We copied 1960 technology, declared it revolutionary and act as if we invented it all
The Apple Way.
The logo on the front is from the NEB, Niederbarnimer Eisenbahn AG, which runs in German province’s of Berlin and Brandenburg. No way in hell the Muskrat MAGAT is going to build trains.
Apparently it runs from his battery factory and they provided batteries because the overhead line doesn’t run that far. That’s it. Everything else is normal German electric train.
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
Train nerds are a weird bunch.
Please never change.
So. It’s Teslas first train. That they bought?
True innovators
That they leased
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!
Hype over fake news like this is one major reason how tesla’s stock price has gotten as high as it has.
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?
Is this like how Apple invented the headphones?
And tablets
And touchscreens
And Mp3 players
And Bluetooth earbuds
And small form factor PC stacks
God the list just keeps going. At least with them the marketing is annoying but the products are usually good. Instead of Elon promising the moon and delivering a pile of dog shit.
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.
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.
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 :/
There are definitely use cases for battery-electric trains:
- We have these in Germany usually in areas with low traffic. E.g. if a train line is only serviced a couple of times a day, it’s more cost-effective to carry the batteries with you than to electrify the line.
- Another use case are train ferries. They are the reason why Germany also had Diesel-powered high-speed trains for a while.
- Another challenge in Europe is the lack of harmonization of power supplies of train lines between countries. In cross-border traffic, trains have to be adapted to work with different energy supplies. Battery-electric trains can add flexibility for these scenarios. E.g. Germany uses AC 15 kV 16.7Hz, the Netherlands DC 1.5 kV on low-speed and AC 25 kV 50Hz on high-speed lines. When a train goes from the Netherlands to Germany, it disconnects from the Dutch system and reconnects to the German system on the fly. For a moment in between, the train loses power. If the train lacks momentum or has to stop unexpectedly, the train is stranded and has to be pushed over the border by another train that is independent of the power supply.
Based on this dumpster fire of a headline, I think the take-away can only be that Siemens and other train manufacturers have to start calling their trains “OMEGA RAIL” and “CHUNGUS 3000” or shit like that so it’s worth a news article.
I’d ride the CHUNGUS 3000.
Crap, now I have to change all my passwords.
NO WAY! Did they just copy the Siemens Mireo and made it a double decker
It looks even more obvious in the German version of the site where the first picture is literally this one:
Edit:
Now that I have taken a closer look I question if the “Tesla” train is even a double decker or actually the Mireo
Edit 2:
And I am unsure if Yahoo just used a random train as their cover or if this is the Tesla train in question. I am so confused O.o
Edit 3:
Soo it’s not a double decker and it is “Tesla’s train” sooo… If I was Tesla I’d get back to the drawing board because I doubt Siemens will be happy with what they did here
From the industry journal I linked in another comment – it’s literally just an off-the-shelf Mireo Plus B. That’s it. The only thing Tesla about it is that it’s serving a spur line connecting Tesla’s factory to the existing Berlin light rail network, and was presumably financed by them for the PR benefit of not having the workers at an electric car factory arrive by diesel train.
That’s literally the train I use everything I get to uni (and back).
I think I see you in the window there, mate.
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
