MT Magazine July/August 2023

FEATURE STORY

JULY/AUGUST 2023

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The Wabtec FLXdrive locomotive: a full battery electric locomotive. Wabtec is also working with GM on the development of a hydrogen-powered locomotive. ( Image: Wabtec )

EVs on Rails When Chevrolet launched the Volt in 2019, it didn’t want the vehicle to be referred to as a “hybrid.” After all, Toyota pretty much owned that word with the Prius in the same way that Kleenex owned the term for the paper facial tissue. The Volt has an electric motor and an internal combustion engine. But that engine functions mainly as a generator, charging the battery that powers the motor that turns the wheels. It is a series hybrid. The Prius is a parallel hybrid. So instead of calling the Volt a “hybrid,” the folks at Chevy insisted that it be called an “extended-range electric vehicle.” While that may have seemed somewhat innovative at the time, if not revolutionary, do you know what else is an “extended-range electric vehicle”? Locomotives. And these hybrids have been commercially available since 1925 (as switchers in railyards). Through the 1930s, a leading manufacturer of diesel-electric locomotives was Electro Motive – which was owned by General Motors (it sold the business in 2005).

Efficiency for the Distance Today the architecture of a locomotive has a diesel engine (with roughly 4,500 hp) that powers an alternator; its electrical output goes to the traction motors that power the wheels and pull the freight. According to the most recent figures from the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics, there are 23,544 freight locomotives (i.e., not passenger trains) on the nearly 140,000 miles of freight rails in the United States. The Association of American Railroads calculates that a train will move a ton of freight some 480 miles on a single gallon of fuel, making a freight train three to four times more fuel efficient on average than a truck. The organization points out that while railroads handle about 40% of the long-distance freight volume in the United States, they are responsible for 1.9% of transport-related greenhouse gas emissions.

While railroads handle 40% of

long-distance freight volume in the country, they only account for 1.9% of transport related greenhouse gas emissions.

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