Comprised of former SpaceX, Google and Tesla engineers, Parallel Systems is aiming to develop autonomous and electric freight train cars that would make the American shipping industry greener and more efficient.
Parallel Systems’ technology relies on replacing traditional diesel-powered locomotives with battery-powered freight cars. In its model, each train car is self-powered, and can break apart from or join together with other cars as needed. In theory, this ability to autonomously break apart and reassemble as needed would reduce the need for switching stations, where trains are reorganized and rerouted manually.
It could also drastically reduce the significant physical footprint of trains, converting them from two-mile-long behemoths into “platoons” of 20-to-50 cars that wouldn’t require massive terminals for loading and unloading. Smaller trains would be able to travel closer to their final destinations before being unloaded—reducing trucking emissions, which account for roughly 7% of all greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S., in the process.
There are already some pretty critical videos on YouTube about this.
@MilesT
I think that’s somewhat in the nature of the beast!
The criticisms were economic and engineering. Whether the box frame can withstand traffic stresses – at low speed operating uncoupled it probably could. For marshalling jobs this could save manual shunting. In the mid west there are a lot of tracks that serve farm silos where engines are despatched for one or two wagons, inevitably they will be electrified and automated.
Big Heavy Sighing. The phrase “They haven’t thought this through” comes repeatedly to mind. You would need thousands of these things for the service to work properly. If a large shipment suddenly arrives at a port, bogies may have to be sourced from hundreds of miles away, so there’ll be empty bogies travelling long distances. Countries like Canada and the US abound with level crossings all of which require trains to sound bells and horns and flash lights, which these bogies will have to be adapted to do, unless they drastically change the regulations. Also with long trains, the barriers may be down for a long time, but little trains/platoons passing every few minutes could be really irritating to road users and may encourage abuse of the system. And it’ll go all night too, unless they find a way for the bogies to shut down at dusk. Also there are thousands of miles of unfenced track across the world to be dealt with with regard to animals and people. What if one of these things derails in the middle of nowhere but due to a fault registers as still moving? Or through some other failure ‘disappears’. And my favourite: How will they deal with a catastrophic power failure? This smacks of things like the Bennie Railplane, Unirail, and Aerotrain, all of which seemed like good ideas to their inventors and sold across the world as the ‘future of transportation’ whilst ignoring their obvious faults. Just – *groans* – find something else to do with your time, people…
Certainly, this is still just a concept. If it reaches production, I see it more as a yard shunter, within a closed system, so many of the longer distance operational issues won’t need to be implemented at immediately. Or for use on industrial spur lines, to increase rail’s last mile(s) reach, where they don’t cross roads or pedestrian paths.
On the Gartner Hype Cycle, the company is promoting it as a do-everything tech, but the Trough of Disillusionment will inevitably hit. If this tech survives, it may find its niche application(s).
The Americans tried a combined box car/grain wagon. The theory being grain flows form the centre of the country to the edges, freight in box cars from the edges to the centre. It failed as it was too complex.
Now is this more or less complex than a dual mode freight wagon?
Add in that a lot of the US network is single tracked with limited passing points (all be it very long). So you’d have to have 100s of these heading in the same direction at once, so why not couple them together and haul them with 2 or 3 prime movers?
Vast mileages are inaccessible, so where a breakdown at the moment can result in a train running on 2 from 3 locos and crawling out the way, with these you’d need to get somebody there to repair it. Given the number of these you would require multiplied by the huge mileages they would need to do and even sky high reliability will have inevitable failures. If you were lucky they could ‘buddy up’ but an air leak would leave one with its brakes locked on, as a safety requirement.
I could go on……..