Now, how will this affect future electric GO trains?
It will be about 5-10 years before the train manufacture catches up to some of these Tesla innovations, but generally speaking, look at this image I posted earlier:
Cooling is Massively Simplified / Lighter because of the new cooling design innovations
While the battery is only about 6/5ths more power-dense than the earlier 2170-form-factor lithium batteries, the critic/researcher comliments the sheer cooling-plate miniaturization improvement means 130 kilowatt-hours fit in the same space as 74 kilowatt-hours -- almost twice the battery power because of more compact heatsinked cooling plate approach. That means a 12 coach train would have over one-megawatt hours in a dozen batteries capable of outputting a grand total of approximately 10 megawatt surge if desired (13000 for the brief train accelerations needed, Most of the heat emits at the ends of the battery, and the new copper jellyroll end has 70% of the heat generated;
simplifying battery cooling to a plate-based approach.
Presumably, train manufacturers will latch this as a simplification. It only requires a few inches of height inside a train undercarriage, and only one of these packs are needed per EMU coach (or two), to meet Metrolinx's goal of short catless hops (Hamilton, Brampton, Bowmanville, etc) with
only a shallow battery discharge -- with enough reserve (more than 50%) for heating a trapped train in the middle of winter. And the cooling plate can double as train-bottom armour (protection + cooling radiators), much like today's Tesla car. The rest of RER (electrified urban GO Expansion) will recharge the battery on the fly.
This battery outputs almost a megawatt -- over 1,000 horsepower -- and 130 kilowatt-hours total.
See how small it is, relative to an EMU train coach size?
For those not aware --
existing batteries Tesla cars can have up to 100 kilowatt hours (e.g. the Model P100D), and already capable of outputting
almost half a megawatt today already (~400 kW) -- in a undercarriage skateboard format -- so 130 kilowatt-hour and nearly a megawatt output is pretty realistic for future 4680-based packs. Today, some electric supercars can
output a megawatt already from its onboard battery. A megawatt today, actual measured (over 1300 horsepower) -- from an undercarriage battery of one car! At peak surge, that is half the horsepower of an MP54AC locomotive, in an actual electric supercar. This is not science fiction anymore.
But we don't even need that much surge power; we just need compact pack assembly suitable for EMU train coaches, and that's being solved by the new cooling plate innovation.
Low Bulk: Only One Of This Pictured Battery Pack Per GO EMU Coach Needed
Based math calculations of how much power is needed to pull one coach across the typical Metrolinx lengths -- only
one (or two) of these 8cm-tall battery packs are needed per EMU train coach for a RER-II extension of a catenary RER plan.
Math: This pictured battery pack is capable of outputting almost a megawatt surge --
more than 1,000 horsepower. 12 coaches of these, one per coach, is
12,000 horsepower. -- more than twice a double MP54AC pair (2700 + 2700 = 5400 horsepower). But that's massively overkill, you don't need that much electric wattage -- about 2700 electric horsepower will have roughly the same horsepowerage as a single MP54AC. So let's use 2700hp as realistic max. But, the max horsepower is only needed for a few seconds: overcoming the stiction during accelerating during uphill from a train station. 2700hp = 2 megawatt, or about 170 kilowatt per coach for a 12-coach. Even if it was continuous all the way to acceleration completion, outputting 170 kilowatts for 2 minutes (2-degree uphill acceleration of an overloaded train, worst case acceleration scenario) only depletes barely 10% of this pictured battery. Now, electric traction is incredibly efficient -- EMU traction is more efficient than diesel locomotive traction -- less equivalent wattage per unit of acceleration -- so realistically will use far less than 170 kilowatts continuous per coach especially conservative acceleration on level ground which is far more efficient. So you could make do of
only 2-5% battery discharge per station departure from a station as the train driver (and train computer programmed) to intentionally slow acceleration from battery-only stations to be nice to the battery (3-minute accelerate instead of 1-to-2-minute accelerate); and you only need to worry about 2, 3 or 4 stations for a RER-2 catless extension of RER catenary to freight tracks. We don't need 500 miles on electricity like this will power a Tesla car -- we only need enough power to hop catless sections with a big safety margin for winter stalls. With good shallow-discharge SoC management, these packs are good for more than 10,000 trips across the catless sections -- many years of service -- and then it's a simple battery swap with the spent batteries spending a second life in a gridscale farm (75% capacity) before being finally recycled. If you're worried about safety margins, use two packs instead of one per coach. By year 2030, 130 kilowatt hours only costs $8450 manufacture plus pack assembly costs (double that), $16-$17K per coach. Then add whatever Alstom/Stadler/etc profit fluff, say $100K-$200K per coach, and the
economically suddenly makes sense in 2030. .... A Metrolinx BiLevel battery EMU by 2030+ that costs only a bit more than a standard EMU? Sign us up!
Correct, we should not wait for battery trains. Electrification will happen with catenary anyway but they're not going to build catenary in Hamilton before 2040-2050 anyway. And battery coaches will become available long before then. The freight catenary problem remains. The train manufacturers are conservative but even today, the battery train trials are showing impressive results.
I predict ~2025, give or take a few years, will be the first announcement of battery backed BiLevel EMUs by a major (Alstom, Stadler, etc), which will begin to really catch Metrolinx's attention.
Then other countries try it out first, then it invariably shows miracle economics, and Metrolinx will use these in year 2035-2041 as part of RER-II to electrify to Hamilton (Metrolinx 2041 Regional Transit Plan of 15-minute electric Hamilton service by year 2041). These would only be used for routes that hopped catenary-less sections of the GO rail network, so Metrolinx battery trains might be expected to comprise a low percentage (such as only 10-20%) of the fleet by 2041, while achieving the documented 15-minute service required.
By then, other countries will have battery trains will have been operating for almost 25 years, with battery BiLevels operating for 15+ years, reprsenting a mature technology for Metrolinx by year 2041, the timepoint of 15-minute Hamilton electric service. When battery trains are
already a mature technology by 2041 thanks to the unexpectedly ginormous ramp-up of lithium battery manufacture well before then;
