You can further optimize the setup by not installing engines/motors in all of them. So maybe you have one car providing locomotion, with the rest following behind and designed for carrying.

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cr125rider 12 hours ago | parent | next [-]

And all the power could just come from a few large centralized facilities that are super efficient. We could just use thin strands of metal to get it to the vehicles over head…

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fragmede 10 hours ago | parent [-]

Of course, the maintenance on those wires outside of the city means that you'd make electric trains with large batteries on them instead.

https://evmagazine.com/articles/tesla-launches-first-all-ele...

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jazzyjackson 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Expense is correlative to scale, likely it's cheaper to deploy pantographs than battery factories.

Why did India build a high speed freight corridor with overhead power when they could have used batteries instead? Because the quantity of battery to power the trains doesn't exist, and overhead wires do.

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beAbU 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I don't think I buy BEV trains to be honest. I'm struggling to think of a proper reason why they might be better compared to normal electric trains.

But the linked article is pretty light on info, so I'll reserve judgement till more info comes to light.

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namibj 4 hours ago | parent [-]

They are good for infrequently used track and places where overhead wires would be in the way, like that very Tesla employee shuttle on it's own track and container ports.

It's not the best way to go for mainline track and not suitable for long distance high speed trains.

	▲	kevin_thibedeau 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		If it's infrequently used, a dual mode diesel-electric can fill that use case today.

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philistine 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

If we do all of that, then we won't need to train them to know how to operate in traffic. Perhaps we can give them a name in honour of that fact?