141–150 of 155 posts
China: Builds 40,000 miles of high speed rail in 12 years https://twitter.com/xiaoyewen/status/1494588071483875333 United States: Thinks about vacuum tubes for awhile, gives up entirely.
Also somehow its easier to build self-driving cars than it is to invest in public transportation.
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I think investing in trains today makes little sense. We are on the verge of electric aviation. Electric planes will not only be much cheaper to they will also be much more quiet and thus can potentially be operate in more places closer to where people need. A major investment into a that technology seem a far better bet then trains at this point.
I think investing in [existing tried and true technology that powers the whole world outside a bubble] makes little sense. We should invest in [technology that doesn't exist but could possibly be applied in roughly the same space for many times the cost]. It's impossible for electric planes to be cheaper than electric rail - everything about a plane is harder to achieve, the size will be smaller (since it also needs…
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I think investing in [existing tried and true technology that powers the whole world outside a bubble] makes little sense. We should invest in [technology that doesn't exist but could possibly be applied in roughly the same space for many times the cost]. It's impossible for electric planes to be cheaper than electric rail - everything about a plane is harder to achieve, the size will be smaller (since it also needs…
Your logic would imply that it's impossible for conventional planes to be cheaper than conventional rail, which is definitely not always the case in the US.
Infrastructure cost? New railway projects are notoriously expensive, but so are new airports.
Per unit cost? Train locomotives and carriages are far cheaper than planes.
Operating cost? Trains are far cheaper over time than planes. Their maintenance is far less intensive, they can run on just about anything, and they last for many decades without issue
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Define the scalability that you speak of. Obviously there is no hyperloop system yet so we can't speak about real life stats but the idea of hyperloop is a pod that goes really fast because of the vacuum. Change "pod" to "shipping container". So if you can send one shipping container after another at, say, 400 mph, what exactly would be scalability problem. It would clearly be faster that rail and therefore having a…
Most consumer goods and the containers themselves are not designed to withstand vacuum, so you cannot have the containers themselves take the role of the pods. They would have to be loaded/unloaded inside the pods. The airlocks at the terminals would also need to be cycled adding to the processing time and making the system less scalable. The entire system is designed for sending containers one by one in pods, so its…
You dont need to shave off 4 hours of 8hrs journey, what most logistics channels need is predictability and at as low cost as possible.
If you can save 1/2 shipping costs of you TVs at cost of 1-2 extra days of transportation, you will pick that option (with exception of perishables).
Thats how the logistics channels work. High predictability ensures you can schedule work, space, and send-off without fuss. That's why rail is the best for the task. So company saves money because solution is cheap and because there are no (or minimal) backlogs due to some failure in transport.
Its the definition of KISS. It works, predictable and cheap.
As Musk said 'Its that simple'. It boggles my mind anyone would be crazy enough to pick hyper-loop as cargo solution - a what 10 years old vaporware with no working anything but CGI.
A lot of people seem to be confused. Elon does not have any companies working on a hyperloop. He kicked off the idea and released a white paper with some very early engineering work seemingly put together by a group of engineers working at SpaceX and Tesla[1]. He never had any plans to commercialize it himself and was releasing it as "open source" for anyone else to take up. Several companies sprang up to pursue the…
What about TBC and the Las Vegas plans? It's not a Hyperloop as originally explained but uses the name - and seems to be par for the course in terms of Elon proposing products that aren't exactly delivered the way they were marketed.
Now google Tesla's battery fire and imagine it happens inside that tunnel.
Those tunnels are death traps.
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Your logic would imply that it's impossible for conventional planes to be cheaper than conventional rail, which is definitely not always the case in the US.
What are we talking about here? Passenger fare? That's almost entirely abstracted away from actual cost of installation because it's in large part driven by demand not supply. Infrastructure cost? New railway projects are notoriously expensive, but so are new airports. Per unit cost? Train locomotives and carriages are far cheaper than planes. Operating cost? Trains are far cheaper over time than planes. Their mainte…
Many regions where it would not make sense economically to connect high speed trains can be connected with electric plains. For many regions you simply don't need more then a small number flights.
Trains make sense when you need transport very large numbers of people.
Airplanes can be dynamically allocated where needed much easier.
And the simply fact is, despite massively subsidized rail infrastructure, even current planes are the cheaper option. Electric trains will require far less maintenance and will use electricity.
Legally speaking building a train line across developed region is an absolute nightmare. It takes a very long time, often isn't successful at all and the project takes so long that financing interest is a killer.
Comparatively a really quite electric plane is easy, far easier then current planes.
The far faster speed of planes is preferable to most people. Sure there are super fast trains, but those are really only viable on a incredibly small set of routes.
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That's an absurd comparison. The actual tunnel was build far faster. The eventual opening had a lot to do with other factors including covid. Convention centers were not exactly in high demand. Doing everything around the actual tunnel took longer. Its also the literally first project ever done by a start up company so of course its not perfect. And if its so amazingly expensive as you claim, why was the only commerc…
> That's an absurd comparison. The actual tunnel was build far faster. So was the Channel tunnel. It takes quite a bit of time after physically digging the tunnel until you can actually open it to the public. > And if its so amazingly expensive as you claim, why was the only commercial competitor 2x as expensive? Perhaps because other tunnels left space for potentially saving someone from the tunnel in case of an eme…
Then you are not comparing tunnel boring machines anymore. And even so, its a totally different type of project on a totally different type of scale with totally different classes of machines.
> Perhaps because other tunnels left space for potentially saving someone from the tunnel in case of an emergency?
A tunnel of that length simply doesn't need a emergency escape. The route is small enough that it is far below the required length for emergency escape.Emergency escapes are not magic.
Do you also want emergency escapes in a 20m tunnel? How about 100m? How many emergency escapes do you as a tunnel safety specialist recommend. And why is the official regulation about that so wrong? Can you show me the research paper that you are basing those conclusion on?
> Hopefully this never comes to pass, but it seems very hard to believe there is any chance to escape in case of a tunnel fire.
Nonsense. Each pod has its own power, propulsion and air filtration system. Its not like a subway that if it stands still everything stands still. If for some unknown reasons there is a pod with a fire. Then all the other pods on either side of the fire will just drive away from the fire.
Even if you are stuck in a pod, its unlikely the fire would jump from one to the next car and the pod air filtration system would mean you could be fine for hours even if for some reason you couldn't simply drive away.
> It's the other way around. They're just a tunnel boring company, but are constantly being hailed as some futuristic transportation solution.
They literally are doing an end-to-end integrated system. They want to build their own boring machines and offer full transportation solutions. Its LITERALLY both. No matter if you like it or not.
> They're particularly a company that seems to bet on reducing costs (all the way down to European levels as far as I understand, American tunnel boring prices are apparently hugely inflated)
If European companies have such magical power in tunnel boring, why don't they bid on contracts in the US?
> beyond anything else, such as comfort, speed and most importantly safety.
So an EV motor on a pod can not possible be fast more comfortable then a rail based system? That is just nonsense assertion. Its never the engine that limit the speed on any such systems.
And you have provide literally no evidence other then your assertions about safety. Yes, in longer tunnels emergency exists will have to exists of course and they will follow those regulation when the build longer tunnels.
And the pod based systems has many advantages in terms of safety.
While EV can take fire, a battery fire really only happens at high speed collisions and even then mostly the fire is pretty slow to develop. Lots of high speed BEV crashes allow the occupant to leave the car before the fire actually starts to really go.
And such crashes are incredibly unlikely as tunnels are 1-direction only. Fire in BEV are far more likely from side impacts. If one pod breaks hard and another pod crashes into it, they will both have large crumble zones.
And even if you think further, next generation batteries and BEV architectures will be considerable safer. Switching to much safer LFP base pods is a certainty. And even then there is significant safety improvements in the form of next generation separators in the pipeline.
China: Builds 40,000 miles of high speed rail in 12 years https://twitter.com/xiaoyewen/status/1494588071483875333 United States: Thinks about vacuum tubes for awhile, gives up entirely.
Also somehow its easier to build self-driving cars than it is to invest in public transportation.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah it was amazing living in France where rail is often faster, and sometimes much faster than driving. And often quicker than air travel when going from city centre to city centre.
Sure, now try shipping freight in France...
There is also this https://www.railfreight.com/railfreight/2021/01/05/new-claim... Supposedly, don't know if it's in regular operation, or has been a publicity stunt.
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Nobody has tested maglev at 700km/h. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_speed_record The conventional train speed record is only 30km/h slower than maglev. The issue with the conventional train wasn't wheels it was the overhead wire contact (though at that speed maglev is more efficient)
>The conventional train speed record is only 30km/h slower than maglev there is a reason that train is so short https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_speed_record#/media/Fi... - in the wheeled train the vibrational modes induced at those speeds and the resulting forces will tear the train apart. >the overhead wire contact well, batteries on the train would solve that. That one thing in HyperLoop Musk got right.
Batteries will never have the energy density to solve that. Just basic physics. Even diesel fuel isn't really good enough