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Do you believe electric trucks, trains, planes, ships, etc. are the future of heavy-haul freight transportation?

Electric trucks are still a baby niche of road transport not really capable ot fulfilling much.

Electric planes are a pipedream, as are electric ships.

Electric trains for freight exist in some parts of the world where reliable and relatively cheap electricity is still produced.
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ArishMell · 70-79, M
I assume you mean by pure battery power.

Long-distance heavy goods vehicles: probably not although companies like Scania are developing them.

Ironically, small (up to about 3t) battery-electric wagons were common in many European and American cities in the 1890s-1900s, mainly used to shuttle freight between railway goods-yards and local businesses.

Among them were many battery-electric, private cars, too; and those were allowed on the roads in London's Royal Parks from which these new-fangled, noisy, smelly, petroleum-spirit fueled equivalents were barred!


Trains. Yes, at least for passenger-trains. It takes far less power to accelerate a given load from rest to a set speed, and maintain that speed, on rails than on roads; and experiments with battery-electric traction are under way.

The world's first public-carrying trials of such started recently on a short line in the London suburbs.

Since Diesel multiple-unit trains with the engines under the coach floors are already commonplace, I see no reason against battery-electric equivalents replacing the DMU for inter-city and suburban routes.

Whether a BEMU carrying, say, 200 passengers would manage the Nullarbor Straight on a single charge, at night with the coach lights and heaters on, remains to be seen! (Steam locomotives had to stop for water part-way, so why not a recharging stop?)


Aircraft: There are already experiments, mainly in Sweden I think, on electrically-powered aeroplanes of limited capacity for short flights. No-one proposes such for intercontinental flight; but the real question there is need for so many flights in the first place.


Ships: Not batteries but fuel-cells perhaps. A large ship requires enormous power to push it through the water, and so far, using batteries for vessels is limited to slow-moving leisure and tourist craft on inland waterways.