Discontinuous Electrification - RUK's thoughts?

[snowball]

Where have they had to build new lines (or opted for discontinuous) in the Valleys for electrification?

My understanding is that they have opted for discontinuous electrification at numerous overbridges. That's supposed to be the unique distinguishing feature of the approach used for the Core Valley Lines.

 

[Class 317]

I'm fairly confident in the the next few years we will see routes electrified via using BEMU's and caternary islands much the same as is currently being implemented in Denmark, Germany and Austria. If you like very discontinuous electrification.

Plenty of routes that could benefit from a low cost electrification option that also has a much lower embedded carbon footprint print than installing OHLE. BEMU's also offer substantially lower operating costs than DMU's. I forget the exact numbers but I believe it's something in the ball park of 70p per KM DMU, 40p per KM BEMU and 35p a KM EMU.

Also plenty of routes that could be electrified via BEMU's with a minimal infrastructure investment given route lengths, charging times and existing OHLE.

Freight could also electrify many services via using battery electric locos to work last few miles on battery charged when operating on the OHLE.

 

[Peter Wilde]

There was a good article in Modern Railways fairly recently (sadly I can’t find the date - a few months ago ??) which pointed out that much of the apparent benefit of discontinuous electrification disappeared if one did a proper analysis of all the costs, over the whole life of the equipment. A significant drawback to BEMUs is that the batteries are heavy and the train is condemned to spend its whole lifetime hauling that weight around. This makes little sense for routes where the train spends much of its time on electrified lines.

I suspect this ought to be a niche product, appropriate in certain situations (like trams while passing outside unique architecture where OLE would be too visually intrusive); but something that ought not to be favoured more widely.

Of course the problem is that political decision makers tend to look at the initial set up costs and worry less about whole-life economics.

 

[Brissle Girl]

My understanding is that they have opted for discontinuous electrification at numerous overbridges. That's supposed to be the unique distinguishing feature of the approach used for the Core Valley Lines.

Not just overbridges, but at more complex areas too, the most obvious one being Queen St station and the junctions on either side of it.

 

[Class 317]

There was a good article in Modern Railways fairly recently (sadly I can’t find the date - a few months ago ??) which pointed out that much of the apparent benefit of discontinuous electrification disappeared if one did a proper analysis of all the costs, over the whole life of the equipment. A significant drawback to BEMUs is that the batteries are heavy and the train is condemned to spend its whole lifetime hauling that weight around. This makes little sense for routes where the train spends much of its time on electrified lines.

I suspect this ought to be a niche product, appropriate in certain situations (like trams while passing outside unique architecture where OLE would be too visually intrusive); but something that ought not to be favoured more widely.

Of course the problem is that political decision makers tend to look at the initial set up costs and worry less about whole-life economics.

The whole life economics will nearly always favour BEMU'S over OHLE on most secondary routes and branchlines.

The costs over both the short and longer term of installation and maintenance of OHLE will far outweigh the extra energy and other costs associated with carrying batteries around under the OHLE. BEMU'S will definitely lead to the pace of UK electrification increasingly in the years ahead.

Don't forget that BEMU'S offer the same advantages of faster acceleration and reduced operating costs as if a service is traditionally electrified with OHLE.

 

[edwin_m]

The whole life economics will nearly always favour BEMU'S over OHLE on most secondary routes and branchlines.

The costs over both the short and longer term of installation and maintenance of OHLE will far outweigh the extra energy and other costs associated with carrying batteries around under the OHLE. BEMU'S will definitely lead to the pace of UK electrification increasingly in the years ahead.

Don't forget that BEMU'S offer the same advantages of faster acceleration and reduced operating costs as if a service is traditionally electrified with OHLE.

The jury is probably still out on where the "tipping point" is between BEMUs and full electrification. The Scottish electrification strategy is the closest we get to a coherent approach to rail decarbonisation anywhere in the UK, and they proposed OLE on the entire network except the Far North and Kyle lines, the West Highland and Stranraer. However, they did acknowledge that technology is still advancing on batteries in particular and what was ultimately done may be a bit different.

 

[HSTEd]

There was a good article in Modern Railways fairly recently (sadly I can’t find the date - a few months ago ??) which pointed out that much of the apparent benefit of discontinuous electrification disappeared if one did a proper analysis of all the costs, over the whole life of the equipment. A significant drawback to BEMUs is that the batteries are heavy and the train is condemned to spend its whole lifetime hauling that weight around. This makes little sense for routes where the train spends much of its time on electrified lines.

I suspect this ought to be a niche product, appropriate in certain situations (like trams while passing outside unique architecture where OLE would be too visually intrusive); but something that ought not to be favoured more widely.

Of course the problem is that political decision makers tend to look at the initial set up costs and worry less about whole-life economics.

I very much doubt this, given that electrification is now running £4m per track kilometre.

Every few hundred metres avoided saves the entire price of a passenger vehicle.

As to "hauling around the weight of batteries", the very principle that makes freight trains good at moving freight around rather limits the negative impact of a few tonnes of batteries.
Indeed EMUS have been hauling tonnes of concrete around on the Southern Region for decades to play along with infrastructure types delusions of conversion to 25kV!

Given even TPRU is taking a decade, I am extremely skeptical there is industrial capability to electrify enough to matter fast enough to matter.
It's batteries or diesels and irrelevance.

 

[Bantamzen]

It is all very well to complain about discontinuous electrification, but the reality is the railway has utterly failed to deliver the "proper" electrification that it desires at reasonable cost.

I think this highlights the fundamental question, why has electrification got so expensive in this country? And nobody seems to want to answer that, and instead look for cheaper options. I've no doubt that battery will find more places on the UK network, but is cheaping out really the answer or are we simply storing up more cost for the future? I would have thought that powering EMUs by continuous wires would ultimately be more efficient than battery? If so then why aren't we seeking ways to bring the cost of wiring down, without of course compromising safety? Looking around the world wires do still seem to be the first go-to when looking to electrify, battery units do exist but in such small numbers that I can't help but wonder that they are not being seen as an alternative anywhere but here in the UK.

 

[Class 317]

I think this highlights the fundamental question, why has electrification got so expensive in this country? And nobody seems to want to answer that, and instead look for cheaper options. I've no doubt that battery will find more places on the UK network, but is cheaping out really the answer or are we simply storing up more cost for the future? I would have thought that powering EMUs by continuous wires would ultimately be more efficient than battery? If so then why aren't we seeking ways to bring the cost of wiring down, without of course compromising safety? Looking around the world wires do still seem to be the first go-to when looking to electrify, battery units do exist but in such small numbers that I can't help but wonder that they are not being seen as an alternative anywhere but here in the UK.

I agree OHLE costs are far to high but even if they were 50% cheaper they would still be unaffordable for most secondary and branch routes.

I don't see deployment of BEMU'S as a cheaper alternative and instead as a way of bringing the benefits of electric operation to routes that would otherwise not receive them. In particular the faster acceleration and cheaper operating costs.

The jury is probably still out on where the "tipping point" is between BEMUs and full electrification. The Scottish electrification strategy is the closest we get to a coherent approach to rail decarbonisation anywhere in the UK, and they proposed OLE on the entire network except the Far North and Kyle lines, the West Highland and Stranraer. However, they did acknowledge that technology is still advancing on batteries in particular and what was ultimately done may be a bit different.

Both the Scottish and network rail studies are I believe quite a few years ago and since then battery trains have proven more capable in service then these studies assumed. I don't think they should now be taken as the last word on the subject and probably another look is required to avoid wasting precious investment on unnecessary electrification.

Agree their will be a tipping point but it's likely to be more routes on BEMU'S than those studies assumed.

 

[Grumpy Git]

Of course the problem is that political decision makers tend to look at the initial set up costs and worry less about whole-life economics.

Nail on head.

 

[snowball]

Both the Scottish and network rail studies are I believe quite a few years ago and since then battery trains have proven more capable in service then these studies assumed. I don't think they should now be taken as the last word on the subject and probably another look is required to avoid wasting precious investment on unnecessary electrification.

We should be getting the latest version of the Scottish programme soon - allegedly on Scottish budget day, 19 Dec.

 

[Bald Rick]

A significant drawback to BEMUs is that the batteries are heavy and the train is condemned to spend its whole lifetime hauling that weight around. This makes little sense for routes where the train spends much of its time on electrified lines.

But…. batteries aren’t that heavy, and the impact of the weight on energy consumption is in any case largely is mitigated through regenerative braking.

To put some numbers on it, a 5 coach Class 720 weighs 193 tonnes; the batteries needed to keep that going on battery on a typical duty cycle for an hour would weigh 8-10 tonnes.

 

[deltic08]

But…. batteries aren’t that heavy, and the impact of the weight on energy consumption is in any case largely is mitigated through regenerative braking.

To put some numbers on it, a 5 coach Class 720 weighs 193 tonnes; the batteries needed to keep that going on battery on a typical duty cycle for an hour would weigh 8-10 tonnes.

I was told that there is not enough known minerals in the world to replace all ICE vehicles with battery operated vehicles especially as battery life is limited by the amount of times the battery is charged/discharged. This applies moreso to trains as they are used daily, high battery mileage and more charge/discharge cycles per day.
A 40 year old train will need at least 4 new batteries in its lifetime using even more rare, even more expensive minerals in the future. As far as I know, batteries cannot be recycled and go to landfill. Very environmental.
Installation of 25kv electrification is a one off expense with little maintenance with lower train build and operating costs.

 

[HSTEd]

I was told that there is not enough known minerals in the world to replace all ICE vehicles with battery operated vehicles especially as battery life is limited by the amount of times the battery is charged/discharged. This applies moreso to trains as they are used daily, high battery mileage and more charge/discharge cycles per day.

Those sorts of calculations are almost impossible to make without making lots and lots of assumptions.
It is unlikely that there is not enough material in the earths crust to make these batteries, although only a tiny fraction of that material is currently economically obtainable.

A 40 year old train will need at least 4 new batteries in its lifetime using even more rare, even more expensive minerals in the future. As far as I know, batteries cannot be recycled and go to landfill. Very environmental.
Installation of 25kv electrification is a one off expense with little maintenance with lower train build and operating costs.

You can recycle the minerals in a battery even if they cannot be conventionally recycled.
If nothing else you can incinerate them and collect the metals from the ash.

And even then, the cost of four batteries will still pale into insignificant next to the cost of overhead wires at £4m/stkm

 

[Technologist]

I was told that there is not enough known minerals in the world to replace all ICE vehicles with battery operated vehicles especially as battery life is limited by the amount of times the battery is charged/discharged. This applies moreso to trains as they are used daily, high battery mileage and more charge/discharge cycles per day.
A 40 year old train will need at least 4 new batteries in its lifetime using even more rare, even more expensive minerals in the future. As far as I know, batteries cannot be recycled and go to landfill. Very environmental.
Installation of 25kv electrification is a one off expense with little maintenance with lower train build and operating costs.

Told by who? Someone who was ignorant or who had an agenda?

Batteries don't use any particularly rare materials, but if you want to lie with statistics you can make claims around "proven resources" which are generally set at about 20-30x current annual production because they are a measure of the mining pipeline not the actual available resources which are much higher.

LFP batteries which would be the ones used by trains use a lithium, iron, phosphate cathode and a carbon/silicon anode. Nothing rare there at all. They can also last 10,000 full cycles, parts cycling would increase life even further. So they would likely last the entire lifetime of a train.

Regarding recycling, this isn't happening because (drumroll) BEVs are new! We wouldn't expect to see large numbers coming through to scrap for about 10 years and even then recycled batteries won't be a noticeable proportion of the materials supply for another 10 years after that. However batteries are a excellent candidate for recycling coming as they do in standardised form factors with everything documented. It is possible to get 95%+ of materials back.

The other way to lie with statistics about a BMU train is to use what amount to first generation costs (which likely include lots of R&D spread over a few vehicles) and assume that those will also always be the case. Automotive is going fully BEV, it is as a market orders of magnitude larger than rolling stock and does things on a much lower cost base with much shorter product lifecycles.

A Tesla or similar already has a battery and motor system more powerful than pretty much any coach. The motors cost ~$1500 and the battery pack ~$10,000. These are rounding errors on the cost of rail vehicles.

 

[Guano]

There are severe constraints on mining the metals required for the energy transition. These include accessing the water needed for processing the ore-bearing rock and handling the resulting waste. Mining waste is at present placed in tailings dams which are inherently risky structures, as shown by two tailings dams' disasters in Brazil in the last 10 years (and others).

A transition to sustainably-produced electricity and away from fossil fuels is absolutely required but that leads to many other issues related to mining. Care is going to be required in deciding how batteries are used, as it is unlikely that it will be possible to electrify our transport system like-for-like. Small batteries for rail vehicles to manage small gaps in electrification and for emergency use are a more suitable use of battery technology than large numbers of private electric vehicles designed for a range of several hundred miles.

 

[Bald Rick]

I was told that there is not enough known minerals in the world to replace all ICE vehicles with battery operated vehicles especially as battery life is limited by the amount of times the battery is charged/discharged. This applies moreso to trains as they are used daily, high battery mileage and more charge/discharge cycles per day.
A 40 year old train will need at least 4 new batteries in its lifetime using even more rare, even more expensive minerals in the future. As far as I know, batteries cannot be recycled and go to landfill. Very environmental.
Installation of 25kv electrification is a one off expense with little maintenance with lower train build and operating costs.

As others have pointed out - it’s worth reading up on the subject. Battery recycling happens now, and the types pf battery that will be used in trains have a minimum of 10,000 cycles - and that is only a guess as no one has got there yet. I know someone who has bought Lithium Titanate batteires for traction applications, traction and during extensive cycle testing they showed no material loss of capacity. (or as he put it - 10,000 cycles is a worst case level)

Having been responsible for operating, maintaining and renewing life expired electrification equipment, I can personally attest that it is far from a one off expense.

In terms of total battery production and resources: what the UK needs is negligible in terms of worldwide resources and the market. To provide battery EMUs to replace every one of the c5000 non pure EMU passenger vehicles on the network, with enough range for about an hour off the wire, would need roughly 750MWh of battery capacity. That‘s what Tesla produce every day for their cars.

 

[Technologist]

There are severe constraints on mining the metals required for the energy transition. These include accessing the water needed for processing the ore-bearing rock and handling the resulting waste. Mining waste is at present placed in tailings dams which are inherently risky structures, as shown by two tailings dams' disasters in Brazil in the last 10 years (and others).

A transition to sustainably-produced electricity and away from fossil fuels is absolutely required but that leads to many other issues related to mining. Care is going to be required in deciding how batteries are used, as it is unlikely that it will be possible to electrify our transport system like-for-like. Small batteries for rail vehicles to manage small gaps in electrification and for emergency use are a more suitable use of battery technology than large numbers of private electric vehicles designed for a range of several hundred miles.

You are taking two very specific issues for certain ores in certain locations and extrapolating out the whole industry. The key point is that the total volume of materials removed for electric vehicles and low emissions electric grids is significantly smaller than for existing ICE vehicles and fossil fuel grids. Furthermore fossil fuels cannot be recycled, batteries can. Mining can be done ethically and should be, not electrifying things because we are worried about mining only helps oil producers.

As an aside in the 2030 timeframe probably half the batteries produced will likely be sodium batteries which removes the last remotely rare mineral from the battery. Everything else in a battery other than lithium is something which is already extracted at orders of magnitude higher than needed for batteries (iron, aluminum, phosphates, carbon) or something substitutable (copper, rare earths (not in batteries)).

Re: Not electrifying the car fleet:

There isn't an OECD nation where car's share of passenger miles is less than 50% and for most of them the amount is greater than 80% (Even China is over 50% if you lump powered two wheelers in the by road figure). The time frame for fully replacing these ICE vehicles is in the order of;

1: Compound annual growth rates of 30-40% in EV sales (current trend, plus manufacturer new model pipeline), result in all new car sales being BEVs by 2030-35 in all OECD countries regardless of mandates or otherwise from governments. Nobody wants to be left with a rapidly depreciating new ICE vehicle in 2030 as petrol stations are beginning to disappear as they have lost half their demand (and EV chargers fast or otherwise are not necessarily best placed at a petrol station) with a certainty the rest are going in the medium term.
2: Cars only last an average of 14 years and due to a whole load of factors its likely that the last (non-collectable) ICE vehicles will be retired early anyway.
3: This means its likely that aside from a small % of a long tail of stubborn ICE users ICE cars will be gone from most OCED countries by ~2040

All the above will lead to the economic rational to mine a lot of material, make a lot of batteries and build lots of EVs. At this stage its more a question of who wins the above scenario (currently China) than there being an alternative solution. Potentially some issues like lithium supply might put a mid 2020's throttle on battery production, but that only delays these things from happening by 5 years max.

If we are not going to electrify the car fleet what are our options?

1: Massively expand public transport; unlikely; UKs rail is at capacity and usage is basically as high as it has ever been. If we quadrupled rail we'd only knock just over 1/4 off the total passenger miles driven by car, to do this we'd need to basically build an Elizabeth Line every year for the next 30 years. In practice we'd be lucky to plan and implement a single new Elizabeth line by 2040. This also assumes that any new journey by rail is displacing a car trip, I suspect that in practice it wouldn't and a new car journey would replace the one displaced onto rail.
2: Reduce car usage by reducing demand; see induced demand, if we all stay at home and home/hybrid work the road space will end up clogged by latent demand for trips currently assigned lower priority.
3: Densify cities and produce more walkable neighborhoods and 15 minute cities - A laudable aim, you have 20 years.... Given this involves massive house building, infrastructure building, winning abstract political arguments and behavior change my money is that just offering people different (and better) car options when they change their car will be easier!

From a transport emissions perspective the only real lever you have to pull is to electrify light duty vehicles. All other modes are relatively tiny by comparison, even expansion by multiples wouldn't dent car usage. Regarding the point:

Small batteries for rail vehicles to manage small gaps in electrification and for emergency use are a more suitable use of battery technology than large numbers of private electric vehicles designed for a range of several hundred miles.

Let's say we put a 100KWh battery in every rail car that the UK railways procures in a year ~1000 coaches. That would equate to 4 hours of battery production at Tesla.

The reason to add lots of cycle infrastructure and legalise every form of micro mobility, build dense urban neighborhoods, plus build every viable metro/light rail line and build a full high speed network is because it would improve our quality of life and productivity not because it would save the environment.

 

[deltic08]

You are taking two very specific issues for certain ores in certain locations and extrapolating out the whole industry. The key point is that the total volume of materials removed for electric vehicles and low emissions electric grids is significantly smaller than for existing ICE vehicles and fossil fuel grids. Furthermore fossil fuels cannot be recycled, batteries can. Mining can be done ethically and should be, not electrifying things because we are worried about mining only helps oil producers.

As an aside in the 2030 timeframe probably half the batteries produced will likely be sodium batteries which removes the last remotely rare mineral from the battery. Everything else in a battery other than lithium is something which is already extracted at orders of magnitude higher than needed for batteries (iron, aluminum, phosphates, carbon) or something substitutable (copper, rare earths (not in batteries)).

Re: Not electrifying the car fleet:

There isn't an OECD nation where car's share of passenger miles is less than 50% and for most of them the amount is greater than 80% (Even China is over 50% if you lump powered two wheelers in the by road figure). The time frame for fully replacing these ICE vehicles is in the order of;

1: Compound annual growth rates of 30-40% in EV sales (current trend, plus manufacturer new model pipeline), result in all new car sales being BEVs by 2030-35 in all OECD countries regardless of mandates or otherwise from governments. Nobody wants to be left with a rapidly depreciating new ICE vehicle in 2030 as petrol stations are beginning to disappear as they have lost half their demand (and EV chargers fast or otherwise are not necessarily best placed at a petrol station) with a certainty the rest are going in the medium term.
2: Cars only last an average of 14 years and due to a whole load of factors its likely that the last (non-collectable) ICE vehicles will be retired early anyway.
3: This means its likely that aside from a small % of a long tail of stubborn ICE users ICE cars will be gone from most OCED countries by ~2040

All the above will lead to the economic rational to mine a lot of material, make a lot of batteries and build lots of EVs. At this stage its more a question of who wins the above scenario (currently China) than there being an alternative solution. Potentially some issues like lithium supply might put a mid 2020's throttle on battery production, but that only delays these things from happening by 5 years max.

If we are not going to electrify the car fleet what are our options?

1: Massively expand public transport; unlikely; UKs rail is at capacity and usage is basically as high as it has ever been. If we quadrupled rail we'd only knock just over 1/4 off the total passenger miles driven by car, to do this we'd need to basically build an Elizabeth Line every year for the next 30 years. In practice we'd be lucky to plan and implement a single new Elizabeth line by 2040. This also assumes that any new journey by rail is displacing a car trip, I suspect that in practice it wouldn't and a new car journey would replace the one displaced onto rail.
2: Reduce car usage by reducing demand; see induced demand, if we all stay at home and home/hybrid work the road space will end up clogged by latent demand for trips currently assigned lower priority.
3: Densify cities and produce more walkable neighborhoods and 15 minute cities - A laudable aim, you have 20 years.... Given this involves massive house building, infrastructure building, winning abstract political arguments and behavior change my money is that just offering people different (and better) car options when they change their car will be easier!

From a transport emissions perspective the only real lever you have to pull is to electrify light duty vehicles. All other modes are relatively tiny by comparison, even expansion by multiples wouldn't dent car usage. Regarding the point:


Let's say we put a 100KWh battery in every rail car that the UK railways procures in a year ~1000 coaches. That would equate to 4 hours of battery production at Tesla.

The reason to add lots of cycle infrastructure and legalise every form of micro mobility, build dense urban neighborhoods, plus build every viable metro/light rail line and build a full high speed network is because it would improve our quality of life and productivity not because it would save the environment.

Having said all that, my neighbour bought an MG battery car four years ago. It spent more time at the MG garage than on the road. In the end he has reverted to ICE as his MG spontaneously combusted burning down his detached garage.
That could easily happen to a crowded train.

 

[Bald Rick]

In the end he has reverted to ICE as his MG spontaneously combusted burning down his detached garage.
That could easily happen to a crowded train.

A passenger train catches fire once every few weeks on the network now…

 

[deltic08]

A passenger train catches fire once every few weeks on the network now…

But not with the intensity of a battery fire. The fire brigade could not put out the fire. When was the last train fire that gutted the train?

 

[Dan G]

Hold on, first of all it was "there's not enough material in the world to make enough batteries" (nonsense), now it's "my neighbour's EV spontaneously combusted years ago"?

Methinks you are trolling.

 

[Bald Rick]

When was the last train fire that gutted the train?

Depends what you mean by ’gutted’. If you mean ‘rendered it unusable in service and had to be repaired’ - fairly revently.

Meanwhile every existing train has batteries on them. How many battery fires have there been on existing trains?

 

[Technologist]

Having said all that, my neighbour bought an MG battery car four years ago. It spent more time at the MG garage than on the road. In the end he has reverted to ICE as his MG spontaneously combusted burning down his detached garage.
That could easily happen to a crowded train.

BEVs catch fire much less often than ICE vehicles. It is perfectly possible to design a pack where battery faults are self limiting and cannot take the pack down.

Pack fires are not more vigorous than fuel fires and passengers could safely evacuate before the train combusted. While the pack is more difficult to extinguish I would imagine that firefighter action is never relied upon to save life as any vehicle would be on the way to fully burnt out before you could guarantee firefighters on the scene.

Dealing with the pack and keeping it cool are just new problems not insanely difficult ones. Most car recovery solutions involve putting the vehicle in an enclosure which sprays them to keep them cool before they are extracted to a salvage yard where they are kept away from other items until they can be dismantled.

 

[The Ham]

It is all very well to complain about discontinuous electrification, but the reality is the railway has utterly failed to deliver the "proper" electrification that it desires at reasonable cost.

I think this highlights the fundamental question, why has electrification got so expensive in this country? And nobody seems to want to answer that, and instead look for cheaper options. I've no doubt that battery will find more places on the UK network, but is cheaping out really the answer or are we simply storing up more cost for the future? I would have thought that powering EMUs by continuous wires would ultimately be more efficient than battery? If so then why aren't we seeking ways to bring the cost of wiring down, without of course compromising safety? Looking around the world wires do still seem to be the first go-to when looking to electrify, battery units do exist but in such small numbers that I can't help but wonder that they are not being seen as an alternative anywhere but here in the UK.

Some suggest that the reason for this is due to the stop start nature of projects. It takes time (read money) to train someone to do a job well (What's the quote, it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert), and so it's they only have one project before the government stops all (say) electrification then they're never going to get food at it and so when the next project comes along you've got to train the teams all over again.

You would also look to employ people who are already good (and so have a high wage requirement) for the whole team, rather than a few at lower experience levels knowing that they'll learn and then be able to be your experts in the future.

As such arguably the costs of electrification are a mess of the government's own making. Whilst the industry isn't without fault, generally they are trying to do the best they can.

I was told that there is not enough known minerals in the world to replace all ICE vehicles with battery operated vehicles especially as battery life is limited by the amount of times the battery is charged/discharged. This applies moreso to trains as they are used daily, high battery mileage and more charge/discharge cycles per day.
A 40 year old train will need at least 4 new batteries in its lifetime using even more rare, even more expensive minerals in the future. As far as I know, batteries cannot be recycled and go to landfill. Very environmental.
Installation of 25kv electrification is a one off expense with little maintenance with lower train build and operating costs.

Even if this were true, it would actually make more sense to use the batteries in the train rather than in the cars as they would be able to make the best use of a limited resource.

Cars are generally easy to replace with other noises of transport (given the political will), most journeys under 5 miles could be done by bike (especially an e-bike.and e-cargo bike), a lot of the rest could be done by the use of a shared car (car club) or public transport and failing that taxis.

The issue is that there's not often enough public transport and car club cars and so people end up owning a car (sometimes due to just a few key journeys a week or month).

 

[swt_passenger]

It has a place, but limited. At one point there was horror at electrifying the Royal Border bridge at Berwick, because of it's beauty, and daft ideas like gaps and coasting..

Presumably “daft ideas“ such as coasting away from a southbound station call at Berwick. Or perhaps that should have been stupid…

And by the way, a similar discussion also happened in 2022:

Thoughts on discontinuous electrification?

Send out a pilotman and reverse them out. The other gain from batteries is that you can use regenerative braking all the time, not just when something is ready to take it. It's also much simpler to stick it in a battery than into the OHLE. Merseyrail seem to have established that it more than...

www.railforums.co.uk

and another earlier this year:

Discontinuous electrification schemes should be replaced by continuous electrification

Moderator note: split from https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/south-wales-metro-updates.117763 Amazing how other countries seem to be able to produce lightweight elegant gantries for high speed main line railways, but here we have heavy ugly things for relatively low speed trams. All...

www.railforums.co.uk

It seems quite a popular subject.

 

[Bald Rick]

Presumably “daft ideas“ such as coasting away from a southbound station call at Berwick. Or perhaps that should have been stupid…

Third rail was mentioned at some point!

 

[deltic08]

Hold on, first of all it was "there's not enough material in the world to make enough batteries" (nonsense), now it's "my neighbour's EV spontaneously combusted years ago"?

Methinks you are trolling.

I am quoting what I have read regarding not enough minerals to make enough car batteries to replace all ICE cars in the world.
I saw with my own eyes what damage a traction battery fire can do. If that was under a train, the coach would not be recoverable as it would be damaged beyond repair due to the intensity of the fire immediately. I did not say years ago, you did. It was September this year.

Depends what you mean by ’gutted’. If you mean ‘rendered it unusable in service and had to be repaired’ - fairly revently.

Meanwhile every existing train has batteries on them. How many battery fires have there been on existing trains?

Gutted is gutted according to the dictionary. There are not degrees of gutted. Gutted is an absolute term.

 

[The Ham]

I am quoting what I have read regarding not enough minerals to make enough car batteries to replace all ICE cars in the world.

In which case there's a need for more public transport, as that's far easier to decarbonise without the need for batteries (and if you do there's a need for far fewer). However, you need the R&D budgets you are only ever going to get from industries like cars to get the battery tech.

 

[zwk500]

Having said all that, my neighbour bought an MG battery car four years ago. It spent more time at the MG garage than on the road.

This isn't particularly unusual for an MG of any type though, is it?

Third rail was mentioned at some point!

Third rail was also mentioned for the GWML at points like Maidenhead bridge IIRC.

To the OPs question - 'Discontinuous' Electrification is perhaps a misnomer for the most sensible application of the concept: Battery gap-bridging. Electrification focuses on the heavier traffic lines and is then extended to the first serious problem on a branch, at which point Batteries take over for the run until either the terminus or when it gets back on the juice at the junction at the far end. There are solutions to visual concerns, and short overbridges could have earthed or non-conductive OLE rather than outright dropping out. The only area where a short gap (i.e. travel time measured in seconds) might be appropriate would be Level Crossings or Swing bridges, which is an approach used in the Netherlands.