Great Western Coffee Shop

Is there a case for a modern Motorail for electric cars.   Cars plug in on the train, and you get off full charged and ready to go at the far end.

Where's the electricity on-board the train going to come from?

Come to that, where is the electricity going to come from to power one-for-one replacement of all the ic powered cars and trucks in use today? 

All very well to talk about public transport, but it's near non-existent or highly inconvenient in many places.  My own economic activity and usefulness to society would be about zero if I had to rely entirely on public transport or pedal-power around rural Worcestershire

Chatting to a lad from a power distribution network the other day about this - he said that if everyone down our little cul-de-sac in a small village wanted a car charging point, the local power supply cabling could not cope with the load

If money were no object, yes.

But only if pulled by fully electric locos all the way, or there would be more CO2 than if they all drove!

Almost - Bristol Parkway to Stirling or Perth, charger switched off Westerleigh to Bromsgrove.

Better make that Westerleigh to New Street. The cross city line OLE is not for anything except EMUs.

No.

Yes. Cars will be charged en route, from a battery beneath the floor of each rail vehicle - which will themselves be recharged or the batteries swapped out between trips.

Mark

(and then I woke up)

A few precautions from the risk of fire from the vehicle batteries during the charging, its a small but know risk.   


The basic form of ETH (Electric Train Heating) from a locomotive is around 500kW which could charge around 30 vehicles 



There have been issues with what is called a PEN (protective earthed neutral) fault in TN-C-S supplly systems even the TN-S cannot be relied on due to the DNO's converting them to TN-C-S.

The PEN fault is when the Neutral which also provides the system earth to a property is damaged.  The Neutral current from the property then tries to find a path back via an Earth path.  Where there is 3 phase distribution, typical for most residential arears, the voltage in a property can rise in Voltage to excessive levels (potentially close to 400 Volts).
The damage to the PEN can be physical ie being damaged by excavations or in a cable joint where the PEN conductor burns due to excess current and or loose joint.

The DNO's have know about this risk for years but its only recently since the increase in EV and heat pumps its become more of a problem.

BS7671 (the wiring regs) require EV's to have PEN fault protection

I can see the merits of charging electric cars whilst moving them by train.
A domestic sized 7 kw charger would give an adequate charge to most vehicles. 7 kw for 7 hours is nearly 50 kwh, or enough to fully charge most EVs, remembering that most vehicles wont  start the rail journey with near empty batteries.
30 such chargers would only total about 210 kw, easily doable on any electrified route.
30 chargers would in practice be enough for a total capacity of about 60 cars, remembering that we some years away from EVERY car being electric, and 50% being electric is probably optimistic.

I think given the likely high capital and operational costs of such a venture, modern Motorail is unlikely to see the kind of renaissance that sleeper trains are.

However, when it comes to trucks then it's a different ball-game and a ro-ro operation with on-board power for refrigeration units and trickle charge would probably be a very good idea.

Of course you need a big loading gauge for such a venture, but I wonder how long it might be before the EU proposes TEN-T corridors with a large enough gauge to accommodate US-style double-stacks of containers and full-size trucks?

The main reason ro-ro has not been adopted in the UK is the loading gauge problem.

Personally I can see 2 forms of energy being used in road transport -

Cars, vans, small trucks typical for most of us on local / short journeys (ie max 200 miles) - battery electric
Lorries cars vans for those who need to do regular long and heavy haul - hydrogen