Autonomous Battery-Powered Rail Cars Could Steal Shipments From Truckers
30th January 2022
Not with the shitty rail network we have today.
For the last 200 years, freight trains haven’t changed much; massive locomotives still move relatively dumb freight cars. Certainly, rail fans could argue that plenty has changed—they’re not wrong!—but from a distance, trains work pretty much the same today as they did in the 1800s.
Guess how heavily the rail networks are regulated.
Whether their bet pays off will hinge on whether freight railroads and their customers will buy into a new way of operating. Parallel Systems isn’t just taking an existing freight train and swapping its diesel-electric locomotive for a battery version. Instead, it’s taking the traction motors and distributing them to every car on the train. It’s how many electric passenger trains operate, but it’s a system that has been slow to migrate to the freight world.
Guess why. (Guess how heavily the rail networks are regulated.)