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> Instead of using suction, which can be unreliable, Pipedream uses electricity to run a small battery-powered autonomous vehicle

This.. has to be a joke? Surely they don't believe a "battery-powered autonomous vehicle" is more reliable than a pneumatic tube network?

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Seems like it would be to me. So long as you monitor your battery charge you know the vehicle will get there and it can tolerate many imperfections in the tube. Pneumatics need a tight seal to the tube and thus cannot tolerate imperfections.

> So long as you monitor your battery charge you know the vehicle will get there

ahem, a BEV has __a lot__ more failure points than just "empty battery"...

sending a complex machine down a tube will _always_ carry the risk of the complex machine reading down. pneumatic tube "vehicles" are simple, they can not break down.

I am not an expert, I don't know which one is better or more reliable, but your claim that once you monitor battery charge, everything is hunky dory is wrong.

While what goes into the tub is less complex, the tolerances on the pneumatics are much tighter and so it is less able to handle problems.

I don't know how the factors compare, but tubes are not perfect.

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