Freight rail produces only a fraction of the greenhouse gas emissions of trucks but the industry is joining the shift to electrification to curb pollution and maintain a fuel-efficiency edge.
Wabtec is building battery-powered locomotives for Union Pacific, Canadian Pacific and major mining companies in Australia.Like a lumbering, mile-long train, change in the freight rail industry isn’t speedy and has to be phased in with care. But locomotive builders and railroads, following the lead of carmakers and truck manufacturers, are turning to batteries big enough to power small towns as a way to curb carbon and diesel emissions, while maintaining a fuel efficiency edge.
Freight rail accounts for only about 2% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions from transportation sources.Billions of dollars are being invested to ramp up production of battery-electric cars and commercial vehicles, with some of the biggest bets being made by General Motors, Ford, Hyundai, Toyota, Volkswagen, Daimler, Cummins and Volvo. Freight rail, given the mass and power requirements of locomotives, is a more complex undertaking.
Trains with high-powered batteries save on fuel and utilize regenerative brakes–like a supersized version of those on Toyota’s Prius or a Tesla Model 3–to recharge while in operation, capturing huge amounts of kinetic energy generated from slowing heavy trains. Los Angeles-based Parallel Systems, led by a trio of former SpaceX engineers, is taking high-tech rail ideas even further with plans for relatively small, battery-powered trains making short-haul freight runs that also can operate autonomously, according to cofounder and CEO Matt Soule. “We are creating a vehicle that has truck-competitive unit economics without requiring massive scale,” he says.
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