Electric Trains are More Viable than Ever, Could be Far Off

Electric power is quickly taking over the automotive space, and even heavy duty vehicles are making the switch, but for a number of reasons, electricity hasn’t caught on with larger means of transport like planes, ships, and trains, though we may be close on one of those.

While the notion of electrified planes collides with a number of weight and aerodynamic factors and progress on electric ocean liners is about as ponderous as their sail boat ancestors, but several analyses suggest that the economics for electric trains (the full-sized version) is close to working itself out.

Out of necessity, the majority of freight trains are diesel-powered, and their 4,400-horsepower engines burn 3.5 billion gallons of diesel annually, producing 35 million tons of carbon dioxide.

And until recently, switching over to electric-powered trains just wasn’t economically feasible. The cost of the batteries, the charging infrastructure (or complete lack thereof), and the upfront cost of retrofitting the train (plus several other factors) was prohibitively expensive.

But the batteries, themselves, have come down in price dramatically – by one estimate, 87% over the last decade – and that could potentially bode well for their introduction to freight trains.

A group of California researchers reckons that switching to batteries would cost $15 billion, upfront, but if you take into account the pollution damages, the number becomes a $44 billion savings…somehow.

The Pittsburgh-based Wabtec claims that every battery locomotive which replaces a diesel one could reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 3,000 tons per year, but the economics are far from certain – especially since the price of diesel is at an all-time low. It could be awhile….

“Estimating the cost of commercially available in production battery locomotives is, in my opinion, like forecasting the price of multiple fully landscaped four-bedroom, three-car garage homes with in-ground pools on Mars,” says Michael Iden, who was Union Pacific’s longtime director of locomotive engineering. “Someday such homes may exist on Mars but that’s a long way off.”