| I have a few more revolutionary ideas for this. First off, we need to get this environmentally clean. Obviously, this must all be electric. For last mile, battery electric is the obvious choice; however I think for main routes and highways some kind of wire system would be ideal. This could also charge the battery needed for the last mile or at truck stops and stuff. Next, we need to make sure that these self-driving units (SDUs) are always centered under that wire. Software would be an easy choice, but with the power delivery arm attached any failure would result in infrastructure destruction, so I'd propose a system of steel guards that force the wheels such that they can't escape the predefined envelope. Come to think about it, rubber-on-concrete is ridiculously bad when it comes to efficiency, so maybe the SDUs should have two sets of wheels, one for last mile and steel wheels for the much more favourable friction coefficient. Then we should couple these units together, because the combined traction force equalizes loads across the whole chain and makes for better acceleration of the linked units resulting in less traffic. Finally, we should equip these SDUs with a radio like GSM or something such that they can communicate with each other and drive in breaking distance, so we can increase the overall speed limit. Gosh, I wonder why nobody has thought of this before. |
But if trucks are electric then it's not totally obvious to me that trains would win on cost or environmental factors despite the obvious advantage of tracks and direct electrification. They're already trialing overhead wires on some highways for electric trucks.
Luckily we don't need to choose between them anyway.