Summary:
Tesla has opened its railway line east of Berlin to passenger trains, providing transportation to workers at its new Gigafactory. The short rail line, which was bought from an independent German rail infrastructure holding company, gives Tesla direct connections to the main line linking Berlin with Poland. The railway line has been used for construction and will be used to dispatch or receive up to six freight trains daily. The Tesla factory is expected to employ around 10,000 people working 24/7 shifts, and the company has sponsored passenger trains to transport employees to and from the factory. The passenger trains are being operated by a local rail contractor and run 54 times a day on weekdays. There are plans to relocate a nearby Deutsche Bahn station near the factory in the future.
Comments:
Tesla has bought a German railway line to serve its new Gigafactory outside Berlin, which some have deemed irrelevant to the German passenger landscape. The railway line is primarily a short branch to service the factory and does not have multiple stations like a traditional railway line. Commuters have stated that the train service won’t change much for them, as they were already using a shuttle bus. However, the fast commuter trains mentioned in the article run irregularly throughout the day. Some have found it ironic that Tesla is building a railway line to facilitate car production, considering that Elon Musk has expressed open hostility towards public transportation.
A commuter train from Erkner (which is well connected to the greater Berlin network) to the factory, running 54 times a day while coopting the existing industrial rail the factory needs anyway seems much more reasonable than using a bus shuttle service.
Kind of makes me think that Elon had no say in this decision.
Almost seems to well thought out for him to be involved.
True, which means he likely wasn’t involved or informed until too late to stop.
I just cannot see Elon agree to a passenger rail line to a factory of his. No way. He’d use individual zeppelin’s before admitting that rail is better than his bs pod ideas.
He was preoccupied in nazifying Twitter.
X is just a swastika missing a few lines.
As far as I remember that was the plan since construction of the factory began. I love the irony of the infamous seller of cars and hyperloop vaporware being forced to admit defeat to a widely superior form of transportation. He sure as hell wouldn’t say it, but his own company already said enough by action.
So they do know how sensible electrified transport should work…
I was half expecting the story to end with ‘he plans to shut it down within the month’.
Nah, he’ll just crank the prices, fill it with ads, and make sure it’s never on time. Then he’ll complain when people don’t want to ride it anymore.
The use of the word “plans” is optimistic here … he’ll just do it in a fit of … intuition at some random point in the future.
These trains will be free for all passengers. And probably paid by the company
The punchline is that the train is not electrified, instead it runs with diesel.
YES! PLEASE! Make it happen!
That…that’s what it is. It’s literally a diesel powered train. I wasn’t joking, reality is the joke.
NO! It can’t be! It was meant to be a joke! Say that you are kidding!
I just can’t decide if I should laugh or cry.
I mean, you can even see it in the photo of the Gigafactory Station. Germany doesn’t have electrified tracks, only overhead wire (or side rail for underground or inner city trains), neither are visible in the picture.
It’s nice that now there’s a train to the factory, but it’s just a tiny diesel powered train that’s usually used to connect small towns and villages- east germans call that a “Ferkeltaxi” (piggy taxi).
I burst out in laughter telling my colleague about this earlier in the office. When I showed him the article he pointed at the picture and said I should have seen that it is a Diesel train.
Well. Just one more shitty solution my Tesla then…
Selling railway infrastructure to car manufacturers is generally a bad idea. That’s how the car industry contributed to killing public transportation in the US.
Public transport is their competition. Killing it brings profit. Very simple logic.
In this case, it’s only going to be used by employees of that company due to the stations on that track, so I don’t see a problem.
I personally do see a problem with companies building their facilities in the middle of nowhere and then expecting the public transport network to figure it out.
Germany is not the US. They surely agreed to a lengthy list of things they can and cannot do. I for once think this is a good thing (I live in Germany)
Which Elon Musk will promptly shit all over the moment it’s inconvenient for him.
I feel like public transports are never good in the hands of private companies anyway. It always needs to be heavily subsidised, and it’s never better than publicly managed. And competition makes things even worse.
The subways in NYC did just fine until the 1920s.when the government started making things hard.
I don’t know about NYC but chicago all the lines were owned by different folk and jumping from one to the other had cost. One of the things I like about our system (especially having experienced DC’s metro) is that moving between train lines and bus routes is all free once you paid the base fare. Recently they are getting the metra rail and cta/pace more integrated to which is great and I hope that trend continues. Actually the bike rental became sorta bs and I wish it had been integrated into the cta.
There are up and downsides to a private market, and switching trains was one of the downsides. NYC also runs a lot of lines today that don’t make sense until you realize it was done in 1910 to compete with some other company. There are pros and cons of both private and government run transit is all I can say confidently.
Yeah I guess it does depend on the individual. All I can say is the switching trains downside basically makes public transit a non starter for me. Where I live the appeal is I can get absolutely anywhere in the city and a fair amount of the suburbs and then further out you become a bit more limited as you get away from the grid structure and the plethera of train lines and busses. Certainly within the city there is nothing you can’t go to in the generic sense (id you can go to many sea food restaurants but not bob chins necessarily [holy crap but while I right this it is possible to go by bus but it would take like an hour and a half and that assumes you get to the buses on time since the last leg as unoften as hourly at times])
Tired of searching for a parking lot? Commute with a train to build… cars…
I hope they rename it to something cooler because now it’s horrible. I mean the ‘train’? What? How about the ‘MegaTrain’! ‘CyberTrain’, ‘SciTrain’, ‘E-Thruster’, ‘TransEther’ or plain ‘T’. You know, because that’s what’s the most important
How about HypoLoop?
HyperDupe
RailX
