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Comment by ajuc | Hacker News Reader

This is solving the wrong problem, badly.

More on why: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJNvpG5gktM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUpST_cQ1hM

I wish I hadn't spent my time watching that. Argument through incredulity and mocking might be entertaining for some, but it's very low signal and all noise. Leaving this comment as a warning for others.

Based on what? You offer no more evidence of your claims against what’s presented in the videos other than vagarities yourself.

I watched only the second video and also find it poor. It basically just says that using this system to transport a train-load of cargo between two train terminals would use more energy than a train. Well, you don't say.

Also, as other videos on the channel it is arrogant and mocking.

I didn't have to click to know that at least one of these links was Adam Something.

Guy jumped the shark and his smugness lately has been tiring, especially that his clips are at times factually incorrect.

The other link explains why this idea is DOA well, though.

What's in the video? A one-sentence summary would save everyone a lot of time.

I haven't watched the video, but based off of the title "Pod train" the argument is probably along the lines of this:

There is a futuristic theme in logistics that envisions humans or cargo to be shipped in "pods". This is in contrast to the more efficient way of shipping humans or cargo in larger vehicles like trains or busses.

These pod-ideas inevitable run into some bottle-necks or have to make trade-offs that in the end give them so much lower efficiency than the "traditional" way which is already the (almost) optimal solution to a given problem.

Examples of this are various incarnations of hyperloop, that do not actually solve all real-world problems existing solutions have to deal with, but rather only a subset of them - but they are better at this subset plus they look fancy in their renderings.

This makes it so these impractical solutions get a lot of hype, and money is spent on prototypes, but there is a lot of hot air and little substance.

TL;DR: Someone who actually knows trains points out that the designers eliminated all the benefits of rail while designing something that requires the entire existing rail network to be changed to support it (which will never happen).

I think the biggest nail in the coffin is that they are targeting short haul lines, which are often the least maintained and require human supervision to operate on for safety and logistical reasons. For example, short haul lines use manual switches - so every time two tracks split or come together you have to have a human present.

+1 on the second link. Adam Something is the authoritative voice on this.

The idea might be indeed just a grift, however the analysis in the video is very poor.

Why do you think it is?

In the first video the author makes a lot of assumption around operating these things in the existing railways without changing how they are managed. It does not consider the cost savings and increased flexibility in having cars arrange themselves and route autonomously to their destinations.

Industrial warehousing/logistic robots are becoming very widespread and significantly changes the workflow and reduces human intervention.

You can't make a fair comparison by treating autonomous robots as if they were regular train cars.

The second video is simply mocking the boisterous style and claims of the ads.

I think they don't consider that because it's a rail system. Re-arranging cars on route would require many junctions, and would probably slow down the whole system when they separate. It's also a different problem that they are solving with warehouse robots - goods need to be transported individually to destinations. Trains solve mass transport. And besides - autonomous rail robots would still be bound to a rail, and thus can't really plan any fancy avoidance or path finding that a warehouse robot could.

> In the first video the author makes a lot of assumption around operating these things in the existing railways without changing how they are managed. It does not consider the cost savings and increased flexibility in having cars arrange themselves and route autonomously to their destinations.

Are they selling the bogie cars, or are they selling new rail infrastructure? If it's just the former then they have to work with the existing infrastructure, including manually switched tracks

> a lot of assumption around operating these things in the existing railways without changing how they are managed. It does not consider the cost savings and increased flexibility in having cars arrange themselves and route autonomously to their destinations.

Assumptions that are deeply rooted in reality. Rail is extremely cheap because it offers a fixed set of interconnection points with other modes of transportation and has extremely rigid standards that ensure at every step nobody has to stop and think about how to handle something.

This is like Tesla announcing the Cybertruck will be 25 feet wide and insisting that all roads nationwide be updated so they will work.

There are two videos in the previous comment, though. Do they both do poor analysis?

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