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by bo0tzz 2803 days ago
> But at the end of the day... what advantages would this ever have over electric trains that get their power from a third rail?

No heavy electric motors and other equipment in the vehicle, for starters

1 comments

From the article:

> Fully loaded vehicles have a ratio of payload to dead-weight of about 1:1, which is up to three times better than conventional alternatives

Might make sense for a small system.

But electric machines have made huge advances in the last decades. Frequency converters, DC-DC converters, high torque permanent magnet motors etc are now very commonplace.

For example in the workshop, electric tools have supplanted pressurized air ones.