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Comment by xracy | Hacker News Reader

I get that this seems to be tesla fan-boy central... And that for some reason trains are a dirty word for Elon...

> Class 8 Truck 5.3 MPG (diesel) 22 MPGe (1.7 kWh.mi) f 4.2X

But if I look at these numbers, they're missing the point. For one thing, how much can the theoretical tesla semi actually haul? Cause the gold standard in this space isn't a truck that gets 10 ton-miles per gallon. It's a train that gets 492 ton-miles per gallon (Note, everywhere I look for freight is using this other metric, which makes me think that this number is real bad for Tesla...)

Trains have the additional possibility of actually being pretty readily electrifiable in a way that doesn't require a battery (potentially a large weight-add for trucks).

Lastly Trains can cover a lot of middle/long distance trips that are currently being offloaded to planes. This solution would save on the total energy requirement for not-overseas-flights.

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Can you please edit out swipes and flamebait, as the site guidelines ask? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Your comment would be just fine without those first bits.

I cannot edit my post (it has been up for too long, the site won't let me).

They aren't swipes, they were an observation at the time of reading that people were gushing about the paper. I have backed my claims in other parts of the venue. I maintain nothing about calling someone a "fanboy" is derogatory. (I have been an Elon "fanboy" in the past. I am a public transit "fanboy". If fanboy is like, some new 'f-word', then this site has fallen far.

I did my research to back that claim up, and I didn't want to get auto-downvoted because I was posting in a venue that seemed to be pretty positive on all of the things Elon is saying in that post.

I was pre-defending my comment about trains being a dirty word for Elon, which they are (please see the existence of the hyperloop), by asking people to step outside of their comfort zone and consider it on the merits which I provided.

If this is flamebait, why are all of the comments off of it civil discussion of the merits of trains and electric trucks?

I believe you about your intent, but the problem is that "I get that this seems to be tesla fan-boy central... And that for some reason trains are a dirty word for Elon..." pattern-matches to garden-variety flamebait. If your intent was to have a substantive conversation about trains, that is definitely not the way to do it. Past explanations about this in case they're helpful: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

> why are all of the comments off of it civil discussion of the merits of trains and electric trucks?

A fair bit got derailed into arguing about "fanboy". However, that's not really the metric—we have to evaluate these things by their general impact, not what specifically ends up happening in a given case, which is subject to a lot of randomness. I promise you that the general impact of posting like that is to inflame and provoke flamewars.

Just the first bits though. The rest of your comment was great! That's why the site guidelines ask you to edit out that sort of thing.

That is one comment thread, initiated by me. Even the other discussion on the comment-thread about whether or not fanboy is derogatory, is completely unrelated, and sticking to the merits of the discussion.

And I again believe that fanboy is not derogatory. But I've been downvoted to oblivion on hostile threads before, so I think it's reasonable to pre-defend some of my comments in order to change people's mindset going into the thread.

If this were flamebait, people would be flaming on it, and they're not.

> If this were flamebait, people would be flaming on it, and they're not.

Dropping a lit match in a dry forest is a fire hazard even when the match fizzles out. You have to judge by the statistical risk. Individual cases are too random to draw reliable conclusions from.

Edit: I see that I already made that point in my previous reply to you. Sorry for the repetition! But surely it's not hard to understand?

I think it's an unreliable standard?

Like, everything people say could incite flaming given the right situation. So saying that something could when it doesn't is an arbitrary standard. Also you can't run the statistical risk more than once, so your sample size will always be 1.

The general case is quite reliable. If a commenter posts the way you did, the expected value is most certainly a flamewar, and that's obviously the basis on which we have to moderate the site, precisely because we can't predict the specific outcome in any given case.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

But... you're moderating after the discussions have happened. You can moderate on the outcome by the point that you flagged my comment. And the outcome is not actually a flamewar. Also, that's why there are humans moderating, not bots, if you wanted to moderate based on a formula, you could just have a bot do this.

The random outcome isn't the important thing. If I ride my bike in front of a car and don't get hit, does that mean it was safe to do so? No—it just means I got lucky.

We have to moderate for the general case! I'm not sure what else to tell you!

I think what you're missing is that Tesla is trying to make things that people buy on their own.

What you're talking about would probably require a political campaign of some sort since it doesn't appear to be happening on its own? I'm not saying your idea is wrong - but it's not right to put down Tesla because they are not pursuing your idea.

I think what you're missing is that Tesla is trying to make money, because it is a for-profit company. Anything else beyond this - saving the planet, humanity, etc. - is just the BS to get you buy their stuff.

Isn't it better to rely on one's greed than their benevolence?

Elon takes a lot of government money/contracts for someone trying to make things that people buy on their own...

All of this calculation would be very different if instead of solar, wind, cars and trucks it would be be nuclear plants, bikes and trains. But that would require some amount of logical thinking and leadership.

FYI, using "fan-boy" is kind of frowned upon on hacker news.

However as someone who commonly agrees with Elon on many things, I do think trains are a good idea, but you can't look at them in a vacuum. The train network of the late 19th century is long gone in the US and many of those right-of-ways are long gone. There's no way to re-integrate a train network into the wider US without a lot of forcing people out of their houses. Using electric semis is the next best option. Trains definitely have a future in the US, but not as a massive fix-all.

> FYI, using "fan-boy" is kind of frowned upon on hacker news.

Why? It's not derogatory. What word would you have me use in place of it?

There are a bunch of people speaking very highly of Elon for what is not a very interesting/ground-breaking paper, if I'm being honest. An impromptu Google search turned up a .gov website with a lot of the stuff in here[1]... I suspect the rest of it is also googleable (Grid setup, and per-grid usage, cost per watt, MPG, Dollar per kW).

They made some cool infographics... But mostly this is a very thinly veiled sales pitch for Tesla products, wrapped in the beginnings of a case for more gov't funding.

re: rail network

You could readily cannibalize a lot of our highway system, as well as invest in fixing up the rail that we already have. Companies that have been making money off of rail should start paying for that infrastructure, in particular...

[1] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/data-and...

"fanboy" is of course derogatory. How is that a question?

If you insist on using that kind of language, "fan" would be reasonable.

Also calling HN pro Musk and Tesla is just nonsense.

Among the online communities I actually respect, HN is easily the most hysterically anti-Tesla/anti-Elon.

Where did I call HN pro Musk and Tesla?

I made a specific comment about how people on this thread were gushing about a "plan" that I still don't understand the hype about. Nothing they're doing in this "plan" (that others have mentioned is not really a plan) is groundbreaking.

I though you refer to HN as a whole. Sorry.

No worries! I definitely tailored it to the comments after reading through a bunch of them. Normally I expect to find a lot more pushback in the comments of HN for Elon's grandiose promises, and I just wasn't seeing it here.

The amount of space need for trains is tiny, and if you do expantion smartly it's really not that hard on the population. Compared to the endless and insane expantions of highway that is for some reason still ongoing it's totally reasonable.

Also there is a huge amount that could be done with existing rights off way. Train companies are making enough profit that forcing them to electricity is totally reasonable.

I saw this video recently that claims that right of way from freight trains are the only thing stopping expanded Amtrak service between many big metros - eg. LA to Vegas. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQTjLWIHN74

The amount of space needed is indeed tiny, but you still need to cut a fresh line through areas where buildings exist, and it can't follow the road network generally and has to take gradual curves, which increases the amount of buildings that must be destroyed rather than going around them.

If you are not building for high speed and super long trains, the curves aren't that crazy. And lets not pretend the US is some incredibly densely populated place. Lots of those areas are filled with cheap single family home subburbs, not skyscrapers.

If we are not willing to move a few houses for climate change, then how are we ever gone solve anything? Somehow most nations of manage this without that many issues.

And again, remove money from highway, to trains and you remove less houses.

Trains go best in those few densely populated areas though. That's kind of the catch 22 with trains, they're best in dense areas, but dense areas tend to obviate the ability to build trains.

Trains are great for populated and less populated places. Lots of not so densely populated places can be connected to more densely populated places with trains.

Full electrification of trains would save maybe 3% - full electrification of trucks could save 25% - https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/use-of-energy/transporta...

The US already uses trains quite a bit, and they could do more, but it will be hard to detruckify immediately.

The proposal is not the electrification of trains.

It's the moving of trucks to trains, and then the electrification of trains. But it would depend on a lot of infrastructure investment in trains that I recognize we're not going to do.

Electrification of trucks might be almost more reasonable - and it's been proof-of-concept'd: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3P_S7pL7Yg

Many people do NOT realize just how empty most trucks are - and major intercity trucking can be relatively easily "trained" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trailer-on-flatcar - but the vast majority of local deliveries are trucks that aren't even half full.

When shipping (trucking is just shipping) each "transfer" costs you money and time, so you want to reduce those as much as possible. To encourage trains, you just make the transfer cost "worth" it - interstate road-mile taxes, for example would do it.

What if I told you... That Trains aren't just proof-of-concepted... They're real. And they don't require adding wires over miles of highway. I do appreciate they're thinking outside of the Battery-Electric Trucks here, but it's incredibly frustrating to have people miss the obvious solution staring them in the face in place of the solution they're hoping will become autonomous in "the future".

Also, I know it's a tough sell because of the number of jobs created by trucking, but there are already L3+ autonomous vehicles, and they are trains...

Lastly, the fact that most trucks aren't even half full seems very much a fact of last-mile delivery. That would be a great place to apply a battery electric-vehicle. Seems like you would want a non-class 8 Truck for that space... (and that you would save a lot more mileage for that)

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