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.
it’s the Mireo Plus B from siemens. it’s already in use in the north of germany since march of this year.
https://www.nordbahn.de/blog/so-isses/der-norden-begruesst-die-akku-zuege/there’s nothing elon about this train, just that it’s driving to his factory.
they are great for short distances that are difficult to electrify.
Yeah, it’s not all electric, some of the train is just regular matter
Wait until you learn how molecular bonds work…
this is the internet I don’t learn
You could learn this internet if you decided to.
dont make me tap the sign
Just wow… So if you look closely at the picture, you can barely see the number ‘563’ on the train. If you have a look at list of locomotives and railbuses iof DB on Wikipedia, you can see that this train is a Siemens Mireo.
Now, let’s take the headline apart. Is it the first all-electric trai… no! Is it the first accumulator train? Also no, as you can see in the list above, the class 515 exists and the Stadler Flirt Akku has been used on a line since October 2023, Is it the first Siemens Mireo Plus B being used? You guess what, nope. As an example, SWEG is using some of them to bridge non-electrified parts of the track since April 2024.
So finally, what is special about the Gigatrain? (gosh, I actually really dislike that name) In February 2024, the subsidary ‘Smart Train Lease GmbH’ of Siemens Mobility has been announced. There you can also lease two Siemens Mireo Plus Bs. Tesla is their very first client. That’s it
Whoops, got longer as expected. In case I made small mistakes, feel free to point it out
