Generally, I’m against violence towards journalists - but dishonest and manipulative headlines like this tend to make me reconsider my stance, if but for a moment.
It’s also just an outright lie. But, I guess that doesn’t matter anymore.
Yeah, it’s not all electric, some of the train is just regular matter
So it does matter?
Wait until you learn how molecular bonds work…
this is the internet I don’t learn
You could learn this internet if you decided to.
dont make me tap the sign
Sure that part’s electric, but what about the bonds keeping the quarks of the train together?
Don’t respond to this @NaibofTabr@infosec.pub, he’s trying to get your grand unified theory before you publish.
It’s yahoo news. It’s pure clickbait. Idk why they do this they have some decent other services.
Yahoo! News is an aggregator like MSN (and has very few original articles), and thus the quality varies widely based on the source. Here it’s some outlet called TCD.
I did a little digging and it seems like there’s a tiny kernel of fact at the core of this giant turd of a hype-piece, and that is the fact that they electrified this little spur line from Berlin to the new German Tesla factory by using a battery-electric trainset. Which is not a terrible solution for electrifying a very short branch line that presumably doesn’t need frequent all-day service, even if it’s a bit of a janky approach compared to overhead lines. But hand that off to the overworked, underpaid twenty-two-year old gig worker they’ve got doing “editing” at Yahoo for two bucks an article, and I guess it turns into “world-first electric wonder train amazes!”
For a second, though, I read the headline and wondered if Musk and co. had finally looped all the way around to reinventing commuter rail from first principles after all these years of trying to “disrupt” it with bullshit ideas like Hyperloop and Tunnels, But Dumber.
I laos looked into this and it seems you are right. This article is such a mess.
it’s the Mireo Plus B from siemens. it’s already in use in the north of germany since march of this year.
https://www.nordbahn.de/blog/so-isses/der-norden-begruesst-die-akku-zuege/there’s nothing elon about this train, just that it’s driving to his factory.
they are great for short distances that are difficult to electrify.
I guess if by a kernel of truth you mean an existing train was used on an existing track, then you could almost make it make sense? But since all of this existed before, it’s just a lie.
I’ll also point out that anybody introducing battery electric trains instead of just electrifying the remaining parts of rail is making an astoundingly bad choice, but that’s almost certainly Germany and not Tesla.
I could see why they would do it specifically in this case.
There’s been huge protests against building the Gigafactory in Brandenburg, and the main instrument of the opponents was using Germany’s strict environmental protection laws against it.
If they needed to cut down more trees along the tracks to electrify the line, the opponents could possibly delay that by suing in court, demanding studies be done, maybe finding an endangered ant species somewhere in the area.Running the train on batteries avoids that.
They could have just illegally cut down the trees like they illegally used too much water, or any of the other things they did against their agreement with the government.
I don’t think you realise how expensive electrifying a line can be, it can be as expensive as building it in the first place. Whereas this technology can be used without modifying the track at all.
If the line only runs a few times a day, it’s an obvious choice.
It’s not a lie! It’s technically the first thing anybody was stupid enough to name “giga train”!
I am amazed at how people ate still surpised…
Tesla paid about 15k for this article and money like that gets you a cute headline.
This is “journalism” 101, this is part of their business model.
What exactly are you taking issue with here? The train runs on batteries, and it’s the first one in the world deployed, though the manufacturer, I’m sure, is hoping to sell to more operators than Tesla Germany.
The headline says worlds first all-electric train rather than worlds first all-battery-powered train. There have been many all-electric trains before. So the headline as written is incorrect.
Electric trains actually predate diesel, noted as far back as the 30s. Subways kind of needed something that didn’t emit smoke and fumes
Volk’s electric railway, 1883. Only a narrow gague tourist type thing but still technically a passenger railway.
That’s a good point, fair enough.
Besides the first all electric train bit, which is nonsense, it also touts the capacity of the train. It has 120 seats, which may be mind blowing to car heads, but for a train is rather on the low side. Regular passenger trains often have over 200 seats and many have more seats for the same length. For busy pieces of track 600 seats per train aren’t unusual.
It really is like the author has never heard of trains before and has his mind blown by the concept.
Personally I think putting in batteries is kinda dumb, trains need so much infrastructure already and it’s fixed in location. Adding a power delivery system (like overhead power lines like most electric trains have) is really easy. That way a lot of weight is saved, thus making the whole thing more efficient. You also don’t need any special materials to make it, compared with huge batteries. And the wear components are a lot less expensive to replace.
There’s room for batteries in the rail industry.
Diesel electrics rely primarily on dynamic braking. To save wear and tear on friction brakes, they convert kinetic energy to electrical, and then to heat in a giant resistor bank.
Add a couple battery cars, and dynamic braking becomes regenerative braking.
Theoretically, you could back feed the grid with that electrical energy, but if you do that, the train’s primary braking system is now dependent on a connection to the grid, and that doesn’t seem like a particularly good idea to me. All of the “stop” systems need to be far more reliable than the “go” systems.
The article states 500 passengers…
So I’d say still hardly “MiNDbLoWINg”
That is probably in reference to the tech used, it is exceptional for a battery powered train. This just seems like negativity directed at tesla/musk (they do such for myriad reasons), even though they aren’t the manufacturer, just the operator.
Nope. UK already has battery powered trains in operation. Trust me, I’m a full blown train nerd. The only remotely interesting things is that it happened in the US, and even then the better option was electrification.
This is in Germany.
Because the headline literally says “world’s first all electric train”, which it very much is not.
Nor is it the first battery powered train in the world or even first in Germany where this giga-train operates.
The train also only runs between Erkner Station, and Tesla Sud, which is literally just the station right at the Tesla manufacturing facility in the area.
“It’s also free to not just Tesla employees, but regular passengers as well.”
That’s great and all, but are everyday people taking trains to go see the outside of a Tesla factory, then leaving again?
lol. They’re promoting their employee shuttle. Classic Felon.
Well I mean, it IS a step up from my current jobs policy which is “Yes you need a car to get here, no we arent providing one and if you don’t have one you don’t have a job”
The far more important question however is:
Why tf did they use the color scheme of bwegt?
I may be an idiot, but I’m 99% certain that this color scheme is only used in Baden-Württemberg - a state that’s like 500km away from the Tesla factory.
The train in the picture is the test train of Siemens that first ran between Herrenberg and Eutingen im Gäu in 2022 for the Land BaWü.
Wait, Yahoo is still a thing?
Huge in Japan (though I think it’s more that someone bought the rights to use the name rather than the yahoo of old IIRC).
Verizon bought out Yahoo actually. I still have an email account with them, though I never check it anymore.
Batteries are heavy, Surely there must another way to supply energy to the train…?
This “I’m smarterer than everyone” sarcasm is easy to say, but have you done a cost comparison between this and electrifying the line?
And what happens when it ends up in shark-infested waters?
Honestly, I’m flummoxed.
How many bad forms of transportation do you think he has to saddle the world with to sate his ego about the hyperloop turning out to be a totally unworkable lie?
What the… this is so infuriating to a railfan. It’s like they are trying to attach a 2x viewer multiplier by putting Elon-related keyword in it when Tesla has so little to do with it.
It’s not a Tesla train, nor a battery from Tesla, nor operated by Tesla, not even a new route (but granted an expanded timetable)
I wish media hyped trains like this in general and not limited to implicitly attributing it to Musk (who made hyperloop specifically to distract from High Speed Rail, mind you)… “GIGA TRAIN brings commuters to work”, “Hyper train first electric regional service in California - you won’t believe the capacity!”
Now just imagine how the hype is for literally everything they’ve ever done, and it’s on the exact same level. Once Tesla/Musk does something related to your field, it’s abundantly clear what an absolute fraud he is.
I have been screaming this shit about neuralink but no one seems to listen
“Mind blowing” passenger train… If it would be able to teleport itself, sure.
Lol how novel, I use an all electric train every work day, a Stadler Class 777 electric multiple-unit fitted with batteries (BEMU).
You are a gigachad that lives in the future.
I’ll get a tattoo of that.
777 is unsafe! Use 755! /s
Just wow… So if you look closely at the picture, you can barely see the number ‘563’ on the train. If you have a look at list of locomotives and railbuses iof DB on Wikipedia, you can see that this train is a Siemens Mireo.
Now, let’s take the headline apart. Is it the first all-electric trai… no! Is it the first accumulator train? Also no, as you can see in the list above, the class 515 exists and the Stadler Flirt Akku has been used on a line since October 2023, Is it the first Siemens Mireo Plus B being used? You guess what, nope. As an example, SWEG is using some of them to bridge non-electrified parts of the track since April 2024.
So finally, what is special about the Gigatrain? (gosh, I actually really dislike that name) In February 2024, the subsidary ‘Smart Train Lease GmbH’ of Siemens Mobility has been announced. There you can also lease two Siemens Mireo Plus Bs. Tesla is their very first client. That’s it
Whoops, got longer as expected. In case I made small mistakes, feel free to point it out
Also if you read the article, it becomes clear that they just copy and pasted the entire thing from a tesla fanboy Blog. It’s this one: https://www.teslarati.com/teslas-all-electric-giga-train-in-germany-takes-first-trip/
I mean, I haven’t seen a “Giga Train” before. Maybe it is the world’s first.
Now I’m imagining the deal between Tesla and Siemens:
Siemens guy: alright Mr Musk, just sign these papers and the mireo will be leased to your company
Elon (in 8 year old voice): woo! I made a Giga train! Choo Choo!
Siemens guy: umm, okay… As I said, the train is a Siemens Mireo. Hopefully this lease agreement will benefit both of our companies
Elon: nuh uh! It’s a Giga train and I invented it! Nobody ever had anything like this for getting around before!
ketamine consumption intensifies
As far as I’m concerned this is accurate which is why Elon needs a team of PR people.
So. It’s Teslas first train. That they bought?
True innovators
Train nerds are a weird bunch.
Please never change.
Lol this look exactly like the regina västtågen uses… they are electric, fast, comfortable, a LOT of people fit on them(commuter train).
I’d say it’s a Siemens Mireo
Yeah they look similar. Idk anything complicated about trains, just every time i go into the city i take the train so yeah
Now, imagine this revolutionary improvement: Find a way of putting the energy source outside of the train somehow, and save on weight by not hauling those heavy batteries around.
Christ, the amount of times techbros and tesla fanboys have accidentally “invented” trains and trams these past few years is beyond stupid…
Well a battery electric train is probably useful for those routes with a section that isn’t powered.
Not sure if it would be awfully cleaner than a diesel electric train, because those are already pretty efficient as I understand it.
If you’re already laying tracks, why not lay electricity as well?
Because there already are tracks without electricity where I live. When coming from a nearby major city by me, the train has to stop for 40 minutes while they switch from an electric to diesel power car. Same process while taking a train into the city, switching from diesel to electric.
But even in that case it’s 10x better to have more frequent, cheaper diesel trains than having insanely expensive and heavy battery trains.
Well, they’d only need enough batteries to cover the distance without overhead lines. So for shortish sections it’s probably fine, just charge while on the powered section.
Not if your goal is to reach net zero emissions at some point
I’m not a rail expert, but I thought for some reason that rails without electricity would be too old/unmaintained to be allowed to serve passenger traffic, lol.
40 minutes? I would have imagined that everyone would hop off at the station, they’d then drive out to a parking junction, and then drive back the electric train to the station for people to load in again. Isn’t it also very expensive to take the train (you’re from the US I assume)? Not weird that no one wants to take it when it’s in such bad situations :/
