Three former engineers from SpaceX have imagined a whole new concept of transporting goods by rail. Although they are only at the prototype stage, their technology is very promising.
The company they founded, called Parallel Systems, just raised $50 million.
Fix flaws in the US rail system
Rail transport is much less polluting than truck transport. However, the American railway system, which has been privatized over the years, has several flaws. Many small railways have been closed because they did not allow businesses to generate enough revenue. In addition, freight trains are incredibly long and can sometimes have more than 200 wagons. The costs are much lower if only one train carries the goods.
This, however, forces them to stop at major terminals in urban areas to unload them, and goods destined for more remote locations are therefore delivered by road. ” Due to the way the railway estate is designed, it has its operational and economic limitations. But if you can break down those barriers and allow rail to serve more of those markets, that’s where the opportunity lies. “, explains Matt Soule, employee at SpaceX from 2006 and 2019.
With John Howard and Ben Stabler, also former employees of Elon Musk’s firm, he therefore created Parallel Systems. The system imagined by the engineers includes small autonomous rail vehicles with electric propulsion which propose a new way of using the railways. They can work both independently and together. But, unlike a conventional train, a car can be loaded and begin its journey without waiting for all the others to be ready as well. In the same way, they can be unloaded one by one, which allows them to go to much smaller terminals, and therefore to rural areas.
” The wagons carrying the containers are all self-contained, but the system will work better if the wagons are linked together. So instead of having a long freight train powered by a few diesel locomotives, Parallel Systems envisions a “platoon” of 10-50 self-powered freight cars. “says Matt Soule to CNBC.
The concept pleases
The vehicles can carry more than twice the capacity of a tractor-trailer, have a range of 800 km and can be recharged in about an hour. Knowing that many locomotives in the United States run on diesel, switching the system to electric could significantly reduce CO2 emissions.2 linked to transport, although the technology by which the electricity is generated must also be taken into account.
For now, Parallel Systems has a team of 25 engineers, some from large companies like Uber, Tesla and Google. Although the firm is not yet making a profit and has only tested its system over 50 miles (31 km), Matt Soule says that more than 30 reputable companies in the sector have already contacted him.
Dean Wise, former vice president of network strategy for BNSF Railway, a railroad company, praises Parallel Systems: At BNSF, we thought an autonomous, self-powered rail vehicle would be a game-changer, dramatically improving rail’s ability to compete with the highway and defend against the impending challenge of self-driving trucks, which most people recognize today as a matter of time, not an eventuality. »
The company therefore seems well on its way to attracting the major players in the sector, who could even invest in it to take advantage of its technology.
On the same subject :
The world’s first battery-electric freight train is here
Sources: Electrek
, CNBC
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