

The Prius principle: What worked for cars can work for trains - bakbak
http://www.economist.com/node/17791989

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ph0rque
Here's an idea I had a bit ago: put solar cells between rail tracks and make
the trains electric.

Also, with the advent of robotically-driven cars, a robotically-driven train
should be much less of a technical problem.

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Avshalom
Is the locomotive engineering industry really this conservative, or is it just
a lack of appropriate battery technology? Because diesel electric locomotives
have been common place for ages, and according to wikipedia they already use
dynamic breaking they just bleed it off in heat instead of store it in battery
banks.

It's seems like a pretty small jump that should have been made already to hook
batteries up in a DE locomotive.

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HeyLaughingBoy
I don't get what's so new about this. Trains have been diesel-electric for
decades.

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rfugger
Adding batteries?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_locomotive#Diesel-
electr...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_locomotive#Diesel-electric)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_locomotive>

The article does a poor job of pointing out that diesel-electrics are very
common already.

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sosuke
They've already had hybrid shunters built since 2004
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railpower_GG20B> and you can see some more that
were scheduled to be in use in 2007 and 2009
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_locomotive>

