The new frontier of electric cars: look at electric trains with enough battery capacity to power a small town

Text/Alan Ohnsman

Wabtec is building battery-powered locomotives for Union Pacific, Canadian Pacific and major mining companies in Australia. Image credit: PAUL GIBBENS FOR WABTEC

Like a bulky train a mile long, the freight rail industry is not changing quickly and must be carefully phased. But following the pace of car and truck makers, locomotive makers and railroad companies are also starting to turn to batteries large enough to power small towns to control carbon and diesel emissions while maintaining fuel efficiency advantages.

Union Pacific recently said it would spend more than $100 million to buy 20 battery-powered locomotives and charging systems from Horizon Rail, a subsidiary of Wabtec and Caterpillar, the world's largest such purchase to date. Starting in 2023, the Omaha-based railroad company will use the train to pull cars in freight yards in California and Nebras — rather than across borders. It is estimated that this giant machine could reduce its carbon emissions by 8,000 tons per year. In addition, adding batteries is also a way to improve efficiency: trains can transport more than 480 miles per gallon of diesel cargo per ton. According to the Association of American Railways, that's four times higher than the average for trucks.

Beth Whited, executive vice president of sustainability and strategy at Union Pacific, said in an interview with Forbes: "We're well positioned from a fuel consumption perspective, and we're also well positioned from a (diesel) particulate matter perspective, but trucks may be loaded with batteries sooner and they'll start quietly catching up with us." The U.S. railroad company, which ranks second by revenue, also plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 26 percent by 2030, and believes electric trains will help achieve that goal. "It's important for us to really push for emissions reductions, and as soon as possible."

Billions of dollars are now being invested to boost production of electric and commercial vehicles, with some of the biggest companies including General Motors, Ford, Hyundai, Toyota, Volkswagen, Daimler, Cummins and Volvo among others. Considering the quality and power requirements of train locomotives, freight rail is a more complex task. An all-electric train is unlikely to be realized in the short term, mainly because more testing of battery systems that fit their unique requirements will be required. But even so, the industry's efficiency in tackling carbon pollution is surprisingly high: According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, about 40 percent of U.S. freight was done by railroads in 2019, but less than 2 percent of transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions and 24 percent were trucks.

Whited said Union Pacific ordered a fleet of locomotives with 2.5 megawatt-hour batteries from Wabtec, but wasn't sure whether the lithium-ion batteries they used were durable enough to deploy them on major long-haul lines. On these lines, multiple diesel-powered locomotives are connected together and can pull more than 150 train cars. Now, the railroad company is looking to use more biodiesel and renewable fuels to reduce particulate pollution on trains. While Cummins and other companies are also developing hydrogen-powered systems for light passenger trains, the high cost of installing new large-scale energy storage facilities and the minimal supply of hydrogen from low-carbon sources mean that hydrogen-powered systems are not yet an effective option.

"This technology is a bit behind for the use of our industry — and for us, it has more drawbacks," Whited said. This is because using hydrogen fuel requires railway companies to invest in more complex storage and fuel systems than diesel. "In terms of the current supply of hydrogen in the U.S., I don't think it's ready to support the number of projects that are being discussed right now and can be built over a period of time." We are, of course, looking at the situation with regard to hydrogen fuel. We just think it's too early. ”

Other railroads want to see if Wabtec's battery train, which uses lithium-ion battery packs from partner General Motors, can do more than pull trains at the depot. The Pittsburgh-based manufacturer is preparing more powerful locomotives for Canadian National and Australian mining companies Rio Tinto, BHP and Roy Hill. According to Eric Gebhardt, Wabtec's chief technology officer, the locomotives will be loaded with battery packs of up to 8 megawatt-hours. This "utility-scale" battery is too heavy for a semi-truck — because U.S. federal regulations prohibit vehicles weighing more than 80,000 pounds from driving on U.S. highways — but it's fine for a 425,000-pound locomotive. They will work in pairs with diesel locomotives to save fuel and reduce emissions. Last year, Wabtec and BNSF did just that in a pilot project in California's Central Valley, using a 2.4-megawatt battery pack that reduced fuel usage by 11 percent.

Trains equipped with high-power batteries can save fuel and utilize regenerative braking systems — like the oversized version of the Toyota Prius or Tesla Model 3 — to recharge in operation, capturing the lot of kinetic energy generated when heavy trains slow down.

"We have a battery capacity of 7 MWh now, but in the near future we will reach 8 MWh. By then, we can save 30 percent on fuel usage," Gebhardt says, "because every time you hit the brakes, all the batteries are charging." These batteries can provide several megawatts of electricity... One of the biggest differences between trains and trucks is that the locomotive may be followed by a mile or two of carriages, and this train weighs 20,000, 30,000 or 40,000 tons. ”

Since its first test in California last year, Wabtec has quickly received orders for 18 battery-powered locomotives. Gebhardt would not disclose the specific pricing, but according to the Order for Union Pacific, a 2.5-megawatt locomotive could cost around $4 million each. "Mining companies in Australia are buying these equipment for their own rail tracks, and then we have another partnership with National Rail, so it's heating up. We ran the original equipment in early 2021 and achieved results in mid-2021. Now orders are starting to come in and we're very excited about that. ”

Matt Soule, co-founder and CEO of Los Angeles-based Parallel Systems, said the company, led by three former SpaceX engineers, is further developing the high-tech rail concept and plans to develop relatively small, battery-powered short-haul freight trains that can also drive themselves. "We're creating a vehicle with unit economics that competes with trucks, and it doesn't need to be very large," he said. ”

Parallel's plan is to run 10 to 50-car trains on its designed platform, powered by distributed battery packs, as a complement to typical trains of 150 or more carriages running on freight rail lines. The company also intends to automate vehicles using Positive Train Control (PTC). PTC is publicly developed by Wabtec and Progressive Rail and is currently used on all freight and passenger rail lines in the United States. It allows operators of railway monitoring facilities to know the exact location of trains to avoid potential collisions and accidents. Coupled with computer vision and sensors, Parallel believes its trains can drive themselves.

Self-driving cars and trucks have to be prepared for a host of unexpected situations on city streets and highways, but on rail routes, "you don't randomly encounter other trains on the rail network; you have a central awareness of where everything is," Soule said. PTC helps ensure that only one train runs within a specific section of the road at a time. "The industry has invested a lot of money in PTC and we definitely think it's something we can take advantage of."

Parallel raised $50 million in funding in January and received a $4.4 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy in February to test its electric freight train platform with federal researchers.

Gebhardt said that while Wabtec is still preparing to build and deliver its first 18 battery-powered trains, it is very optimistic about the interest shown in electric locomotives.

"We haven't estimated these numbers yet, but we think there will be a good upward trend in these numbers in the coming years," he said. ”