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by shantara
1583 days ago
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Most consumer goods and the containers themselves are not designed to withstand vacuum, so you cannot have the containers themselves take the role of the pods. They would have to be loaded/unloaded inside the pods. The airlocks at the terminals would also need to be cycled adding to the processing time and making the system less scalable. The entire system is designed for sending containers one by one in pods, so its throughput is not at all impressive compared to the trains with several tens of railcars. Not to mention the technical difficulties of reliably maintaining vacuum in hundreds of kilometers of the tunnel. And don’t forget that a single broken seal anywhere on the whole track would bring the whole system to a halt, and would require significant safety intervals between the poss. As for the speed - the hyperloop’s main advantage - there is relatively little cargo in the world for which shipping time makes a critical difference between 100 km/h train and 2000 km/h hypothetical hyperloop. Reliability, throughout and an established network are much more important, hence why the bulk of world’s shipping is done slowly and reliably by sea. |
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You dont need to shave off 4 hours of 8hrs journey, what most logistics channels need is predictability and at as low cost as possible.
If you can save 1/2 shipping costs of you TVs at cost of 1-2 extra days of transportation, you will pick that option (with exception of perishables).
Thats how the logistics channels work. High predictability ensures you can schedule work, space, and send-off without fuss. That's why rail is the best for the task. So company saves money because solution is cheap and because there are no (or minimal) backlogs due to some failure in transport.
Its the definition of KISS. It works, predictable and cheap.
As Musk said 'Its that simple'. It boggles my mind anyone would be crazy enough to pick hyper-loop as cargo solution - a what 10 years old vaporware with no working anything but CGI.