It’s also just an outright lie. But, I guess that doesn’t matter anymore.
I did a little digging and it seems like there’s a tiny kernel of fact at the core of this giant turd of a hype-piece, and that is the fact that they electrified this little spur line from Berlin to the new German Tesla factory by using a battery-electric trainset. Which is not a terrible solution for electrifying a very short branch line that presumably doesn’t need frequent all-day service, even if it’s a bit of a janky approach compared to overhead lines. But hand that off to the overworked, underpaid twenty-two-year old gig worker they’ve got doing “editing” at Yahoo for two bucks an article, and I guess it turns into “world-first electric wonder train amazes!”
For a second, though, I read the headline and wondered if Musk and co. had finally looped all the way around to reinventing commuter rail from first principles after all these years of trying to “disrupt” it with bullshit ideas like Hyperloop and Tunnels, But Dumber.
I guess if by a kernel of truth you mean an existing train was used on an existing track, then you could almost make it make sense? But since all of this existed before, it’s just a lie.
I’ll also point out that anybody introducing battery electric trains instead of just electrifying the remaining parts of rail is making an astoundingly bad choice, but that’s almost certainly Germany and not Tesla.
I could see why they would do it specifically in this case.
There’s been huge protests against building the Gigafactory in Brandenburg, and the main instrument of the opponents was using Germany’s strict environmental protection laws against it.
If they needed to cut down more trees along the tracks to electrify the line, the opponents could possibly delay that by suing in court, demanding studies be done, maybe finding an endangered ant species somewhere in the area.Running the train on batteries avoids that.
They could have just illegally cut down the trees like they illegally used too much water, or any of the other things they did against their agreement with the government.
I don’t think you realise how expensive electrifying a line can be, it can be as expensive as building it in the first place. Whereas this technology can be used without modifying the track at all.
If the line only runs a few times a day, it’s an obvious choice.
I do realize. I also realize things like weight of the train, cost of the battery packs, the fact those packs will wear and need to be replaced faster than anything else in the system, and much more.
Yeah but it’s also far from new technology. Germany is mostly electrified rail, and having BE sets to bridge areas is not uncommon (in southern Germany you also get diesel electric combo units).
cutie little vroomie :)
Not much capacity though, so I guess the “Giga-Train” has that advantage.
The train also only runs between Erkner Station, and Tesla Sud, which is literally just the station right at the Tesla manufacturing facility in the area.
“It’s also free to not just Tesla employees, but regular passengers as well.”
That’s great and all, but are everyday people taking trains to go see the outside of a Tesla factory, then leaving again?
Generally, I’m against violence towards journalists - but dishonest and manipulative headlines like this tend to make me reconsider my stance, if but for a moment.
Now, imagine this revolutionary improvement: Find a way of putting the energy source outside of the train somehow, and save on weight by not hauling those heavy batteries around.
Christ, the amount of times techbros and tesla fanboys have accidentally “invented” trains and trams these past few years is beyond stupid…
Well a battery electric train is probably useful for those routes with a section that isn’t powered.
Not sure if it would be awfully cleaner than a diesel electric train, because those are already pretty efficient as I understand it.
Ok but that’s infrastructure and we don’t pay for that (for real though we need to upgrade our outdated catenaries)
NO WAY! Did they just copy the Siemens Mireo and made it a double decker
It looks even more obvious in the German version of the site where the first picture is literally this one:
Edit:
Now that I have taken a closer look I question if the “Tesla” train is even a double decker or actually the Mireo
Edit 2:
And I am unsure if Yahoo just used a random train as their cover or if this is the Tesla train in question. I am so confused O.o
Edit 3:
Soo it’s not a double decker and it is “Tesla’s train” sooo… If I was Tesla I’d get back to the drawing board because I doubt Siemens will be happy with what they did here
From the industry journal I linked in another comment – it’s literally just an off-the-shelf Mireo Plus B. That’s it. The only thing Tesla about it is that it’s serving a spur line connecting Tesla’s factory to the existing Berlin light rail network, and was presumably financed by them for the PR benefit of not having the workers at an electric car factory arrive by diesel train.
Yeah, I didn’t expect much more of this, and then a bunch of those bored Yahoo Tech Bros think Elon would really make a train :')
That’s literally the train I use everything I get to uni (and back).
Sharp observation
Is this like how Apple invented the headphones?
And tablets
And touchscreens
And Mp3 players
And Bluetooth earbuds
And small form factor PC stacks
God the list just keeps going. At least with them the marketing is annoying but the products are usually good. Instead of Elon promising the moon and delivering a pile of dog shit.
The logo on the front is from the NEB, Niederbarnimer Eisenbahn AG, which runs in German province’s of Berlin and Brandenburg. No way in hell the Muskrat MAGAT is going to build trains.
Apparently it runs from his battery factory and they provided batteries because the overhead line doesn’t run that far. That’s it. Everything else is normal German electric train.
The far more important question however is:
Why tf did they use the color scheme of bwegt?
I may be an idiot, but I’m 99% certain that this color scheme is only used in Baden-Württemberg - a state that’s like 500km away from the Tesla factory.
Hype over fake news like this is one major reason how tesla’s stock price has gotten as high as it has.
Screw Elon
Lol how novel, I use an all electric train every work day, a Stadler Class 777/1 electric multiple-unit fitted with batteries (BEMU).
777 is unsafe! Use 755! /s
You are a gigachad that lives in the future.
I’ll get a tattoo of that.
🎶 “I’m a connnnnn mann, or maybe I’m a god? Zoomin‘ round the planet, in my hyper loopin‘ pod…” 🎶
Yahoo, the cowboys of journalism.
The train itself isn’t plastered with logos and tesla has no way to manufacture trains. What is this screenshot from?
