 It's set up dependent on your salary and position. With highest in the front and least in the back. This is because the front of the train is more comfortable. Especially when stopping and starting. You don't notice this on short passenger trains, but when the train is a mile long, the engine has moved quite far and picked up a lot of speed before that information is transferred down the line to the last car. This results in quite a jerk when it starts moving. On my unit the first 5 (or so) cars were for the elephants. Followed by the General Manager and Ringleader who have half cars. Then the head clown, various administrative people, etc get quarter cars. Then the less valued people, but still valued people, like named performers, professionals, etc get 8th of cars. Then it's followed by the people who are very undervalued who sleep 16 to a car but still get their own rooms. These are like dancers, unnamed clowns, mechanics, bus driver, etc. They're still employees. Further down you get the "independent contractors" (me) and we sleep about 40 to a car (can't remember the exact number). This means you get a cabin which is about 3 feet wide and you sleep in bunk beds. Bathrooms, showers, are all outside the cars. We also have to pay rent, but it's not much. It's awful. But my brother ran the school so he had an 8th of a car. And I could go there to cook and shower. His bed was facing parallel to the direction of the train and it folded down into storage and a table. Also since only 8 people lived in his car. It means the washing machine on that car was not constantly occupied. The cars have a porch on both side (the vestibule) and so you get two open porches facing each other between each car. It's a nice place to hang out. There's also a restaurant car which has good greasy food for relatively cheap. About 30 cars were for people, and the remaining 30 cars in the back of the train were for equipment.
These tech bros misunderstood the mean of “disruption” all they’ve done is disrupt the efficiency of exciting rail systems by adding in as many new points of failure as possible. Brilliant.
It's crazy to see the solutions I come up with for problems in Satisfactory actually be pitched in real life! Hundreds of trains carrying small loads to a hundreds of destinations when one well planned train could do it itself. The future is now folks and I am a genius!!
People already hate when trains are at a crossing. Now imagine single car trains going through crossings every minute. You couldn't even cycle the crossing in that time.
In areas with crossings, these modules could bunch up and cross in larger groups before going their separate ways again outside of town. Ideally you'd want modules to travel in groups in order to reduce overall wind resistance.
@@WheissRS Trains already have signals (that quite look like traffic signals) used to make sure one don't ram the ass of the one before it. The smaller the train, the less efficient you are as you can only have one train per interval. They can already be used at crossings but the rule (at least here) is that trains always have the right of way. Cars can only go when there's no train or the train can't go further (like when the next interval is taken).
@@TyphoonJig and then you add the fact that a train is far less efficient at slowing down because steel on steel just doesnt have the grip rubbber has on Asphalt and the result is that Railway just became even more chaotic
How about Underpasses,India is building on large scale,Indian Railways said they will eliminate every single Railway Crossing by Bridges or Underpasses by 2024-25.
You know that thing that makes trains so efficient? The fact that they pull tons of freight cars at a time? Let’s get rid of that. You know. In the name of efficiency.
No, that's what makes trains so marginalized and trucks so popular. Trains are kilometers long, because we need people to drive each locomotive (and people have poor reaction speed requiring long scheduling delays between trains). Putting aside switching infrastructure and batteries vs. overhead power, this is actually an excellent idea. "Micro trains" that do not need huge terminal operations, because they can actually deliver containers where they are needed could be a huge win for cost and effeciency. Multiple engines are actually more efficient than one big locomotive (see TGV or any other modern passenger train design) and air resistance is utterly neglible at freight speeds (not to mention how horribly aerodynamic freight containers are). You can compare it to autonomous, electric trucks - this is so much easier to impleement and cost efficient. And electric autonomous trucks are considered best case for autonomous electric vehicles.
@@borek772 This just leaves out the fact that the most difficult and expensive part of rail transport is - you know - *_rail._* Rails don't go everywhere like they did in the early 1900s because road transport is far more flexible in smaller scale. Rail takes a lot of space and fewer lines operated at higher capacity are what today's city planning requires. Dropping rails among highways and taking their right-of-way nullifies most of rail's benefits. Building overpasses everywhere to accommodate larger amount of rail infrastructure required for point-to-point transport is _expensive._ Rail's primary benefit is long distance transport in large scale and economies of scale in freight handling. Building mini-container ports everywhere is inefficient in comparison. Semis can simply drop trailers wherever needed and can maneuver easily by themselves, which makes them massively more flexible. Fewer larger engines are generally more efficient, but in modern passenger trains have size limitations because motors must largely fit inside bogies, and express traffic needs multiple driven axles to provide traction to allow higher acceleration to achieve greater average speed.
With this kind of thinking, we might as well replace all super cargo carriers with millions of single crate boats! You know what? NO We should instead have passenger boats deliver it all! Better yet, just have speed boats deliver all the cargo in 2m by 1m cardboard boxes! Because apparently nobody knows how efficient economy of scale works, nor the difference between passenger delivery and cargo delivery!
Not to mention that you really don't want a 40' high cube loaded to the limit bounce around on rails for any period of time at all without a support brace underneath. It will fold like a lawn chair.
There's also the problem of the replacements for literally every other type of rolling-stock so there compatible with the new rail network and the fact that there's still places that lack solid and reliable satellite connections requiring said areas to have cabling run to keep the container slaying carts running through those areas moving just as efficiently as they're claimed to be.
It looks like whoever designed this has no idea about the structural makeup of container units. They're just simple box frames with sheet metal for the sides.
In many countries, electricity still comes from fossil fuels, so yes... any overhead rail power there gets its electricity from burning fuel like coal, lignite, or natural gas.
@@vikumwijekoon3166 25, are you insane? Diesel engines are extremely efficient, you can pull 70 cars with 4 engines, try and do the same with a catenary system, your company's money would be better invested in the trash.
A better solution would be the hybrid trolley truck. A concept I once saw. For standard routes there’s a powerline above but they have also a Diesel engine would the powerline fail or for getting to places without the power lines overhead.
@@marn200 diesel engines are far more efficient than catenary systems for freight, the shear ammount of wire you'd spend placing catenary over a freight line would probably buy you a locomotive or two, even a few depending on the line.
Battery-powered. You could have stopped the video there. One of the best things about trains is that you can just have power lines to the trains so that they don't have to haul around heavy batteries or fuel. In the "tech bro" universe, there seems to be a strange obsession with all sorts of pods and other ideas that revolve around making things into smaller units that can act independently. They imagine this somehow brings about efficiency and freedom and such, while completely missing the great downsides that this approach brings.
They grew up having it drilled into their head that cars are somehow a sensible idea, and now they have to bring that misconception to whichever industry they're trying to "reinvent".
Remember the first thing in the video is a map of the US where Mexico and Canada don’t exist. These numpties don’t know anything about the world beyond their borders and in the US where nobody has spent any money on railways since 1950 most lines are still single track and electrification is some weird thing that communists like Angela Merkel do.
They think of packages and people as physical data or at least they want you to. They imagine if everything is reduced to the smallest transportable unit, routes can be magically optimised and efficient. They ignore, or hide the physical and economic bandwidth constraints the real world imposes. Heck even data transport can be optimised by increasing packet size.
Y'know, as stupid as this idea is, it was actually really encouraging to see this video. People are actually starting to realize that rail is the best option. It's a step in the right direction. And when we take enough steps in the right direction, we'll end up at trains!
Dunno. Still has to be sold to dunces. We need to do something like creating an innovative solution that totally revolutionizes the market by taking a regular train and painting some speed stripes on it, and then call it differently, with some innovative words in the name, like hyper or quantum or maybe stellar.
this is why the phrase "don't fix what isn't broken" exists trains are already perfect. sure maybe tweak and innovate the engine to be both more efficient and powerful but the overall base concept has already been perfected since the beginning
i always love the use of the phrase "existing technology" to fool idiots into thinking that the new idea can be implemented without much more additional work or research
Is this not how it works? Existing technology means that a prototype or product can be created using off-the-shelf parts and not requiring research into addition components that don't exist yet?
@@joshuagoldshteyn8651 Entirely in theory, that's the thing. It ignores the fact that you're going to have to do much more in RND and practical testing like every other product, them being from off the shelf parts that could work doesn't mean they will or will be all that practical to use.
@@petrfedor1851 Cant we somehow bring this video here more attention, so the Future-Look-Fetish dies out??? We have to be able to do 'something', right?
So....the genius plan is to use battery power...to power the things that are already running on tracks and thus could be powered by...power lines? It's that or the genius plan is to hype up some doomed project to once again stall the US's switch to rail...
@@bradk8590 I mean....yeah, you wouldn't be getting the economies of scale of a locomotive and would be introducing countless needless points of failure into the system, but at least the power supply would make some sense and it wouldn't be so incredibly reliant on resources which are already bottlenecking a bit...still a dumb idea, but yes, monumentally less stupid than the current version.
I’m convinced at this point that a lot of these “innovators” were somehow traumatized by Thomas the Tank Engine when they were kids, giving them an irrational hatred of conventional locomotives.
@@cryotek3624 what are you talking about? Macho Man Randy Savage attacked Helgen. His thunderous "OH YEAH!" Tore the sky apart and burning rocks fell from the clouds.
It's like they don't realize that trains are so energy efficient because they are super aerodynamic relative to their size, individual cars throws that out the window
How can people say this with a straight face when they're litteraly witnessing first hand reusable self landing rockets and the boom of the EV industry is beyond me.
@@ailurusfulgens1849 okay bro, tell me when your reusable self landing rockets will be useful literally anywhere. No I couldn't care less about $3 billion costing one way ticket to Mars with result being me living in a 2x4 pod with barely anything to do on it, but hey, at least I'm not on Earth bro.
@@kirayoshikage4057 like you said, those rockets are pretty expensive, although it won’t benefit you doesn’t mean it’s not an overall benefit in terms of science, because 1. They don’t have to waste the time making new rockets 2. They don’t have to waste the limited money, they be useful litteraly anywhere in the field they are used in, solar power still exists whether it benefits you or not because it’s an overall benefit
@@ailurusfulgens1849 Both EV and reusable rockets have been a heavily researched. To improve the efficiency of trains is not to decentralize and scale it down. The funny thing with this system is eventually you get a few hot spots that become big terminals.
Parallel Systems CEO: “What are we gonna make to challenge regular trains?” Employee: “Well, you know those little scooter things that are used in elementary school gym class?” CEO: “Give this person a raise”
For those wondering, the scooters I’m talking about were plastic and were used in elementary school gym classes. Basically you just sit on it and move it around with your arms or legs. We used them for rely races, games, and stuff like that. I grew up in the northeastern US, though I don’t know how widespread they are.
Imagine calling freight train management expensive and suggesting two motorized battery-driven units for every individual carriage instead. Any investor buying into this bullshit deserves the outcome honestly.
I love how they open up by saying "trains are way more efficient than trucks" but then go on to reinvent trains so they can service trucks more effectively and say "Our technology opens up new possibilities for the [...] trucking market".
If you hype your products up enough, idiots will put in their money and you'll get rich, even if in the end your product is a total failure. Musk is doing the same right now, he's trying to get people on board with his robot (which will totally not happen). Not even the first of his stupid ideas, see hyperloop or his boring tunnel.
"Trains require large terminals" Yes, because the job of a freight train is to move large amounts of goods to distant places in an efficient way. And miles long freight trains are just that: efficient. It's not the job of a train to get resources directly to the factory, that's what trucks and other smaller transportation vehicles do. There is absolutely no point to use this weird battery powered sled combo that carries one cargo container to a specific location. It actually creates more problems than it solves. Let's be nice to the system and say that the batteries in those sleds actually last long enough to get goods from say New York to Miami and that they actually have a very low failure rate. The fact that you now have thousands of individual cargo containers going along the tracks requires much more supervision and planning to make sure these things arrive at their destination smoothly and without stopping for long to let other containers pass. That's also a huge benefit of having a mile long train pulling multiple cargo cars at once: Less individual units to coordinate. At best I can see such a system used on a small scale. You know to connect the large cargo terminal to the individual factories and warehouses and whatnot that require those goods. You know, let them do the job of trucks within cities. But that poses the question of: Where do you put the tracks? A big problem of modern urban planning is that they have to make new concepts work within an already existing city that was built for older solutions. You can't just remove existing infrastructure and put a new one in there to fix problems. You can't just take things from one part of the city and put it somewhere else because it would be better suited for it.
Might be useful to shuttle containers on a large terminal. But that's about it. And they'll probably already have cranes for that anyway. This is clearly a solution developed by a company who neither understands how the industry works, nor bothered to check that what they're trying to solve is in fact a problem.
It woud be a great idea to put tracks right on the road so that those tracks can be used by trams and cars with extra set of wheels to reduce friction few times. that woud be a real revolution in transportation because cars woud use 4 times less fuels and also if you have third rails you can even power your electric car from the grid and charge uit while driving.
A lot of factories and warehouse have or used to have their own rail spurs. Many are now abandoned or torn out, but they could be put back without too much issue.
Not that the current system is without flaws, but...yeah, gathering things in one place to be moved in bulk to another gathering area of cargo where they can then be distributed is just the obviously efficient thing to do both from a cost and management standpoint. More to the point this not only doesn't solve said flaws to trains but probably creates even more flaws that can be easily fixed by...not doing this.
@@Steellmor Which is an idiotic plan. Because we still have trains. Its pointless. The extremely small increase in efficiency over trucks won't make up for the immense production cost, and thats assuming it can even be more efficient than trucks.
@@RaistlinMajereFistandantilus Extremely small? Where you get numbers from? For something that doesn't even exist yet? Where you got "immense production cost" numbers? You have no idea where and how this supposed to be implemented,but claim "IT"S IMPOSSIBLE". There are factories 20 miles apart which could benefit from this a lot. Idiotic is shit-talking about others people trying to do some real work in modern problem-solving.
@@Steellmor No. Because those factories would benefit just as much from a train or dedicated transit system, if not more. I dont need to see the numbers to know making autonomous, battery powered sleds, would be immensely expensive. We can't even that effectively make battery powered cars yet. These would require a lot more power and would need to be much more heave duty. There is simply no evidence this would or even could be beneficial anywhere or for anyone.
Look on the bright side, Adam - these guys recognize rail infrastructure as a good thing. That's progress. At this rate, it will only take them a few more decades to reinvent what we already have, with no extra bells or whistles or other "improvements", and then they'll be investing in the right thing 🤣
I love how they even show in the video, how large station serves the mile-long train, but their proposed small station takes forever to handle 4 carts. How is being inefficient an improvement?
The idea of that I'm sure was to propose that their systems would be less congested, less complicated and more organised. But yea it's not portraying a great advantage in the advert
The one area I could see this being a little useful would be last-mile container delivery. Right now it’s all trucking. With better rail infrastructure, it might be preferable to send individual containers to specific destinations like “a supermarket” or “a shopping mall” or “a community post office”. Not really feasible at this time, but a less stupid version of this might be worthwhile later?
@@youteacher78, that's pretty literally what the video showed. They had a magic arm pick the trailer up off the not-train and put it onto a semi. It never explains "how it happens" because there is no "how it happens". The whole thing is bullshit.
I lived next to a rural railway track my entire childhood, and I can say with absolute confidence that breaking up every train into a hundred parts would be hell on earth at crossings - why in the name of all things peaceful and quiet would I ever want to have the stupid warning lights blinking and chiming a hundred times a day? Not to mention the horns on trains themselves, at most ten trains on a busy day was more than enough for me growing up thank you very much lol
These are the same kinds of people who think flying cars should be a thing. Imagine the people that can't drive in two dimensions already, then give them a third dimension to maneuver in.
Exactly what I was thinking. Ring ding ding ding ding every few seconds. Property values near the tracks would plummet. And if there are multiple tracks in parallel, that just clogs it even more. You have 4-6 chances of having a ring ding ding every time you cross the set of tracks XD
@@Kuli24000Almost everyone in this comment section and the video author himself all seem to either be either wilfully or accidentally ignorant about the purpose of "Parallel Systems" which is to be a PARALLEL SYSTEM to traditional rail. Literally only running in the spaces between traditional trains, going to locations which are not served by traditional railyards. No trains will be broken up and sent individually across level crossings. Every locomotive and train on the rails today will still be there. People are angry because this company was founded by former Tesla employees. This is Elon derangement syndrome at its worst. People are losing their minds!
@@blackwoodsecurity531 Wait so you don't want to be chilling and get U-boned by a car trying to merge into your skylane from below causing the flaming wreckage of your car and the chucklefuck who hit you's car to rain down on some poor family chilling beneath you, singing the song, "We like being alive, we like being a live..." ? Personally I think adding a 3rd dimension to car crashes will make the world more interesting for about 2-3 months before flying cars are outright banned.
Imagine making fun of like 20% of the population. Seriously, I get that Gen Z has some stupid things but all generations do. Don't you have ANYTHING better to ridicule?
Imagine the flight industry's version of this. One small helicopter for each passenger at a time. Perfect. No airports. No check-in lines.
Uber does that
that's what those stupid flying cars and drone cars are, basically.. 😂
@@Aresenal1739 that’s a silly comparison because taxis already exist
They got these
Flying cars...🤣
It's almost like the locomotive is the part which makes trains so efficient.
This concept just combines the disadvantages of trucks with the ones trains have.
The rails themselves play a large part as well. Much less friction loss, and lower angled slopes.
We can fix this. A modern double-stack train pulls around 240 40-ft containers. So you'd need 480 of those battery driven units at the same cost and reliability as two to three locomotives plus low-tech flatbeds plus the IT infrastructure for the tracks to deal with 240 times more independently moving parts. And any of aforementioned 480 battery units would be a single point of failure because if one overheats and goes down, your track is jammed.
I can't see where this would go wrong.
@@strangelic4234 also, each little pod doesn’t physically connect to the next pod except by a container… so if the container attachment wasn’t literally perfect, you could have an enormous derailing situation where all the little jinga blocks of this train thing smash into each other.
Which means more insurance payouts!! It is a profitable idea after all.
It adds a huge 3rd one, it has gigantic TRAFFIC problems. If one of the small ones stops in the middle: it destroys everything.
To be fair, efficient trains don't *need* a locomotive, electric multiple unit passenger trains work very well. But I don't think (outside of autonomous BEMU schemes like this) anyone has applied the EMU concept to freight rail yet.
I like how they think that the reason that big trains need big loading/unloading stations is because the trains are long, not because the cargo throughput is high.
also if the dude is annoyed by long trains... well nobody tell him that you can just.... uncouple some wagons??? boom now you have a short train
I mean its ultimately both. Its more efficient to unload as much of the train at the same time as possible, rather than having to have it "scoot" forward repeatedly to fit sections into the station. They ultimately are trying to solve the "last mile problem" of freight on a system that is designed for long distance and high throughput. You don't use trains to deliver single containers, and you couldn't run rail everywhere those containers need to go anyway. Sure, maybe you could have this system run parallel (ha, get it) to existing freight deliveries... rather than replacing existing trains and stations, adding some of these smaller scale systems for local deliveries along pre-existing lines.
But why in gods name would you ever put batteries on a train when you can just electrify the rail? Like come on, there are so many things we need batteries for and only so much material we can make them out of if we're going to move away from fossil fuels. It seems that every ten minutes some technologist is trying to come up with another way to use up batteries and make them more scarce and therefore more expensive. Do all these people have shares in lithium mining companies and are just trying to artificially raise the price?
@@albertjordan3249 It's dumb, but those techbros think in the start up mindset, in which you do small scale prototypes instead of whole systems. Electrifying the rail infrastructure is the better solution, but it's a huge national investment, while some cargo pod tests is doable with gullible silicon valley money.
@@booketoiles1600 Tesla should be taking some of their excess capital and lobby the government for more electrification projects which they can manage. Except they have no excess capital, only ("market capital,) and they have no practical experience with anything but batteries.
@@MrTaxiRob and don't those batteries just melt and explode as well
Imagine waiting at a rail road stop and see a sea of never ending separate cars crossing your path for hours
I can't imagine that, because humans are smart enough to build bridges over rails before they get as crowded as you say.
@@valentinursu1747 bro it was a joke, also, not really
Now imagine that you could build a road that passes beneath the railroad! Crazy i know...right?
@@submarine6410 I don't think it was a joke, people are remarkably stupid when outraged.
@@valentinursu1747 saying "Imagine" before a sentence basically means being sarcastic, but yea I cant be sure its a joke.
“Trains are up to 4 times more efficient than trucking”
“Our solution to this is to make trains less efficient than trucking”
By turning trains into trucks, we will take trucks off of the roads and put them on railroad tracks.
@@sauercrowder but when you seperate cargo into multiple trains you get much more surface area hitting air and more air resistance, so you lose more energy that way. bad ida
cargo boats are more eff in the long run
So railway crossing are more active?
@@burrdid we uh… we can’t build canals across the continental United States
Imagine the shipping industry's version of this. One small boat to carry one container at a time
it would be a less terrible idea on water where space is less of an issue. for inland shipping on wide rivers, you could design a ship that can only carry a few containers but is able to travel upstream at a slow speed using solar panels and sails instead of using diesel engines on huge push barges.
@@TheSuperappelflap It would still be a terrible idea. More terrible, even, because there's only so many good places to put a port in. And important chokepoints on shipping lanes are already congested as it is, imagine if instead of one ship with 20 000 containers, there's 1000 ships with 20 containers each.
@@JackPhoenixCz no 2000 with 10 each
@@aryaaswale7316 20,000 with 1 or go home.
@@JackPhoenixCz thats why i specifically said inland waterways. in the EU most inland waterways are underutilised and there isnt much space for large ports. for ocean freight it would be a terrible idea. in the netherlands we have a lot of small ports along rivers with just a few cranes where containers can be transferred to land transport. these are currently served by small push barges that generally transport about 4-8 containers each. the canals arent wide and deep enough for larger ships.
"just build trains instead"
-Adam Something, every video.
Guy is always right. Trains are awesome!
Edit: except for Military and politics. Liberals and European-centric Imperialists like him are never right and just spread propaganda that can help the ambition of pan European empire.
And yet, it's always completely correct
Trains are efficient and a good solution for most big scale applications.
He also could say: "just use bikes" but actually we all know it's Not Just Bikes and not just trains and definitely not just cars.
That should be the name of the channel
Also, US freight trains are so big they do not need to be particularly aerodynamic, as their frontal cross section is pretty small relative to their mass so aerodynamic drag is not a big factor. if you shrink it down to each container aerodynamic drag is going to be a much larger factor.
Totally relevant if you're trying to efficiently use battery power.
Also the fact it even considers batteries as a means of power, why not just use 3rd rail or overhead catenary like normal electric trains? (Based on the form factor of the cart 3rd rail is probably easier)
What they say: "we want to make it clean and efficient"
What they mean: "I want a slice of that $700 billion freight trucking market"
That's exactly what I was thinking...Their genius idea is to make the industry dependent on "Parallel Systems," as every single train car needs two of their battery powered rail cars!
Plus building all the infrastructure and taking profits from the manufacturing of the batteries, etc. Creating problems so Parallel Systems can sell us the solution.
These ideas are often very stupid, but they look slick and modern focusing on trends everyone believes in - self-driving AI, and battery powered cars. Thus they get investments, and often big contracts worth millions. The project never works of course, but that's after a state or country has paid them 50 to 100 million dollars. Elon Musk uses this model for his Hyperloop which will never go anywhere.
i wnt to punk the bank for a big ass credit
I'm pretty sure they know they can't get that. What they want is VC money they can make off with.
@@sorryifoldcomment8596 Printer companies be like
The trains pulling cargo miles long is part of why they're so efficient lmao
no, trains are efficient because steel rails and wheels have very low loss, you can look for videos where a car can pull 3 pcs of 60 tonne wagons or one man can pull one wagon.
if we replaced roads with rail it woud give extreme efficiency boost to all cars and trucks, but you need to make some kind of dual suspension with extra wheels
@@deltaxcd what do you mean "no"? how does what you say conflict with what the original comment says?
they are BOTH points which add to the efficiency of trains...
@@RYNOCIRATOR_V5 the conflict is because original poster claims that efficiency comes from the "economy of scale" as if it is because trains is big, but in reality efficiency comes from the fact that rails are very efficient on their own and size is completely irrelevant in fact vagons are have very horrible aerodynamic so efficiency could be further improved by at least 50% or even more
put a plain car on the rail and it will use like 4-6 times less fuel for the same distance
@@deltaxcd again, both are true. i don't know why that's hard to grasp...
@@RYNOCIRATOR_V5 Both washt? Size has no effect, driving just one wagon woud be almost as much effective as driving 50 wagons and considering that wagons are all standard size and super heavy it is super inefficient if you need to cary very bulky loads.
These companies be like: “Ok, so it’s like a train, but less efficient and far more costly, but get this: _polygons”_
Bionicle train
Add some RBG and you've got yourself $1b in investors by the end of the week.
polygons -> look more sciency -> people who have no idea how these things work like it -> investors have no idea how things work -> investors invest in it -> company stock prices go up -> sell company shares -> make ton of money and run away before investors realize they are dumb
You can still make a video pointing out the errors, without sounding like an asshole. Yes, this is a terrible idea, but it's an idea nontheless. That's how the world works.
@@sanafabich2184 It's an idea with the intent of drifting the uninformed. It does not deserve gentle consideration.
You're the Gordon Ramsay of urban planning
This is a criminally underrated comment.
US or UK Gordon?
I see he held his donkeys
THIS IDEA IS FOCKIN RAW
I love the "it'll be quieter" argument. Because if anything is quieter than one long train, it's a hundred short trains of equal capacities starting and braking all the time. 🤦♂️
Also every single vehicle having to use their horn for every level crossing ever. That won't get annoying anytime soon!
@@daanwilmer yeah imagine sitting at a level crossing with only one rail car going by
@@bjthedjdutchdude1992 Yeah but then another one comes by... And another... And so on... Depending on the average use of a crossing it would be much more time consuming than, let's say, connecting all cars and running them all at once through the crossing.
If you've ever heard a freight train, you know there's nothing quiet about them anyways...neither are 100s of trucks, but I've heard some freight trains with almost square wheels come by in my days live close to the track.
@@LuizAlexPhoenix Not to mention a hell of a lot more dangerous.
This system basically combines the problems of freight rail and electric trucks without solving any problems
but its innovative...
And it would litter the landscape with expensive, inefficient, individual sorting gantries.
Urgh.. iTs DiSrUpTiVe!!!
@@mikek9297 Software will handle it...
exactly.
"We don't have any problems with our current trains, so our technology should solve this problem of having no problems."
"The problem is... that there is no problem!"
@@ryos.5974 the problem is trains are not "tech enough". Just let tech bros build 1:1 copies of trains but call them blockcain cool carts and we are good. There will be investment money for it and no one will ruin trains
there are a lot of problems with current trains, you just didn't research them, neither did adam, and he didn't even provide a real critisim or any arguements. It is very shameful video. You're just being a fanboy right now.
@@nerodominus7582 is not like the video offers much substance to be criticized. Plus if you watch then channel regularly you pretty much can figure out why this idea is not great by information contained in another videos. But yeah trains have problems, still are a great way for moving mass ppl and cargo.
Reminds of a quote from a video I watched some time ago: “Good? Good is not good, I want bad”
So instead of having a handful of engines that can be rigorously maintained, there will be thousands of powered skates and the failure of any one bringing entire lines to a halt. Brilliant.
I don’t understand why they would think their system would be more efficient
I think they might be trying to sell the idea, of shipping one single container, or small amounts of cargo. This would maybe make sense for a small company, but that would also block the train track/rails on which they run. One of the main problems of train shipping is, that often the loadup and loadoff spots are horribly maintained, and arent keeping up with the times, leading to massive delays. Including blocked tracks, it causes hours, up to days of delays in shipment.
So if the system did ship single containers, it might make that "singular container" part of shipment slightly faster, but will extremely slow down anything else, as train tracks would constantly be blocked by these single container "trains".
don't you get it? they bypass expensive train yards! FREEDOM! AUTONOMY! CAPITALISM! MURICAAAAA
MICROSERVICES EVERYTHING!
They don't. They are out to grift gullible idiots in middle management.
Because they are tech bro's so don't understand basic economics, but get everything delivered and wondered how they could get things delivered quickly and didn't think to ask one expert even a train conductor if this was a good idea.
"Freight trains are 4x more efficient than trucks"
Mere seconds later: "Let's reinvent freight trains as they seem to be the root of the issue."
and forgetting that when you split up all the carts... it is not that efficient anymore.
@@geraldfisher6475 Most of the efficiency of trains comes from the low rolling friction of running steel wheels on steel rails.
@@kered13 and the fact that only a few units are actually powering it.
@@gundamator4709 That's not actually a significant factor. With electric engines, it doesn't really matter whether you have one big engine or many smaller engines, the efficiency is the same. Actually having more engines distributed throughout the train has some advantages, hence why it is used in many passenger rail services.
@@kered13 Yeah, but at the same time, more engines is more occasions for one to fail. That's not a huge deal with existing EMUs, since they can easily get off the tracks without it, but with freight trains that do need all that power, it might clog the network up for a bit. Although I guess there are two units per container in this proposition so maybe it's not that big a deal.
Another thing I wanted to touch on was maintenance and production, but then I thought that perhaps the smaller size of the units would actually help with that, so I'm not sure about it anymore.
Also, running them on batteries instead off the existing wires is simply dumb, though it's a relatively easy fix.
Lastly, while I'm no engineer, I'd imagine a single bigger engine would be more efficient than several smaller ones producing the equivalent ammount of power and torque, no? Please correct me if I'm wrong.
All in all, very skeptical of the idea, but maybe it does have its merits (transporting perishables maybe?). It seems like an interesting point of discussion for sure.
The thumbnail alone makes me know this is gonna be a bruh moment
@@abigel_____3020 nice
@@aeyde 🤨
@@leo0six wha
I thought it was one of Spiderman’s webshooters lol
@@abigel_____3020 sus
Here's a complication I see; Railroads operate mostly independently from roads, however, they do intersect with each other. Having a hundred or so cars moving independently, instead of one hundred-car train, would mean traffic would be stopped at crossings a hundred times instead of just once. So I can see this creating more traffic congestion, not reducing it.
Yeah. And the only solution would be to send the individual cars in a cyclic timed schedule, which would be impossible since the cargo won't be the same every time
thats because your thinking in old train logic imagine instead that there's sensors for cars at least on low traffic roads so the micro trains stop and let the cars through and then continue since you no longer have one super long wait. because of this you can maximize the throughput of both cars and train cars.
It all depends on how well cars communicate with central and between one another. The only reason we need traffic lights in an intersection is because human drivers can't coordinate but if I would be able to send my speed an position constantly to cars next to me and my route can be calculated exactly with fine tolerances then speeds can be gradually adapted so I can pass through an intersection 1 second before the other car crosses without any of us applying the breaks.
@@valentinursu1747 We don't live in a society that's technologically advanced enough for that.
@@christopheraaron8299 not yet, but if an idea sells well enough to create that problem you mentioned, we will get there faster. The rails are much more likely to implement this first. Roads are a lot more chaotic and people that will protest against their "private" car broadcasting their position to other cars. Cargo on rails has no such privacy concerns.
Imagine driving a car or being on a bus, that has to wait for 30 minutes on a railroad crossing, just because there's a single container on the rail every minute
By then the cars will be autonomous as well as the trains.
Yeah but when we have autonomous cars it will all work itself out. I swear it will. Now gib 76 billion dollars
Ahh, one can dream.
@@aculasabacca ah. So you'll be locked in the car while the rail trucks keep it from moving.
Yeah, this is where my head immediately went.
First statement: Trains are more efficient than highway trucks for cargo transport
Second statement: So we split them up into individual vehicles, effectively creating highway trucks on rails!
But then we show them moving individually-right-next-to-each-other the same way a linked train car would be..
@@citizen6350 the MAIN reason rail is more efficient is THE RAILS. The rolling resistance is NIL, thus much easier to maintain motion due to lower friction. ANYTHING You put on rails becomes more efficient. You do realize that most train engines use the exact same technology as a truck, namely a diesel engine. And have you ever heard of electric trains?
The only thing missing from this proposal is using electric trucks powered not by batteries, but by the rail system itself as any other electric train.
@@t00by00zer Air drag is still a critical thing also on rails. A whole train has got less air drag, than a single cart.
@@norbertfleck812 There is NOTHING precluding those individual carts from lining up and driving in each other's slip stream while they share the same rail route. If you've spent any time on the interstate highway system, you will have seen trucks doing the same thing, getting in a line and following closely to each other to greatly reduce drag. Even easier with computer-controlled trucks that could actually PUSH each other.
@@t00by00zer However, these single carts are complicated, expensive and prone to failure.
They might be not worse than conventional trains, but they also do not provide ad advantages worth the extra money, maintenance and infrastructure.
Q: What is the most crucial thing that makes trains efficient?
A: The ability to couple hundreds of cars and haul them or rails over long distances with minimal energy losses and cost.
Q: What if we took this essential part away and claim it a benefit?
A: ...
"long distances" is not really a benefit but disadvantage you need to adapt train to short distances
i got answer for last one we sell it to stupid people as futureware and make a quick buck
@@deltaxcd We have short distance transport, the benefits ain't worth the infrastructure, and who knows if by the time the implementation is done it will still be as useful?
@@deltaxcd Are you talking last mile of delivery? You wouldn't want to use normal trains for that, it's not practical. But I can imagine package delivery rails in sufficiently high population density areas.
@@bramvanduijn8086 well if governments decided to replace all roads with rails and tell all cars that from now on they are going to drive on rails rather than roads that woud be totally possible and probably even less expensive than roads. everyone could build a railroad right into their garage or back yard if they want.
Also it could be feasible to move truck on rail rather than letting them drive on their own power and on the last mile they get off the rail platform and drive on their own
Imagine the trouble/difficulty of getting the two pod things at the right distance for the shipping container... and what would happen if they didn't get it just right..
positioning is the easy part. the real problem is with the fact that they would need to be maintaining the exact same speed at all time.
I think this is good. Techbros are evolving: first hyperloop, then this piece of crap. They will eventually catch up to the present and learn that modern trains without Tesla batteries are the answer.
🤣🤣🤣
I mean to be fair, they do point out a problem of modern us cargo trains (though not in the way the think) : really good for huge loads, but absolutely no flexibility. You can't send a miles long train to a midsized town. Also each wagon is attached manually, which is a problem when you want to change the train composition quickly.
For the second problem the cargo division of SBB CFF FFS (swiss federal trains) are looking into automated attachment systems, to save time and increase safety.
For the first problem, if we want to actually replace trucking by train logistics smaller and more flexible trains are needed, but I've no idea how to achieve those operations, there's a reason trucks dominate this service.
It's as if batteries are a waste of resources if you have a CABLE RUNNING NEXT TO YOU.
@@booketoiles1600 West Virginia would like a word with you
It's kinda like how Flat Earthers keep proving Earth is a sphere, then come up with a way to disprove that experiment, which only leads to another experiment that proves Earth is in fact a sphere. Someday, that nickle will drop.
A lot of these "disruptive" transport technologies seem to be powered by their CEO's deep antipathy of sharing space with other people.
this should be the bechdel test of transport innovation
"is this worse than the present in every aspect while allowing people to be alone while using it? so futuristic!"
the musk test.
Sociopathy on wheels/in tubes.
@@gamongames I am absolutely going to start using the term "the Musk test," exactly as you have described it. It's perfect.
It's been that way since Walt Disney.
"People movers" were the original pods.
And the CEO's masterful counterargument to valid criticism from scientists and economists: "You're an idiot."
Yeah I am a millionaire so I am qualified to reinvent something that thousands of engineers have been improving over the last 200 years.
Have I ever worked in the business I want to reinvent? Of course not!
@@eannamcnamara9338 😂😂😂
I use a variant of that line whenever my friends come to me with one of their pie-in-the-sky ideas. It's disappointing to me how quickly they fold when they consider, apparently for the first time, that the problem they're trying to solve has already been addressed and that any improvements their ideas would bring would be incremental rather than revolutionary.
@@ryang2573 the same with economics, and heck even in politics, everyone think their little progressive ideas are the ushering of a new utopian era, they solved civilization! sigh.
@@ryang2573 Cant we somehow bring this video here more attention,
so the Future-Look-Fetish dies out???
We have to be able to do 'something', right?
What hurts me the most. Is that I'm sure if you showed this to a group of people high school students college students regular adults in life people with families that are good percentage of them would just take it at its word and be like Yup we should be doing that.
true
yes of course, if you use it as intentended than it is a great solution. notto replace rail road, but to replace the last mile carrier (the trucks), maybe not battery driven but power line, definitely quieter, cleaner, and more secure than trucks. and no, the technology of a system that can do only 2 simple things (rotate motor clockwise and rotate counterclockwise) is not more prone to failure than systems like a truck with 100s of moving parts, and on top human error of the truck driver. but if you shine the light the right way you can change everything to the bad. like: do you know how much CO2 a Tree produces when there is a forrest fire? maybe we should remove all trees. What kind of argumentation is that?
The solution, hear me out, is highly trained carrier pigeons tied to strings. With merely 30,000 pigeons you can carry a shipping container at least 20 feet to load it onto a train. After the pigeons have loaded each container, their union demands a 15 minute lunch break before tying them to the front of the train and pulling it to its destination where, you guessed it, 700 sled dogs will take over.
You're welcome.
LMAO now that's existing technology gawd dardnit!
and its 4 times more efficient than highway horses
Too bad the pigeons are gone because the chinese ate them
Solid. Now shut up and take my money!
A 5 ounce bird, could not carry a several ton container.
Suppose 2 pigeons carry it
What, held on a line under the dorsal guiding feathers?
I like how the US is an island in their promotional video. I know this is done on purpose to get slick visuals, but this fits so well with the image of Americans being disconnected with geographical reality.
Remove geographical and your last statement still stands
Then replace Americans with people and the statement still stands.
"trains are up to 4 times more efficient than trucking"
"so our solution to this is to turn trains into trucks that require rail roads"
nimko
The youtuber’s arguement is actually flawed. Big terminals do have economies of scale except they are also further away from the containers’ final destination. Smaller stations inside industrial parks may provide even higher economics of scale because factory owners can now just dump raw material from the train to the production line. Boeing’s medium-large airplane beats Airbus’ A380 under the same logic of thinking.
@@johnanon372 yeah he comes off as very ignorant lol
Only good outcome from this is saving on rubber and asphalt. And that's literally it.
Exactly "trains into trucks that require railroads"... but first we'll have to invest billions to modify the infrastructure of the entire network.
(not that there isn't room for improvement)
I just want to point out one important safety feature: brakes. *Emergency brakes*, specifically. Almost all modern trains and many semi trailers use a continuous brake system first developed by Westinghouse. Without going into too much detail about its operation, it basically has pressurized air lines running along the entire length of the assembly. When the pressure drops, brakes are applied. This is intrinsically failsafe because if anywhere along the assembly a coupling breaks, a pipe fails, or a valve is opened using an emergency stop handle, the pressure in the whole line vents into the atmosphere, applying all brakes immediately, thus preventing a runaway train. This requires all train lines to be connected - you can't have it on an assembly of individual, autonomous units without introducing many critical points of failure.
For example, how do you communicate to the other units that they should apply brakes? Using a radio signal has the same disadvantages as using straight air brakes. Applying brakes on the *absence* of a radio signal also requires the on-board computer to perform an action, which introduces many points of failure.
Trains have had HUNDREDS of years to solve these problems, PLEASE don't let those billionaire fuckers introduce them again.
I am so unreasonably angry.
If you shorten the train (I doubt getting all the way down to single rail trucks is possible, but they can be a lot shorter) then does not the danger of a run-away train also similarly reduce? I mean, we do have a great many individual road cars running around and massive 100-car pileups are uncommon enough to be newsworthy.
Nothing but brake lights to signal those following to also apply brakes. Computer controls are now operating in this environment, with a better safety record than humans, and they will only get better. I fully expect an autonomous systems running on rails, where there are slightly fewer idiots in control, could easily handle the traffic involved.
You do have to remember that the rail system's primary problem was with having the smallest crew possible manage the most amount of cargo. The long trains that created caused a lot of other problems that had to be solved.
Automation is coming. Rail is much easier to solve than road. This will be disruptive.
@@4Fixerdave Keep in mind that we're still talking about rail infrastructure. You can close one or two lanes, or an entire road section, and cars will switch lanes or find an alternative route. There's no such thing on rails. A single crippled unit can hold up the affected line and disrupt the greater system. It's also much more difficult to get out of the way of a runaway train.
One of the critical issues of fully computer-operated vehicles is exception handling. The Boeing 737-MAX, if you remember, had a critical bug in its software that made the plane nose-dive on three occasions. Two resulted in all crew and passengers being killed, one was saved by human oversight when the pilot noticed that the trim wheel was constantly spinning in a nose down direction and physically had to hold it in place. The root issue was a faulty signal from an angle-of-attack sensor that was handled badly.
The point of that anecdote is that automation has been a part of transportation for decades, but the vehicles are incredibly complex systems and something could always break. To this day, no safety system has been 100% reliable.
One massive advantage of a long train assembly is the redundancy it provides. A car could lose braking power entirely and the rest would compensate (the Westinghouse system would actually apply the emergency brake if even one brake reservoir failed). Make the train shorter and you lose redundancy. Remove the operator and the software could potentially become the single point of failure.
Automation isn't coming, it's already here and it was determined that oversight is necessary.
10 years later:"The future of freight is carrying 1 item per drone."(the sky darkens with thousands of drones, some fall and kill people but most get to their destination)
Not gonna lie, that sounds kinda metal
We need this sci-fi book yesterday.
AMAZON PRIME AT YOUR SERVICE!!!
@@avenue4624 yeah guys it's me Jeff Bezos in my evil blimp
I actually thought that's the direction they were going to go when they said "Two can play at that game."
You want modular, do you? YOU WANT TO SEE MODULAR, MORTY? I'll show you TRUE modular!
Trains in Japan and Europe actually did much better than the US, they don’t have to reinvent the trains like that
electrify the railways could help
Actually, a higher percentage of freight is transported by train in the US than in the EU.
@@MarioAtheonio yep, freight transport is still big in US. Personal transport is not that big though
@@herrklugscheiser2330 Switzerland has an electrification rate of 100% for there railway
@@Dr_Doctor_Lee LMAO, who in their right mind would electrify large freight systems using 3rd rail? xd
Why battery power why? Rails already have 3rd rail or overhead power. What kind of scam are they running?
I want to know what investment company would give these people a penny.
Theranos is a thing.
You still playing that god awfull game mate?
You´d be surprised how dumb investment companies can be.
Because Musk.
Battery power is the new "Tech"
I feel like every electric inventor ignores the fact how batteries are actually made...
At least they admitted trains existed beforehand, even if they don't understand why trains are long in the first place. And how a van or truck is a lot cheaper (about 10x-30x at least) than even a single wagon making the economics untenable.
There's a lot of industrial sites that have rail access, but are never going to get a full train to stop there. Instead of taking a container off the rail network, putting it on a truck, and driving the last mile, why not keep it on the rails?
@@RobertSzasz As Adam says in the video, that’s about the only application that makes any sense.
@@RobertSzasz they already use small switch engines for that. There’s not a lot of benefit to change. A factory may only need 20 widgets but a container can have 50,000 widgets onboard for an entire region. Running a single container point to point would take a long time.
Don't worry about it, the system is automated. Our proprietary patented spaghetti code will take care of all the building, maintenance, and scheduling for you. Trust us. We paid for this animation, we can pay someone to figure out how to make it work later.
"Don't worry, it uses AI"
@@alandarrin Each cargo container can be minted as an NFT to help keep track of it. Brilliant!
how about we put these containers into underground hyperloops?
@@cerulity32k oh great, now we have the retarded sibling of glados from portal managing potentially critical infrastructure. Not everything needs ai
As a software engineer, I approve this message.
My man really said, “We’re going to disrupt the shipping industry with gym class push carts operating as Amazon warehouse robots.”
We're disrupting ship transport by giving every container a swim ring.
You dumbed it down enough that now I understand the concept. Thank you.
HOLY SHIT ITS AWFUL.
@@jochenkraus7016 logic is literally thinking a motorboat is faster than a freighter or tanker
@@jochenkraus7016 The perfect analogy! Thank you.
I just read one of biggest Czech online store start to use trains to transport of goods from China instead of tankers cause it´s faster, cheaper and with more stable prices.
If you've ever lived in a town where trains cross roads, these little battery powered mini trails sound like a nightmare. Imagine instead of a train coming every hour or two, blocking traffic and activating the train crossing signal... it happened every 3 minutes. Good luck ever falling asleep again.
Fun fact:
While U.S. passenger rail is a nightmare, the North American freight rails system is one of the most efficient, safe, and productive in the world, and has been for over a century.
Indeed, the American firght train network is amazing (it could be further improved upon of course). I remember as a young boy when I read about the huge Big Boy locomotives hauling cargo over the Rocky Mountains and in my seven year old mind it was absolutely glorious!
It's amazing indeed, but it could always welcome a bit more capacity and extension, it's just better to simply expand it than try to reinvent it with stupid gimmicks
@@sephikong8323 Cant we somehow bring this video here more attention,
so the Future-Look-Fetish dies out???
We have to be able to do 'something', right?
Too bad the big seven rail companies in North America have spent the last decade sabotaging American rail infrastructure to squeeze out more profits.
@@jacksonlarson6099 Um, how exactly would that be profitable for them? How would sabotaging rail infrastructure PROFIT the rail companies?
It wouldn't.
You're wrong.
"How about we just reinvent a truck, but make it fucking stuck on rails"
"That is a bad idea"
"I've already made the advertisement"
"Why are you like this"
lol! good one
Well there were trains before trucks
Trains came first
@Pud Pete It´s taking the worst parts of trucks and trains and combining them. Genius!
@@Thetarget1 you forgot the part were they flex seal the battery onto it and call it a day!
The advantages of rail are: scale, efficiency, pre-existence.
The disadvantages are: non-flexible routes, speed.
New idea: let’s keep the disadvantages and get rid of the advantages
only the finest of american solutions
Also, batteries are awful for trains. I feel that a methanol fuel cell would work better. :) In simple terms, liquid methanol can produce electricity. Also, the train is highly inefficient only tugging 4 cars. lol ...
@@playtesting2317 "hey america you should replace your entire fleet of reliable long distance GE engines with these remote controlled skateboards for moving cargo because uhh your trains use diesel and diesel is icky. this is the future!"
@@thatguyalex2835 methanol. You know that methanol is highly toxic solution? Imagine one of the trains falling into a river and killing entire biotope by that. We have hydrogen, ethanol, methane. Also octane but its kinda old (same as ethanol and methane but who cares)
In logistics, speed isn't a concern, if its passenger trains then go ahead.
Oh wait we have trains that can go as fast as airliners.
So no disadvantage there.
It reminds me of the tiny trains they have in Switzerland that can carry a few containers. but they only move stuff within their city between individual warehouses.
Yes, I think there are applications for this, just not any of the ones listed in the company’s video
Those exist in the US too.
We used to have one of those in my little town, where a bullet factory moved supplies from one end of town to the other on a little private track.
and exactly that is what these systems are for, not to replace long haul trains
"Our country was built on rail, and after 200 years its still the most efficient way to move heavy loads."
The video should've ended there.
Oh wait, but who said that small trains cannot work alongside large trains to achieve different goals? Just like you have buses and also you have cars.
@@homo-sapiensis Yes, personal trains for EVERYONE!
But really, that might apply to mining, where they use these small trains anyway without issue, but what would this battery powered nonsense improve there.
But for carrying loads of cargo across land (since ships are better when they can be used) splitting up the trains gives no benefit. Relying on batteries only makes it worse. If anything, they could put electric trucks up with those powerlines that trolleybuses use, but batteries and heavy lifting/pulling are a bad match.
@@Notmyname1593 exactly! A small production enterprise could easily own a train for medium-size deliveries to customers.
On electrified tracks they could join and hire small locomotives to push or pull them.
@@homo-sapiensis Except train tracks don't go to every home and business. They'd still need to stop at the same terminals and offload onto trucks anyway.
@@screamingcactus1753 plenty of under-used railway stations where I live. And they have side tracks. I see potential.
"The future is now" That doesn't mean everything has to look futuristic. It has to be effective and economic.
heck the future was 1920.
I'd rather have stuff effective and eco friendly, but with aesthetics of a brick, than another sleazy white-plastic-with-accents I-Shit
i say we just rebuild existing ES44AC and SD70ACE locomotives with pantographs
Agreed. The future is in the future; now is now.
Sometimes stylistic changes just make things look like shit.
For Factorio folks out there:
Imagine having a rail with just one (1) transport wagon and feeding your whole base with it.
haha, right? there are so many games that are effectively logistics simulators, maybe play a few hundred hours on them before sinking money into a stupid idea.
A man of culture. Factorio is an awesome model for this. Say having 4 trains with 4 wagons probably is much better than having 16 trains with 1 wagon. Because signals start getting all messed up when there are too many trains in the system. 16 trains even in a large system can cause fuck ups.
Okay but like, people actually do that for mega bases and it actually works very well. You just have to set up your base right.
yeah scale is something very big i cant imagine running 1 wagon on each train
why cant i get green circuits
oh right because i have 30 trains trying to enter the station and 1 wagon being filled at a time
@@AJ213Probably with super SUPER carefully balanced systems that still sometimes jam, and without the aspect of human error or random malfunction
"quieter neighborhoods" These trucks will still need to grab the container at some point unless you build a rail to your business/home
They did it, they somehow managed to screw up “just build a train”
not the first
WARNING I am the unprettiest human YTer worldwide. Take the hint, dear 2ill
The fact that they acknowledged that rail is the future of transport as it’s more efficient than single lorries and then completely removed the part of trains that made them that efficient
Frankly, i'm more interested in whether these people are clueless or scammers. Although i'm somewhat confused as to how this scam is supposed to work. No rail company that's successfully doing business should be stupid enough to not realise that the proposed scenario makes no sense.
@@Llortnerof they are after venture capitals money, then "burn" it while not producing anything of value
"Guys ya know how trains are designed to carry large amounts of cargo in a short amount of time? well lets do that except the exact opposite: we'll minimize carge carrying efficiency while maximizing the time it takes all the carge to get to its destination! And on top of that lets replace existing electricity infrastructure with something that no one fucking asked for!
Not entirely a lot of the efficiency of rail is the lack of rolling resistance because steel wheels and track don't flex as much as rubber and asphalt.
@@thebigyeeter4282 9
Standard freight train: 4 points of failure (4 diesel engines) for 70 cars.
Parallel Systems: 140 points of failure for 70 cars.
Forgive me if I’m wrong but I’m pretty sure that if one of the 4 engines fail it can still run on three, so it’s four points of failure with redundancy of one, versus 140 with redundancy of 0 which is an absolute slaughter.
@@randombrit13 who said one cart cannot power the other at reduced speed?
@@homo-sapiensis i actually didn’t think of that. I’m guessing by the scale of the thing it’s unlikely, but my engineering qualifications are exclusively software so I couldn’t say for sure.
Edit: a warning to ye fools who dare venture further this gets so far off topic we end up discussing the economics of a fully automated world.
@@randombrit13 if a container lies on two carts firmly, I don't see a reason why it couldn't work.
Also, with two pairs of wheels, why wouldn't a cart have two small engines?
@@homo-sapiensis Even if one cart can power the one in front at reduced speed you're still gonna lose a lot of cargo if two of them stop working somewhere in the middle. Well actually maybe not, if each one has the power to push the one in front then if two or three stop in the middle or front then you'll have a whole line behind them pushing. I still wouldn't trust that system though, things might get dicey with that many engines pushing on eachother.
Had this company been out in early 2021, it would have gone public. That's how crazy 2020 and 2021 were.
Why 2020 and 2021 were crazy??
I wish they did. Imagine if you short sold their stock 😂
@@user-vr8qd4hk6y have you been living under a rock
@@fiyum333 So?
Yeah fiyum u live under a rock but log into the internet ??? It’s all a big lie
Hey, at least we're getting somewhere! Now they're accepting the superiority of rails, I say give it a few more years and they figure out that putting several of these together behind one very powerful engine will be cheaper and more reliable. Apparently they're planning to use these in a 'platoon' of 10 units at once, so they're close to figuring out what a 'train' is.
On a different note, I think something like this might be useful for fully automated shunting, though it would be extremely expensive. Just use a single powered bogie to shunt one or two cars.
This might have also been useful 60 years ago, when more or less all industries still had a rail spur. But not today.
someone obviously saw the little roombas in an ikea warehouse and thought: we could do this on train tracks! autonomous units simply don't work better on rails - they work better with less restrictions. they are also better for sorting stuff or delivering separate packages, NOT massive volumes.
@@alveolate Everything autonomous works better on rail since the autonomy isnt really there 😅 Roomba has to realize that she shouldnt go there... on rail, you just cant take the wrong turn 😄And to have autonomous trains you would need a fucking satelite scanning what is in front of them since trains dont really like fast braking XD
I'm not an expert but I do know that there are already automatic systems for identifying freight cars - all it needs is to put a chip on each car (might have been RCID, it was years ago). So automatic routing and shunting of freight cars shouldn't be too difficult. It might in fact be made easier by adding a motor to each car for the shunting phases, a bit like in the first video,, while still relying on a locomotive for the transport phase. (As I said, this isn't my job so I won't swear this actually makes sense - just brainstorming...)
Anyway, postal services and firms like Amazon already have systems for automatically identfying and sorting parcels, so why don't railways integrate such systems to increase efficiency?
@@gerardvila4685
The embarrassing thing is to go and try to sell such a solution to a custumer who has used rfid for decades:-)
Good points and great brainstorming. All the best
@@gerardvila4685 As someone who works in the industry, because those systems fucking SUCK.
They could be a hundred times better designed but the failure would be critical when they do happen.
"How could this get even worse than it already is?"
*B A T T E R I E S*
Imagine shipping containers getting manhandled on boats and then beeing used as a structural part to connect two powered bogies.
if only you could electrify trains.. oh wait
Yeah the problem with batteries in a normal train is that it can’t store as much as a diesel train can
@@ImfrAfreak Not only that, but batteries that big will be incredibly heavy and costly (especially on the material side of things) to manifacture, not to mention the loss of performance over time.
@@zocca0134 dont tell that to Deutsche Bahn, they are currently testing battery powered passenger trains instead of just electrifying the network
Another thing to add to the mix - cargo is often carried by roads because it's essentially piggybacking off the demand for roads to go to houses/businesses. Because they often move people. That's so obvious to everyone, that most never really think about it. We've designed cities and towns around roads for so long that it's normal. Since the days when we were moving horse drawn wagons around.
But there isn't a network of rail cars going to every driveway. Nor is anybody going to build one because you'd have to rip up existing infrastructure. And more or less reinvent how humans see cities.
So these battery powered railcars "can come to where they're needed", would just be those same freight stations, in more or less all situations. And then just loading onto trucks for the last leg. The same as it is now.
The necessary preceding step isn't there. And is already being filled, albeit inefficiently, by cars.
wtf are you doing here
Well this explains at least why this video is in my feed.
Womble?
Hi sir
@@dolphinus2479 most likely your mother
A standard shipping container probably cant handle the forces arise between front and rear carriages underside. Especially when the whole set brakes. One may think, the individual carriages can communicate each other and adjust into that. But the friction between whhel and rail wont respond to any sudden change anyway. So a ladder frame in between 2 carriages seems inevitable. Thus it turns into a standard carriage :)
If only there was a way of connecting electricity to trains without having to build thousands of battery powered sleds.
Yes interesting, it really activates my brain coconut, can you elaborate more on your idea of an overhead elrctrical outlet? Maybe we can get multiple investors to give us money, yes...
NATIONWIDE BUMPER CAR HIGHWAY SYSTEM
-We desperately need a company interested in improving solar power. If we could make solar panels more efficient, we could start putting them everywhere, instead of needing massive solar fields. They could potentially one day be all around cities, built into smart phones, and yes, imbedded in car and locomotive roofs. Then their wouldn't need to be so many plants burning coal to generate electricity that all this "innovative" stuff needs, and our carbon footprint could actually be reduced more significantly.-
EDIT: okay so people have told most of what I’m suggesting a company do is physically impossible. I realize Nuclear is probably an option we need more people to support as it has the capabilities to provide power to cities and electric locomotives I was suggesting. I still think experimenting with less resource-intensive Solar diode designs is worth doing so they could provide some extra power, but I get that it won’t solve everything as I had the impression it would. At least my confusion sparked some discussion and will prevent others from being less naive.
@@maxmocs5008 But the televisions keep getting bigger and bigger.
@@Bipedalduck overhead electrical connections are difficult to maintain are susceptible to weather bringing the systems down. How about we make a rail car that is powered by electricity, that pulls a lot of rail cars, but the elecrical generator is on the rail car itself! This also doesn’t require expanding power plant capacity which relies on coal to generate electricity
"Finally my redesign of the train is complete"
"You have managed to improve trains?
"...improved?"
"Instead of a single train with a single engine that we'd have to maintain, we want 4 electric engines that are inefficient and prone to break for each container." (c) some engineering genius
and, rather than a single train that can be powered with overhead lines
we want these little battery powered trains that have to be recharged
Imagine how possibility of failure this shit will be. Like, you had not one, but 100 separeted train instead. If one of them fails anyware, all you entire system crash. And you cant just simply "drag that train with another train" as we do now, cause, you cant even get to it.
What a fcking joke they invent.
That's not how systems engineering and calculating the probability of system failure works with parallel systems. Literally go anywhere that moves water and you will see multiple smaller pumps (ie. 3 but only 2 need to operate) instead of 1 big pump (or you will always see another large pump in reserve). Part of why they do this is for decreasing the probability of system failure. Of course modern pumps can 'throttle' (ie. variable speed drives).
*some executive that ignored the engineering genius who told them it was dumb
Youe mean 8 engines, since yuo need at least 2 of those things per container.
And that's why schools shouldn't focus on people remembering but people understanding the concept as a complex system
Another glaring thing they left out: Not every train car is carrying a cargo container. Some have cars stacked in them, others are carrying loose materials like coal cars, and then tankers... all those would require redesign from already perfectly functional forms.
i guess they think building special containers for that cases is ok. But how it is different from what we already have, except making new containers and, probably, upgrading infrastructure?
@@Blackwing2345635 "making new containers" = a product for that company to sell you.
Their business model is basically: we'll re-invent the wheel just to create a market for "new wheels."
Well, they are using regular ship containers. It's pretty clear, that this system shouldn't replace existing, well established train lines. It is a concept that should replace truck traffic. And there are many valid reasons, why all those companies don't use trains now. The main one is speed. The second one is cost. Trails work, nobody doubts that, but they are neither fast, nor cheap. In most cases, it is *much* cheaper to send 50 trucks with 50 truck drivers instead of one train with one train diver.
What part of "parallel system" you you guys nit understand? This is explicitly explained as a supplement, and the comments are full of fools saying it's not a viable replacement. Duh. It's not designed to be a replacement, it's a parallel system meant to supplement what already exists.
yes and any way i think 6 axle battery locomotives should be illegal but locomotives like a modernised version of the Pennsylvania Railroad E44 should be encouraged
"Routed directly to their destination..." That implies lots of new track. OK, once that's in place , how about installing an overhead electrical supply and connecting the bogies up to a main power unit to haul even more stuff? We could even give the power unit a special name, like "automotor" or "rail tractor" or something.
How about "locomotive"?
it woud make lots of sese to lay rails right in the middle of the road like trams so that trains cloud drive on the roads along with cars also cars cloud have dual suspension to use rails and save a lot of fuel. of course all cars woud be required to have dual set of wheels.
@@deltaxcd we anyway have a lot of crashes going on in the crossings, what do you think will happen when the trains and cars will be sharing the same track?
@@zardian there will be more crashes obviously and so what invest in wextra bulldozers to clean up the wreckage and you are good
Surely it needs new tracks to everywhere. But plastering cities with ten lane highways also wasn't a problem back then. How 'bout tearing down two or four of those vehicle lanes and put tracks instead, where we can transport way more goods and people? Face the fact: Did 10 lane highways solve the traffic problems in - for example L.A.? No. They're still jammed every day.
You can tell it's a good, well thought out idea whenever someone uses the word 'reimagine'.
Please at least admit that some trains suck. A lot of rail lines have only a few passenger trips per day. For cargo, you no longer can just drive a truck into a random terminal and send a shipment.
Automatic, small trains can potentially change that. Sure, it will cost. But you get almost a luxury rail-taxi.
@@homo-sapiensis I think you'll find that for the most part, transportation is cost optimized. As for trains, they're taxpayer subsidized and if they weren't, they wouldn't exist. If you see the mode something is being shipped by, that is the cheapest option. Trains are used to ship large quantities of cargo long distances over land because their strength is economy of scale. Their downside is the limited places they can go. I think you'll find that trains move lots of cargo between hubs and trucks distribute from there.
@@jaye1967 sure, I am aware that trains are build with money forcibly taken from taxpayers.
They could occur in the free market though, if governments didn't subsidise roads for cars, trains would be the cheapest option.
Especially if governments had our health at heart... They would massively tax air pollution, so that any non-electric vehicle would be prohibitively expensive.
@@homo-sapiensis Now you're artificially altering the other side of the equation. Instead of lower the cost of rail, your raises the cost of cars. In other words, your argument always relies on the government altering the comparison. And now for the subsidizing of roads, that comes from the license fees and taxes on vehicles and gas.
Reimagine policing
Imagine thousands of grade crossings closing their gates every few minutes as another individual car or block of cars comes by..
Seriously what were they smoking?
They took the road robotrucks and imagined railcars acting like them. When robotrucks drive at platooning distance there is an energy savings for the entire roadtrain it creates but because they are multiple smart units and they aren't all physically coupled the roadtrain as a whole doesn't have to stop when an individual unit needs to take an exit. It is an interesting concept when you imagine railcars behaving like that but it is so logistically hard to arrange all the cargo into continuous subtrains that you end up with this stupidity where every unit has to be a drone instead of just having a few mini loco drones interspersed in the train to allow it to split and regroup while rolling.
I rode the freight network in the USA while living and working on the RBBB Blue Unit Circus Train. It really is quite fascinating. Despite housing around 350 people (and 9 elephants), the RBBB train is actually classified as freight, and we traveled through the network like any other freight train. It was a hard, less-than-minimum-wage job, but riding on the train between shows really was quite enjoyable. Watching the countryside roll by from the vestibules, and playing card-based drinking games with the philosophers in the clown car.
Animals don't belong in the circus. It's monstrous.
@@sarasthoughts thanks for the useless input
@@sarasthoughts humans are animals
@@nathanlevesque7812 humans can consent lol
@@chuckles3265 It's set up dependent on your salary and position. With highest in the front and least in the back. This is because the front of the train is more comfortable. Especially when stopping and starting. You don't notice this on short passenger trains, but when the train is a mile long, the engine has moved quite far and picked up a lot of speed before that information is transferred down the line to the last car. This results in quite a jerk when it starts moving.
On my unit the first 5 (or so) cars were for the elephants. Followed by the General Manager and Ringleader who have half cars. Then the head clown, various administrative people, etc get quarter cars. Then the less valued people, but still valued people, like named performers, professionals, etc get 8th of cars. Then it's followed by the people who are very undervalued who sleep 16 to a car but still get their own rooms. These are like dancers, unnamed clowns, mechanics, bus driver, etc. They're still employees.
Further down you get the "independent contractors" (me) and we sleep about 40 to a car (can't remember the exact number). This means you get a cabin which is about 3 feet wide and you sleep in bunk beds. Bathrooms, showers, are all outside the cars. We also have to pay rent, but it's not much.
It's awful. But my brother ran the school so he had an 8th of a car. And I could go there to cook and shower. His bed was facing parallel to the direction of the train and it folded down into storage and a table.
Also since only 8 people lived in his car. It means the washing machine on that car was not constantly occupied.
The cars have a porch on both side (the vestibule) and so you get two open porches facing each other between each car. It's a nice place to hang out.
There's also a restaurant car which has good greasy food for relatively cheap.
About 30 cars were for people, and the remaining 30 cars in the back of the train were for equipment.
These tech bros misunderstood the mean of “disruption” all they’ve done is disrupt the efficiency of exciting rail systems by adding in as many new points of failure as possible. Brilliant.
I like how going smaller means a comically immense system of stops effectively slowing down the entire operation, rather than having large scale hubs.
It's crazy to see the solutions I come up with for problems in Satisfactory actually be pitched in real life! Hundreds of trains carrying small loads to a hundreds of destinations when one well planned train could do it itself. The future is now folks and I am a genius!!
the most enthusiastic Czech man in the world
Hi :-)
Boris!
Okay, but your name and that comment just reminded me of the greatest kid's show opening from my childhood:
ua-cam.com/video/rMG_ReVxPV4/v-deo.html
Zdravím
@Bundle O’ Fuck dont click on the link. Its some lame kids song about big knights or sth.
People already hate when trains are at a crossing. Now imagine single car trains going through crossings every minute. You couldn't even cycle the crossing in that time.
Hey hey hear me out, imagine reinventing traffic signals and use them for trains, this will solve the problem!!!
In areas with crossings, these modules could bunch up and cross in larger groups before going their separate ways again outside of town. Ideally you'd want modules to travel in groups in order to reduce overall wind resistance.
@@WheissRS Trains already have signals (that quite look like traffic signals) used to make sure one don't ram the ass of the one before it. The smaller the train, the less efficient you are as you can only have one train per interval. They can already be used at crossings but the rule (at least here) is that trains always have the right of way. Cars can only go when there's no train or the train can't go further (like when the next interval is taken).
@@TyphoonJig and then you add the fact that a train is far less efficient at slowing down because steel on steel just doesnt have the grip rubbber has on Asphalt and the result is that Railway just became even more chaotic
How about Underpasses,India is building on large scale,Indian Railways said they will eliminate every single Railway Crossing by Bridges or Underpasses by 2024-25.
"Rail is the most efficient way to transport large amounts of freight, so we improved it by getting rid of all the things that make it efficient!"
This man has basically explained how marketing works in only 3 minutes.
Well done :D
You know that thing that makes trains so efficient? The fact that they pull tons of freight cars at a time?
Let’s get rid of that. You know. In the name of efficiency.
No, that's what makes trains so marginalized and trucks so popular.
Trains are kilometers long, because we need people to drive each locomotive (and people have poor reaction speed requiring long scheduling delays between trains).
Putting aside switching infrastructure and batteries vs. overhead power, this is actually an excellent idea.
"Micro trains" that do not need huge terminal operations, because they can actually deliver containers where they are needed could be a huge win for cost and effeciency.
Multiple engines are actually more efficient than one big locomotive (see TGV or any other modern passenger train design) and air resistance is utterly neglible at freight speeds (not to mention how horribly aerodynamic freight containers are).
You can compare it to autonomous, electric trucks - this is so much easier to impleement and cost efficient. And electric autonomous trucks are considered best case for autonomous electric vehicles.
@@borek772 This just leaves out the fact that the most difficult and expensive part of rail transport is - you know - *_rail._* Rails don't go everywhere like they did in the early 1900s because road transport is far more flexible in smaller scale. Rail takes a lot of space and fewer lines operated at higher capacity are what today's city planning requires. Dropping rails among highways and taking their right-of-way nullifies most of rail's benefits. Building overpasses everywhere to accommodate larger amount of rail infrastructure required for point-to-point transport is _expensive._
Rail's primary benefit is long distance transport in large scale and economies of scale in freight handling. Building mini-container ports everywhere is inefficient in comparison. Semis can simply drop trailers wherever needed and can maneuver easily by themselves, which makes them massively more flexible.
Fewer larger engines are generally more efficient, but in modern passenger trains have size limitations because motors must largely fit inside bogies, and express traffic needs multiple driven axles to provide traction to allow higher acceleration to achieve greater average speed.
With this kind of thinking, we might as well replace all super cargo carriers with millions of single crate boats! You know what? NO We should instead have passenger boats deliver it all! Better yet, just have speed boats deliver all the cargo in 2m by 1m cardboard boxes! Because apparently nobody knows how efficient economy of scale works, nor the difference between passenger delivery and cargo delivery!
So a train that can Transport a hundred Wagons needs 1 engine.
This Design would need 200 engines For the same Thing.
INCREDIBLE
SO EFFICIENT
Why sell one thing when you can sell many things?
The train that needs one engine uses the slave and master system last time I checked
Also: BATTERY POWERED. They'd barely make it out of town before needing to be recharged.
Plus an entirely new signalling system because current ones are not going to be compatible with these.
Not to mention that you really don't want a 40' high cube loaded to the limit bounce around on rails for any period of time at all without a support brace underneath. It will fold like a lawn chair.
There's also the problem of the replacements for literally every other type of rolling-stock so there compatible with the new rail network and the fact that there's still places that lack solid and reliable satellite connections requiring said areas to have cabling run to keep the container slaying carts running through those areas moving just as efficiently as they're claimed to be.
It looks like whoever designed this has no idea about the structural makeup of container units. They're just simple box frames with sheet metal for the sides.
Take any form of transport on land requiring an engine. Improve it. Improve it again. And again. Congratulations, you've now reinvented the train!
"It uses electricity! That means it's cleaner than burning fuel!"
Classic
In many countries, electricity still comes from fossil fuels, so yes... any overhead rail power there gets its electricity from burning fuel like coal, lignite, or natural gas.
It technically is. Power stations generally have an efficiency about 80% while most locomotive does around 25%
@@vikumwijekoon3166 25, are you insane? Diesel engines are extremely efficient, you can pull 70 cars with 4 engines, try and do the same with a catenary system, your company's money would be better invested in the trash.
A better solution would be the hybrid trolley truck. A concept I once saw. For standard routes there’s a powerline above but they have also a Diesel engine would the powerline fail or for getting to places without the power lines overhead.
@@marn200 diesel engines are far more efficient than catenary systems for freight, the shear ammount of wire you'd spend placing catenary over a freight line would probably buy you a locomotive or two, even a few depending on the line.
Battery-powered. You could have stopped the video there. One of the best things about trains is that you can just have power lines to the trains so that they don't have to haul around heavy batteries or fuel.
In the "tech bro" universe, there seems to be a strange obsession with all sorts of pods and other ideas that revolve around making things into smaller units that can act independently. They imagine this somehow brings about efficiency and freedom and such, while completely missing the great downsides that this approach brings.
They grew up having it drilled into their head that cars are somehow a sensible idea, and now they have to bring that misconception to whichever industry they're trying to "reinvent".
just toxic hyperindividualism things
Remember the first thing in the video is a map of the US where Mexico and Canada don’t exist. These numpties don’t know anything about the world beyond their borders and in the US where nobody has spent any money on railways since 1950 most lines are still single track and electrification is some weird thing that communists like Angela Merkel do.
You said the p-word.
They think of packages and people as physical data or at least they want you to. They imagine if everything is reduced to the smallest transportable unit, routes can be magically optimised and efficient. They ignore, or hide the physical and economic bandwidth constraints the real world imposes.
Heck even data transport can be optimised by increasing packet size.
Y'know, as stupid as this idea is, it was actually really encouraging to see this video. People are actually starting to realize that rail is the best option. It's a step in the right direction. And when we take enough steps in the right direction, we'll end up at trains!
ye ... but why do so many steps then?
Everyone outside the USA: 👀
Dunno. Still has to be sold to dunces.
We need to do something like creating an innovative solution that totally revolutionizes the market by taking a regular train and painting some speed stripes on it, and then call it differently, with some innovative words in the name, like hyper or quantum or maybe stellar.
@@henryviiifake8244 The person means trains meant for cargo not passengers.
Agree
this is why the phrase "don't fix what isn't broken" exists
trains are already perfect. sure maybe tweak and innovate the engine to be both more efficient and powerful but the overall base concept has already been perfected since the beginning
i always love the use of the phrase "existing technology" to fool idiots into thinking that the new idea can be implemented without much more additional work or research
There's basic research (improving components) vs applications research (building prototypes).
Mom: Have you done your assignment
Me: I have found out that it can be done using existing knowledge
@@4dtoaster819 lol, underrated comment. xD
Is this not how it works? Existing technology means that a prototype or product can be created using off-the-shelf parts and not requiring research into addition components that don't exist yet?
@@joshuagoldshteyn8651 Entirely in theory, that's the thing. It ignores the fact that you're going to have to do much more in RND and practical testing like every other product, them being from off the shelf parts that could work doesn't mean they will or will be all that practical to use.
As soon as i heard "battery powered" i zoned out. But yeah the transport revolutionaries always love systems with hundreds of points of failure.
Most funny is in my first language "battery powered" is idiom synonimus to it suck.
@@petrfedor1851 Cant we somehow bring this video here more attention,
so the Future-Look-Fetish dies out???
We have to be able to do 'something', right?
So....the genius plan is to use battery power...to power the things that are already running on tracks and thus could be powered by...power lines?
It's that or the genius plan is to hype up some doomed project to once again stall the US's switch to rail...
This probably wouldn't be the dumbest idea if the sleds weren't battery powered but motor power circuits still have points of failure.
@@bradk8590 I mean....yeah, you wouldn't be getting the economies of scale of a locomotive and would be introducing countless needless points of failure into the system, but at least the power supply would make some sense and it wouldn't be so incredibly reliant on resources which are already bottlenecking a bit...still a dumb idea, but yes, monumentally less stupid than the current version.
I’m convinced at this point that a lot of these “innovators” were somehow traumatized by Thomas the Tank Engine when they were kids, giving them an irrational hatred of conventional locomotives.
Don't you remember, Thomas the tank engine attacked Helgen. That moment cemented fear and hatred to the hearts of men
They are causing confusion and delay!
@@cryotek3624 what are you talking about? Macho Man Randy Savage attacked Helgen. His thunderous "OH YEAH!" Tore the sky apart and burning rocks fell from the clouds.
This just reminds me of a great bit in Elementary when Sherlock asks an architect "Did straight lines hurt you as a child?"
😂😂👏👏👏😂😂
It's like they don't realize that trains are so energy efficient because they are super aerodynamic relative to their size, individual cars throws that out the window
It’s a new level of arrogant when you claim you’ve made a breakthrough on one of the most developed areas of engineering
How can people say this with a straight face when they're litteraly witnessing first hand reusable self landing rockets and the boom of the EV industry is beyond me.
@@ailurusfulgens1849 okay bro, tell me when your reusable self landing rockets will be useful literally anywhere.
No I couldn't care less about $3 billion costing one way ticket to Mars with result being me living in a 2x4 pod with barely anything to do on it, but hey, at least I'm not on Earth bro.
@@ailurusfulgens1849 >reusable self landing rockets and the boom of the EV industry
So basically light rails
@@kirayoshikage4057 like you said, those rockets are pretty expensive, although it won’t benefit you doesn’t mean it’s not an overall benefit in terms of science, because 1. They don’t have to waste the time making new rockets 2. They don’t have to waste the limited money, they be useful litteraly anywhere in the field they are used in, solar power still exists whether it benefits you or not because it’s an overall benefit
@@ailurusfulgens1849 Both EV and reusable rockets have been a heavily researched.
To improve the efficiency of trains is not to decentralize and scale it down. The funny thing with this system is eventually you get a few hot spots that become big terminals.
Parallel Systems CEO: “What are we gonna make to challenge regular trains?”
Employee: “Well, you know those little scooter things that are used in elementary school gym class?”
CEO: “Give this person a raise”
why are those used in a gym class?
Lmao I almost forgot about those
What? Is there something that looks anything like this in some elementary schools? What could possibly be the purpose?
@@NatiiixLP I've also never seen such a thing and would like to know. Is this an American thing? (I'm not American.)
For those wondering, the scooters I’m talking about were plastic and were used in elementary school gym classes. Basically you just sit on it and move it around with your arms or legs. We used them for rely races, games, and stuff like that. I grew up in the northeastern US, though I don’t know how widespread they are.
Imagine calling freight train management expensive and suggesting two motorized battery-driven units for every individual carriage instead.
Any investor buying into this bullshit deserves the outcome honestly.
E v e r y..... I N D I V I D U A L..... carriage. This is just asking for problems
I love how they open up by saying "trains are way more efficient than trucks" but then go on to reinvent trains so they can service trucks more effectively and say "Our technology opens up new possibilities for the [...] trucking market".
The cost for that shipping "sled" would be astronomical. I can't believe enough idiots got together and agreed that such a thing would be practical.
The energy density doesn't work either. It would have to be 99% batteries to move even a few hundred miles.
That's the point. It's to get investment from public funds to make rails seem like a worse investment in the eyes of the public.
Hey guys! Let's make some runaway trains that carry our valuables and run on small batteries!
What's next? Solar panel roads? :DD
If you hype your products up enough, idiots will put in their money and you'll get rich, even if in the end your product is a total failure. Musk is doing the same right now, he's trying to get people on board with his robot (which will totally not happen). Not even the first of his stupid ideas, see hyperloop or his boring tunnel.
"Trains require large terminals"
Yes, because the job of a freight train is to move large amounts of goods to distant places in an efficient way. And miles long freight trains are just that: efficient. It's not the job of a train to get resources directly to the factory, that's what trucks and other smaller transportation vehicles do. There is absolutely no point to use this weird battery powered sled combo that carries one cargo container to a specific location. It actually creates more problems than it solves. Let's be nice to the system and say that the batteries in those sleds actually last long enough to get goods from say New York to Miami and that they actually have a very low failure rate. The fact that you now have thousands of individual cargo containers going along the tracks requires much more supervision and planning to make sure these things arrive at their destination smoothly and without stopping for long to let other containers pass. That's also a huge benefit of having a mile long train pulling multiple cargo cars at once: Less individual units to coordinate.
At best I can see such a system used on a small scale. You know to connect the large cargo terminal to the individual factories and warehouses and whatnot that require those goods. You know, let them do the job of trucks within cities. But that poses the question of: Where do you put the tracks? A big problem of modern urban planning is that they have to make new concepts work within an already existing city that was built for older solutions. You can't just remove existing infrastructure and put a new one in there to fix problems. You can't just take things from one part of the city and put it somewhere else because it would be better suited for it.
Might be useful to shuttle containers on a large terminal. But that's about it. And they'll probably already have cranes for that anyway.
This is clearly a solution developed by a company who neither understands how the industry works, nor bothered to check that what they're trying to solve is in fact a problem.
It woud be a great idea to put tracks right on the road so that those tracks can be used by trams and cars with extra set of wheels to reduce friction few times.
that woud be a real revolution in transportation because cars woud use 4 times less fuels and also if you have third rails you can even power your electric car from the grid and charge uit while driving.
A lot of factories and warehouse have or used to have their own rail spurs. Many are now abandoned or torn out, but they could be put back without too much issue.
Regional rail is also really good for delivery to warehouses and factories
Not that the current system is without flaws, but...yeah, gathering things in one place to be moved in bulk to another gathering area of cargo where they can then be distributed is just the obviously efficient thing to do both from a cost and management standpoint.
More to the point this not only doesn't solve said flaws to trains but probably creates even more flaws that can be easily fixed by...not doing this.
I love how they point out how efficient trains are then spend the rest of the video explaining how they'll make them less efficient
They want to be more efficient than trucks,even thought not as efficient as trains.
@@Steellmor Which is an idiotic plan. Because we still have trains. Its pointless. The extremely small increase in efficiency over trucks won't make up for the immense production cost, and thats assuming it can even be more efficient than trucks.
@@RaistlinMajereFistandantilus Extremely small? Where you get numbers from? For something that doesn't even exist yet? Where you got "immense production cost" numbers? You have no idea where and how this supposed to be implemented,but claim "IT"S IMPOSSIBLE". There are factories 20 miles apart which could benefit from this a lot.
Idiotic is shit-talking about others people trying to do some real work in modern problem-solving.
@@Steellmor No. Because those factories would benefit just as much from a train or dedicated transit system, if not more. I dont need to see the numbers to know making autonomous, battery powered sleds, would be immensely expensive. We can't even that effectively make battery powered cars yet. These would require a lot more power and would need to be much more heave duty. There is simply no evidence this would or even could be beneficial anywhere or for anyone.
Look on the bright side, Adam - these guys recognize rail infrastructure as a good thing. That's progress. At this rate, it will only take them a few more decades to reinvent what we already have, with no extra bells or whistles or other "improvements", and then they'll be investing in the right thing 🤣
I love how they even show in the video, how large station serves the mile-long train, but their proposed small station takes forever to handle 4 carts. How is being inefficient an improvement?
less is more dude weed lmao
The idea of that I'm sure was to propose that their systems would be less congested, less complicated and more organised. But yea it's not portraying a great advantage in the advert
I think the expected improvement is in who gets paid.
@@kirayoshikage4057 hand
You're missing the point. The cars being independent can spend less time in switch yards and go right to where they're needed directly.
A company: Utters the word "reinvent"
Adam Something: And I took that personally
Smith?
Even worse, “reimagine”
I love the fact that a boat is just cruising through Mexico without a care in the world
The one area I could see this being a little useful would be last-mile container delivery. Right now it’s all trucking. With better rail infrastructure, it might be preferable to send individual containers to specific destinations like “a supermarket” or “a shopping mall” or “a community post office”. Not really feasible at this time, but a less stupid version of this might be worthwhile later?
1:04 "Each car is routed directly to its destination, bypassing switchyards." Just... just... GAH! Switchyards are what do the routing!
They'll just jump from one track to another. No switches needed.
@@youteacher78, that's pretty literally what the video showed. They had a magic arm pick the trailer up off the not-train and put it onto a semi. It never explains "how it happens" because there is no "how it happens". The whole thing is bullshit.
I lived next to a rural railway track my entire childhood, and I can say with absolute confidence that breaking up every train into a hundred parts would be hell on earth at crossings - why in the name of all things peaceful and quiet would I ever want to have the stupid warning lights blinking and chiming a hundred times a day? Not to mention the horns on trains themselves, at most ten trains on a busy day was more than enough for me growing up thank you very much lol
These are the same kinds of people who think flying cars should be a thing.
Imagine the people that can't drive in two dimensions already, then give them a third dimension to maneuver in.
Exactly what I was thinking. Ring ding ding ding ding every few seconds. Property values near the tracks would plummet. And if there are multiple tracks in parallel, that just clogs it even more. You have 4-6 chances of having a ring ding ding every time you cross the set of tracks XD
@@Kuli24000Almost everyone in this comment section and the video author himself all seem to either be either wilfully or accidentally ignorant about the purpose of "Parallel Systems" which is to be a PARALLEL SYSTEM to traditional rail. Literally only running in the spaces between traditional trains, going to locations which are not served by traditional railyards. No trains will be broken up and sent individually across level crossings. Every locomotive and train on the rails today will still be there. People are angry because this company was founded by former Tesla employees. This is Elon derangement syndrome at its worst. People are losing their minds!
@@blackwoodsecurity531 Wait so you don't want to be chilling and get U-boned by a car trying to merge into your skylane from below causing the flaming wreckage of your car and the chucklefuck who hit you's car to rain down on some poor family chilling beneath you, singing the song, "We like being alive, we like being a live..." ? Personally I think adding a 3rd dimension to car crashes will make the world more interesting for about 2-3 months before flying cars are outright banned.
Dude, didn't even THINK about that, good point! 😳
Don’t fix what’s not broken.
Things to fix - Infrastructure, Healthcare, Education, Corporate and Government Countability, and Banking.
Government countability is a big one. If we’re going to have governments, we should at least know how many
@@aidanwarren4980 lmaooooooooo that made my day
@@aidanwarren4980 Are you from Belgium?
Let’s have fast regional passenger rail. The freaking airport/airline experience is always a pain in the but, if not a nightmare.
Things to fix?
More like "things that neoliberalism would rather die than fix!"
I actually have a revolutionary idea that I am sure will get all the support of gen z if proposed to them:
* Trains with RGB lights *
How about a train, but it’s on tiktok ?!?! OMGF!! SOLD !
Imagine making fun of like 20% of the population. Seriously, I get that Gen Z has some stupid things but all generations do. Don't you have ANYTHING better to ridicule?