Siemens' battery trains set to save £3.5B and consign diesel trains to history | Hacker News Reader

Siemens' battery trains set to save £3.5B and consign diesel trains to history

railuk.com

25 pointsconsumer45111 comments

I wonder how seamless the transition is— the setting depicted looks like a commuter rail setup where I would imagine it's fairly lengthy runs of powered vs unpowered.

Waterloo Region built an urban light rail [1] system ten years ago and overall I'm a huge fan of it, but the snarl of wires required at each intersection to make the overhead lines turn a corner is unfortunate. It would be neat if you could have the power only on straight runs and have frequent brief interruptions.

[1]: https://www.grt.ca/en/ion-light-rail.aspx

>>— the setting depicted looks like a commuter rail setup where I would imagine it's fairly lengthy runs of powered vs unpowered.

It says in the article - only 20-30% of the route needs to be electrified for these to work. And the batteries can be recharged at stations in 20 minutes.

"It shows that Siemens Mobility’s battery bi-mode trains would only require 20 – 30% of a line to be electrified. These trains, utilising Lithium Titanate Oxide battery chemistry, can charge their batteries to full capacity in 20 minutes whilst moving along the electrified sections or charging whilst stopped at stations."

My question is more about the transitions— how much of a bother it would be to get the pantograph up and down. Like, would you want the 20-30% of the electrified line to be a single continuous section down the middle of it, or can you have it be 30% of every block with gaps anywhere it's even slightly inconvenient to route the line?

For context, Thameslink operates a route through central London, and transitions from overhead power in the north to third-rail in the south. This happens when stopped at stations and is fairly quick - the pantograph/shoes are raised/lowered around the same time as the doors open - the dwell times seem the same as usual.

As for charging, Jago Hazzard has a video on a fast-charge trial[1] for a battery-only route. As it's using a modified tube train, I'd assume it's lighter and thus requires smaller batteries, but recharging from third-rail takes roughly 4 minutes.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dV441HnVI34

This article is just a verbatim marketing piece from Siemens.

It's a press release. If you'd prefer to see the rewritten press release in conventional media, here's one example:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/news/siemens-yorkshire-made-...

Presumably, the writer fact-checked the piece before publishing it. Maybe they did; maybe they didn't. Before The Internet, any reputable newspaper publisher would have. Today, there's a lot more push to be fast and cheap.

That's always been the majority of news. Reporters find out about stories from somewhere. When it comes to business news, it's usually from a company's PR department telling them. It's not like they're ferreting out secrets. They're supposed to put in some leg-work of their own, but the PR department isn't supposed to be actually lying. Getting caught at that causes other reporters to start ignoring your press releases.

These days we can more easily get our hands on those un-rewritten press releases. And that's an advantage in the sense that it's a primary source. But unless you're an expert in the domain, you always need help to put the primary source in context.

Er, anyway, thank you for coming to my TED talk.

The way Japan recharges it's battery-EMUs in stations is the right way forward, that way you're readying the infrastructure for 100% normal electrified operation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battery_electric_multiple_unit...

> would save Britain’s railways £3.5 billion over 35 years

So it saves £100 million per year. Why multiply by 35? Is that the lifetime of the trains?

>Why multiply by 35? Is that the lifetime of the trains?

I found another article in which Siemens provides 35 years of full service maintenance for its brand new electric locomotives (sold to a different customer.) So short answer: yes. https://press.siemens.com/global/en/pressrelease/siemens-mob...

Is that in any way significant? Porsche offers 60 yeas of full service maintenance for its customers.

I couldn't find any evidence of Porsches having a 60-year full service maintenance agreement. But even if it exists, I guess it would really depend what the agreement contained. I don't think most Porsches are going to be running after 50 years.

I'm no expert, but my understanding is these Siemens service agreements are contractually paid agreements with yearly revenue, and that revenue is based on keeping the train in service and fully operative for that entire time period.

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