News on China's scientific and technological development.

solarz

Brigadier
I prefer this concept over wireless. Note, the truck has a fossil fule engine to go off the grip for a short distance to unload, rest etc.

The concern of wireless is that wireless high power transmission is less efficient than wired, it rely on high frequency microwave which is more dangerous to human nearby especially the passengers. It is similar to wireless communication is always slower than wired counterpart.
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video

Personally, I don't think any of this will be necessary. The battery revolution is just around the corner.
 

SamuraiBlue

Captain
Batteries has a disadvantage with it's low rate in energy density, requiring a large banks of batteries which ends up as dead weight as it discharges their charged electric amount.
It also takes too long for it to recharge with the danger of catching on fire if it is recharged too quickly so it requires a very sophisticated monitor in regulating the charge voltage. One of the thing Samsung had to learn the hard way with their Galaxy 7 Notes.
 

plawolf

Lieutenant General
I prefer this concept over wireless. Note, the truck has a fossil fule engine to go off the grip for a short distance to unload, rest etc.

The concern of wireless is that wireless high power transmission is less efficient than wired, it rely on high frequency microwave which is more dangerous to human nearby especially the passengers. It is similar to wireless communication is always slower than wired counterpart.
Axle-Image-2.jpg


video

I personally think port-like freight handling with rail is the way forwards.

Rather than have a hundred trucks all drive 1000km to deliver one container full of goods, have a train carry those hundred containers 990km of the way, and 20 trucks could deliver the containers to their final destinations in far less time, and drastically reduce costs as well as pollution.

Similarly, I want drive on carriages for personal cars on trains.

Passengers goes in the regular carriages, while stacking robots can pack cars in far more efficiently than drivers.

The train takes the passenger and their cars to far away destinations, cutting down on time, pollution, congestion and wear & tear on the cars.
 

taxiya

Brigadier
Registered Member
Personally, I don't think any of this will be necessary. The battery revolution is just around the corner.
besides what SB says, there is a thing about efficiency. There is energy lose in battery charge and discharge. There is energy lose in wire transmission. Depending on the lose, battery and wire may have advantage over one another, depending on distance for example.
 

taxiya

Brigadier
Registered Member
I personally think port-like freight handling with rail is the way forwards.

Rather than have a hundred trucks all drive 1000km to deliver one container full of goods, have a train carry those hundred containers 990km of the way, and 20 trucks could deliver the containers to their final destinations in far less time, and drastically reduce costs as well as pollution.

Similarly, I want drive on carriages for personal cars on trains.

Passengers goes in the regular carriages, while stacking robots can pack cars in far more efficiently than drivers.

The train takes the passenger and their cars to far away destinations, cutting down on time, pollution, congestion and wear & tear on the cars.
In my opinion, the scenario that you presented fits more to countries like China, US, Russia and Australia where very long distance between two transit hubs are big enough for railway to be more preferable. But in Europe where such distance is much smaller, electrical trucks may be better reducing the loading and unloading works. Just think of these trucks as train carriages with individual motors, you would see less difference between trucks and trains, the Japanese high speed train has motors on every carriage, you can imagine them travelling independently just like these trucks.
 

solarz

Brigadier
Batteries has a disadvantage with it's low rate in energy density, requiring a large banks of batteries which ends up as dead weight as it discharges their charged electric amount.
It also takes too long for it to recharge with the danger of catching on fire if it is recharged too quickly so it requires a very sophisticated monitor in regulating the charge voltage. One of the thing Samsung had to learn the hard way with their Galaxy 7 Notes.

besides what SB says, there is a thing about efficiency. There is energy lose in battery charge and discharge. There is energy lose in wire transmission. Depending on the lose, battery and wire may have advantage over one another, depending on distance for example.

That only applies to the current generation of batteries. Future batteries may not have these limitations:

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
 

taxiya

Brigadier
Registered Member
That only applies to the current generation of batteries. Future batteries may not have these limitations:

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
they are promising techs in lab (except one claims to hit the market by 2016), most will be 5 or 10 years away, in the mean time, people will not sit and wait. The trucks mentioned are already running on real highways in Sweden and Germany(?) today.

Besides, these techs address the charging time, safety and unit capacity, but I haven't see anyone of them addressing my lose-in-usage issue (super efficiency). I don't have any efficiency figure of the wire transmission system, so I can not say what is the cut-off point that make the battery preferable, but physics tell us there is such a point and the battery must exceed this point to defeat wire all together. We have to wait for that point to happen some day.

These techs do not change the fact that SB mentioned, batteries become dead-weight when discharged, that can never be overcome.
 

solarz

Brigadier
they are promising techs in lab (except one claims to hit the market by 2016), most will be 5 or 10 years away, in the mean time, people will not sit and wait. The trucks mentioned are already running on real highways in Sweden and Germany(?) today.

Besides, these techs address the charging time, safety and unit capacity, but I haven't see anyone of them addressing my lose-in-usage issue (super efficiency). I don't have any efficiency figure of the wire transmission system, so I can not say what is the cut-off point that make the battery preferable, but physics tell us there is such a point and the battery must exceed this point to defeat wire all together. We have to wait for that point to happen some day.

These techs do not change the fact that SB mentioned, batteries become dead-weight when discharged, that can never be overcome.

I do not believe energy loss in charging batteries is an issue. An empty battery may be dead-weight when discharged, but so is an empty gas tank, and we don't have any issues with that.

Charging time, capacity, and durability are the main issues. Reliability under adverse weather conditions is another, albeit secondary, issue.

We've had wired electrical vehicles since the turn of 20th century. They are still useful in certain applications and come back from time to time, but their uses are limited by the fact that they are geographically constrained by the availability of the power network.

So in the end, I believe battery technology is the way forward.
 

vesicles

Colonel
I'm not so sure about the potential environmental friendly part of electric cars. Electricity at charging stations has to come from somewhere, most likely power plants using fossil fuel. So it is simply a switch in locations. Instead of being pumped into the atmosphere by individual cars, the harmful substances would now be pumped into the atmosphere in huge quantities by power plants.

The electric cars will only be meaningful when most of the electricity production can be done using alternative methods, completely taking the fossil fuel out of the equation...

Charging time, capacity, and durability are the main issues. Reliability under adverse weather conditions is another, albeit secondary, issue.

Completely agreed!
 

plawolf

Lieutenant General
In my opinion, the scenario that you presented fits more to countries like China, US, Russia and Australia where very long distance between two transit hubs are big enough for railway to be more preferable. But in Europe where such distance is much smaller, electrical trucks may be better reducing the loading and unloading works. Just think of these trucks as train carriages with individual motors, you would see less difference between trucks and trains, the Japanese high speed train has motors on every carriage, you can imagine them travelling independently just like these trucks.

Combined, the EU territories have more than enough size and scale to make rail a suitable alternative to road.

To say trucks are little different then trains with individual drive carriages is to miss the point of the economy of scale savings involved. Each train carriage can carry many times what could be carried in a road capable truck. By that logic, you can use a dozen family cars to transport the goods in 1 truck.

Sure you can do that, and in some instances, that could even make more commercial and economic sense. But for long haul transport, bulk carriage offers significant advantages.

You cut down on the labour requirements, needing only 1 train driver instead of dozens of truck drivers; fuel costs, pollution and congestion are all eased, and transport times cut.

I think there is great potential for this sort of rail technology revolution with China's OROB initiative. Because it's a clean slate programme, covering vast distances, which falls under the control of a single lead country.

Once set up and the enormous benefits demonstrated, I believe the concept and technology could easily be adopted back home in China, and then become the new gold standard for the future of world freight rail.
 
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