Diesel electric locomotive have many, many positive attributes, but if one was used for the way cars and trucks are used, it will break down far more frequently with the start-stops. They run basically what cars see as "all highway" trips and vary speeds comparatively gradually. if a gas or diesel engine connected to the wheels directly is only used for highway driving, that's how you get 1 million mile Tundras and Super Duty trucks that's never had the motor taken apart.

Also, no main drive batteries in main stream diesel electric locomotives, as far as I remember. I could be wrong, it's been a while since I been in the cab of one.

 

Nope Power comes from the generator. Power generated by electric brakes is sent to a giant resistor and turned into heat.

 

THIS is the type of Hybrid I would have, a diesel/electric that drove electric motors at the axles. No heavy expensive batteries, and very fuel efficient since the diesel would run at it's optimum RPM with reduced emissions.

You are considering freight locomotives, which is true, but Commuter D/E are designed for stop/starts just like city driving. The way they do it is the engine doesn't idle, but is run at a base RPM that generates the current needed to start and run, reducing wear on the engine. If you were to spend some time on a commuter line watching the trains, you will find that none of them idle down when loading passengers, and none of them chug when they start rolling. Freight locomotives however idle down when not pulling.

 

He brought up “100,000 ton pulling” trains. I was directly addressing his example.

The type of power plant in commuter trains have their own idiosyncrasies that make them unsuitable for consumer automotive use. If it was viable, you can be sure someone would have done it already.

 

. "This isn’t some whack-a-doodle concept. The Ramcharger is very much a Ram truck with all the modern-day premium touches", Says some engineer at ram... So why specifically won't it work...??? Just because it hasn't been done before...??? I think Mercedes did it years ago. Being able to go 690 miles and fueling up at a gas station and going another 690 miles or what ever it would get without charging the battery at a fast charge station... Seems pretty capable & practical to me.

EDIT; Oh and it can carry 2,600+ Lbs., and or tow 14,000 Lbs. sounds like a capable/normal, 1/2 ton truck to me... Except for the 0 to 60 4.4sec. time...

 

Please show data to back up your claim. I'm willing to bet 90%+ of vehicles in general get their oil changed based on the vehicle telling them to do so. I sold my 2015 F-150 with over 120,000 miles on it and I changed the oil when the truck said to and the rest of the fluids as called for in the Owner's Manual. I spent exactly ZERO dollars on any repairs during the >100,000 miles I put on that truck, which included considerable towing and offroading.

 

No one said it doesn’t work. It’s your apples-to-oranges comparison that doesn’t work. But I guess I shouldn’t expect a linear dialog with your with all your emojis, random capitalizations, over usage of punctuations, etc that makes your posts harder to read than my Gen Z cousins’ Twitch posts.


and in case you didn’t see, it’s not a half ton, no half tons run 8 lug hubs.

 

So tell us, how is a Diesel generator driven set of motors any different from battery driven motors? A Generator runs at a specific RPM all the time to provide a set voltage. As current draw ramps up the engine provides more power to produce the current at set RPM. That is exactly how a train works. It is also how the batteries work. It's what makes Lithium batteries so useful in this application, they provide a constant voltage regardless of power draw until the reach a certain percentage but never go below a set point. With computer controls, it can regulate the diesel power in microseconds as needed.

A 10 car passenger train with one locomotive, BTW weighs 1,000 tons. Thats 80 tons per car and 200 tons for the locomotive. For the record the heaviest train ever recorded weighed 98,159 tons and required 8 locomotives to pull it. I typical freight train weighs little more than a rush hour commuter train, only the long cross country trains are up around the 15-20K ton mark and they use multiple locomotives to power it. They usually run all to get the train rolling, but power down to all but one once moving and only draw off the others when going up grades, or for braking purposes. The diesel runs at 900 RPM tops, idles at 200 RPM. Of course it's the mass of the components that allow it to run so low, but for pickup trucks, a 6.7 could easily power the motors and be very efficient at it too.

 

The lack of options similar to train type propulsion despite hybrids having been on the market for a quarter of a century tell me otherwise. do trains have large lithium batteries onboard for propulsion ? I haven’t worked on one for a while so I don’t really know if it’s a thing now.

 

Tough to come up with an apple to apple comparison as nobody makes them yet, Yes, it does have 8 lugs like an HD, but that is because it is so heavy, as heavy as a HD F-350 probably. BUT, it's capability is like a 1/2 ton as I understand it.

 

Trains may not, probably don't, have large lithium batterie's, but because of the stop and go situations of vehicles, they need to have a battery buffer, and because of that type of use it's going to be the way to go for the future, it's as simple as that. IMO

EDIT; This not having it in use because it's not workable, reminds me of Tesla's dream on providing electricity world-wide without wires... People, industries laughed him into obscurity, guess what, today we charge our batteries with-out a direct wire connection to our phones... Magic, I guess... I do actually wonder how many totally wonderful things/ideas are sitting in a safe not used because big & rich companies bought them (patents) and said lets not rock the boat, things are just fine, the way they are...???

 

 

They dont need them since the motors are direct current. The generator is AC, with a rectifier to covert to DC. Keep in mind we are referring to HP in the thousands, which we don't need to have in a truck, and with how compact they can make high torque motors and electronic components, no special batteries would be needed. The motors in a Tesla are AC with inverters used to convert the DC to AC. The DC part of the truck can be powered conventionally using the standard alternator setup in use now, the motors to drive the truck can be AC driven off the AC generator on the back of the engine. The tricky part would be how to control the power going to the motors for acceleration, since they would be pure AC.

Also remember that they make inverter generators now that can provide pure clean power that is easily regulated for this purpose and can be run by a much smaller motor, think a 6 cylinder small diesel to power an F-350 dually. Since it would run at a steady RPM, it wouldn't clog up as quickly as a normal diesel, and when under load would be hot enough to keep the DPF clean, while maintaining good emissions. If done right, it might not even need DEF. My Kubota puts out a LOT of power and doesn't use DEF, but it is still Tier 4 compliant with a DPF that takes a long time to fill up.

It is quite doable if enough thought is put into it.

 

You mean like a 5.9 Cummins swap? Sorry I had to.