[freebeard]

www.electrive.com/2022/01/20/parallel-systems-reveals-a-rail-innovation/

Parallel Systems, a company founded by former SpaceX engineers to reimagine the railroad system, [snip] is basically an autonomous rail system that consists of separate self-powered wheel units that shipping containers can sit on. These containers can join up via the self-powered, autonomous wheel units to form what the company is calling “platoons” or travel as individual units. Of course, this also means the containers can travel as a platoon for part of a journey and simply split off in different directions depending on their destination.



The Parallel System has a few rather spectacular data sets. The fact that a shipping container with these self-powered, autonomous wheel systems can travel up to 500 miles (around 800 kilometres) is great, but if the system uses only 25% of the energy of a semi-truck, that is indeed a breakthrough. Similarly, the claimed charging time of less than one hour makes this a significant solution. Also impressive is the payload capacity: Up to 128,000 lbs. / 58,000 kg. (in a double stack container formation), which Parallel says is 2.8 times more than a semi–truck.

Another advantage over traditional train systems is that freight trains would not need to be so long. Long trains require a lot of loading time and also mean that traffic has to wait for a while for large trains to pass. With Parallel Systems, a longer platoon can even split up to allow better traffic flow – which should be easily monitored with the right exchange of information.

On it's face, this is pretty brilliant. Take rails and shipping containers and obsolete everything inbetween. What's the problem? Who owns the rails.

Note that these are SpaceX veterans. There is obviously an opportunity here for The Boring Company, IMHO.