Electric cars don’t solve a lot of the root problems of cars. They still require massive amounts of energy to move thousands of pounds of steel. They also still rely on sprawling roads and parking lots.
Absolutely. And the benefit trains have over cars is that you can reduce the amount of other stuff per person needed to get people moving.
For a local train of mine that seats 93 people with empty weight of 54 metric tons, that comes out to ~0.58 tons/person.
My sedan weighs in at about 1.5 metric tons empty, and since I’m the only one that uses it, my weight footprint is ~1.5 tons/person.
Forget about fuel economy too. Trains don’t have traffic (most of the time) to deal with, meaning they can accelerate to coasting speeds and spend most of the ride at best-efficiency. Cars are subject to traffic conditions, meaning efficiency can be as-designed by the manufacturer, or it can be much, much worse on a per trip basis if you contribute to the daily rush hours on freeways.
Electric motors are between 95 and 98% efficient, while ICEs are in the 80’s on a good day.
You are aware that electric trains also use electric motors, just like electric cars do, right? And you are aware that electric cars rely on an electric battery while electric trains rely primarily on overhead electric power lines, are you?
That means cars require one extra component and an extra conversation of energy which trains don’t need. Every conversation of energy reduces efficiency of the final outcome. The more conversations, the less efficiency.
Trains use: power lines -> electric motor
Cars use: power lines -> electric battery -> electric motor
Furthermore, bigger machines can be built to be more efficient than smaller ones. So bigger motors can use (electric) fuel more efficiently than smaller motors.
That means cars require one extra component and an extra conversation of energy which trains don’t need.
Well, tbf, both trains and cars require converters (i.e. inverters like variable frequency drives or VFDs; or rectifiers) to match power between the local electric supply and traction motors, in the case of trains, or between the battery and traction motors, in the case of cars.
You need to be able to ramp up or down voltage or current (or both) depending on the drawing load that the motor sees at each and every moment of a trip (cars and trains). Then there is the possibility of your train jumping between different electric systems along its route, and so you need to have a way to accommodate those difference if you want to serve the most amount of passengers.
There are Battery Electric Multiple Units (BEMUs), too, out in the wild today that incorporate batteries in addition to electric service on trains (or just batteries alone), mostly in Japan and some in Europe. These are in the minority though compared to electric-supplied units.
Interestingly, there are some projects, most notably in Germany, where overhead lines are being introduced to trucks, fuzzying the differences in transportation modes even more.
I still get your point about the conversions, though. Batteries don’t have 100% Coulombic/Faraday efficiencies, meaning that they don’t charge up from 0-100% every charge cycle: you might start at 0-100%, but the next charge cycle might be 0-99.9999%, then 0-99.99%, then 0-99%, etc. This efficiency loss isn’t as great as the other losses you might find in the converters previously mentioned, or other resistive losses such as via Eddy currents in the motors/axles, demagnetization of the motors, etc.
Trains use: power lines -> electric motor Cars use: power lines -> electric battery -> electric motor
A better description of these processes would be:
Non-BEMU Trains: power lines -> converter -> electric motor (acceleration)
Non-BEMU Trains: electric motor -> converter -> power lines (deceleration)
Cars/BEMUs: power lines -> converter -> [battery -> converter -> electric motor] (charging [acceleration])
Cars/BEMUs: [electric motor -> converter -> battery] -> converter -> power lines ([deceleration] discharging)
Furthermore, bigger machines can be built to be more efficient than smaller ones. So bigger motors can use (electric) fuel more efficiently than smaller motors.
Totally. And trains that add batteries onboard can reduce the advantage that non-battery EMUs have, moreso resembling locomotives with big diesel engines and fuel tanks. I still find BEMUs better though because you can run the trains as married units, just like EMUs (and I suppose DMUs), but batteries can also be distributed along the rolling stock to allow for greater weight balancing. Idk if the major manufacturers like Siemens or General Electric have plans to design systems this way, but greater adoption may lead to more varied designs.
Hope this helps the discussion!
Not to say trains are not more efficient than cars, because they are for a myriad of reasons. But electric motors scale relatively linear to my extent of knowledge, so usually it just ends up being that trains use many motors instead of one big motor.
I was responding to your assertion about EVs not being much better than ICEs.
![[meme] Trains are 100000x easier to electrify and automate than cars, so why does everyone keep talking about electric and driverless cars?(lemmy.world)](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/11c37658-7c32-4cc2-b12c-6ced348bd09d.png){kind=link}