On Wed, 12 Aug 2009 12:42:07 +0100, "Recliner"
wrote:

However, I think that electric trains are already so efficient that the
amount of improvement available can't be as much as cars, which start
from a much worse position. After all, you can't do as much to improve
the aerodynamics of a train as you can a car, and there isn't an idling
engine you could switch off at stations.


There is also a heck of an improvement coming in average fuel
consumption of new cars in the next few years. This will eventually
make them more than competitive on CO2 emissions with high speed rail,
which is very hungry for power, and much closer than they are now to
conventional rail.

The first commercially available volume production electric cars are
expected in 2010 from Nissan and Renault. Over the next decade, they
will revolutionise urban transport. Nissan's model will include
leasing the very expensive battery pack, which will make the purchase
price of the car competitive with comparable petrol and diesel engined
models while still costing at least 20% less to run. CO2 emissions
will be only about a third of those of conventional cars, putting them
on a par with conventional rail.

Rail has no answer to this, other than companies like Siemens
designing *out* the ridiculous excess weight that they had previously
designed *in* to their Desiros.

That isn't progress, it is just putting right a major design error,
and restoring things back to where they were a few years ago.