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He's engaging in one of the basic principles of arguing against a technology, cherry pick your examples and then assume no improvements are possible. He also conflates batteries and Bi-Modes. If you want to create a strategy BEMU is likely the best option and it is also the option on the "right...

Have read some of his work, he's a Dinosaur talking about battery EMU's operating at reduced performance. I always used to notice how my Tesla was getting out dragged by trains on OHLE! Regarding track maintenance costs for battery vehicles it looks like the annual track access charge...

One of the proposed HS2 extension options is to run HS2 to East Midlands Parkway and then upgrade Nottingham to Newark and thus put all the fast trains from ECML via Nottingham and HS2. It takes the Edinburgh to London train 2:55 to get to Newark and was expected to take 50 minutes to go from...

There is negligible evidence that Chernobyl has killed 16,000 people by cancer. That is position is essentially a statistical aberration which requires you to believe that doses of radiation much less than the background give you microscopically increased chances of cancer which then multiplied...

The BEMU still needs partial electrification to function, in many cases we might also want to use 3rd rail to provide the "charge island" to allow them to run much further off the network. My proposed solution would have an insulated bus bar to carry the 3rd rail current, this would have a cost...

Just did a quick scaling exercise with AI, this suggests that device about the same size as two shoeboxes would be enough to allow a 6000A switch on a 3rd rail system. Said device would cost less than £10,000 per unit. So for £100k/km equipment cost plus the cost of an additional insulated...

There is a pretty good argument for a BEMU being the standard for the entire network. Batteries are very cheap, strip out the novelty and development costs and you are looking at about a 5% cost to add a battery pack even if you pay twice what automotive does. That’s for a pretty long ranged...

My model train swaps the mass of the diesel engine and fuel of a bi mode 800 train for a degraded LFP battery pack scaled from a CATL one. I have also credited the pack as a structural member and then put the mass saved into more battery. The energy density of LFP is fine, rail is famously...

I used the IET energy usage specs: 4600KWh for a 5 car train between Newcastle and Kings Cross. The journey takes 162 min and stops 7 times. That is 18.77 KWh/mile, also this is the spec for the IET not what the class 800 actually achieves. It can also be pointed out that a class 800 is...

The C rate of that product will be a factor of inverter size not discharge capacity of the LFP batteries. LFP can do 10C discharge no problem and there are some automotive LFPs that can charge at 10C. LFP types are typically able to do 5-10,000 full cycles and in practice in most rail usage you...

A battery car can quite easily crack 125mph, why do you thing a train would struggle? Battery trains will be able to comprehensively out perform an EMU as they are not limited in peak power by the OHL. A 5 car train 8xx style with a battery mass no greater than currently used for the diesels in...

To build an airliner I need to design a turbine that operates at 400 degrees hotter than the melting point of the refractory alloy it is made from where each blade (the size of two of your fingers) absorbs more power than an F1 car. This being one of dozens of low volume bespoke miracles that I...

We're talking about a longer term paradigm where we are using batteries to make freight trains go like EMUs today. Designing freight trains to be aerodynamic is not impossible if we are bringing in new kit.

They do and they don't, technology change is normally the point at which a lot of existing paradigms get undone. In mature markets you get out sourcing and horizontal integration, this produces efficiency but restricts the ability to change things. When you change technology you need vertically...

It's perfectly acceptable to use tolls to pay for new capacity (bridges and new roads), the UK has a relatively poor network of trunk roads compared to our near neighbours and economic peers we could build new roads. Whether it would stop road protests or similar which was one of the reasons for...

I really should just write a substack post and then just link it. Some basics, rail is a niche form of transport in basically all rich countries, as an approximation road shifts about 10 times as many passenger and freight km as rail in the UK (740bn KM vs 64bn KM). This means if you wanted to...

The Pendolino replaces a lot more than 200 cars if it is full, also a question of how many other paths a freight train removes. A lorry takes up approximately two car spots on the road, most of the road space occupied by a road vehicle is to stopping distance ahead of it. The road wear of a...

Whilst I doubt it would be initially cheap to do with existing operators and techniques metro like frequency is something that rail is going to have to do almost as a default to remain relevant in a most post autonomous vehicle world. There is no fundamental reason why an intercity train cannot...

Depends on how you count it: These numbers appear to be pretty similar to the ESPON numbers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESPON_metropolitan_areas_in_the_United_Kingdom whereas the ONS numbers of based on continuous urban areas...

Why not? I'm sure there is a list of constraints but how many of them are fundamental, we could change signalling, rolling stock, banish freight and conflicting trains.