• Dr. Dabbles
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    1979 months ago

    It’s also just an outright lie. But, I guess that doesn’t matter anymore.

    • Greg Clarke
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      1349 months ago

      Yeah, it’s not all electric, some of the train is just regular matter

    • @Thrashy@lemmy.worldOP
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      9 months ago

      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.

      • Dr. Dabbles
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        139 months ago

        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.

        • @Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee
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          19 months ago

          I don’t think you realise how expensive electrifying a line can be, it can be as expensive as building it in the first place. Whereas this technology can be used without modifying the track at all.

          If the line only runs a few times a day, it’s an obvious choice.

          • Dr. Dabbles
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            19 months ago

            I do realize. I also realize things like weight of the train, cost of the battery packs, the fact those packs will wear and need to be replaced faster than anything else in the system, and much more.

      • Carighan Maconar
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        19 months ago

        Yeah but it’s also far from new technology. Germany is mostly electrified rail, and having BE sets to bridge areas is not uncommon (in southern Germany you also get diesel electric combo units).

    • lurch (he/him)
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      179 months ago

      It’s yahoo news. It’s pure clickbait. Idk why they do this they have some decent other services.

      • TheTechnician27
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        119 months ago

        Yahoo! News is an aggregator like MSN (and has very few original articles), and thus the quality varies widely based on the source. Here it’s some outlet called TCD.

        • @brbposting@sh.itjust.works
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          19 months ago

          Just checked something and it makes me wonder if they struck different deals than MSN:

          View, say, a Business Insider article on MSN, and use the share button, and it will share the article hosted on Business Insider. Do the same on Yahoo and it shares the same Yahoo News URL that you were reading it on.

    • @DerisionConsulting@lemmy.ca
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      9 months ago

      They aren’t saying it’s the first electric train, they are saying it’s the first all electric “Giga Train”.

      It’s like how Bros kept trying to imply it was the first gay movie, or even first gay romcom, but it was the first gay romcom that was created and released by a major studio whose initial release was a “wide” release in more than one country.

      • Flying Squid
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        59 months ago

        Well then I would argue that that’s some Giga Bullshit on their part.

      • @ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world
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        39 months ago

        Bros kept trying to imply it was the first gay movie, or even first gay romcom, but it was the first gay romcom that was created and released by a major studio whose initial release was a “wide” release in more than one country.

        Torch Song Trilogy (1988)? The Birdcage (1996)? I don’t know about “more than one country”, but they were major studio movies with wide releases.

        • @DerisionConsulting@lemmy.ca
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          19 months ago

          New Line isn’t one of the “major studios”, so Torch Song is out, and I’m not sure that Birdcage is a romcom.
          Maurice, Trick, and The Broken Heart’s Club, are also older and much better than bros, but not major studio releases.

          But all of these movies are watchable, so they’re better than Bros.

      • @captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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        29 months ago

        Ok I know when people say gay like that they mean gay male, but D.E.B.S. is one of the greatest queer movies ever made and is a romcom between two women. But it like many other classic queer movies wasn’t a major studio or anything

      • Flying Squid
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        29 months ago

        Not much capacity though, so I guess the “Giga-Train” has that advantage.

      • @Delphia@lemmy.world
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        219 months ago

        Well I mean, it IS a step up from my current jobs policy which is “Yes you need a car to get here, no we arent providing one and if you don’t have one you don’t have a job”

  • @recklessengagement@lemmy.world
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    539 months ago

    Generally, I’m against violence towards journalists - but dishonest and manipulative headlines like this tend to make me reconsider my stance, if but for a moment.

  • Rentlar
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    529 months ago

    What the… this is so infuriating to a railfan. It’s like they are trying to attach a 2x viewer multiplier by putting Elon-related keyword in it when Tesla has so little to do with it.

    It’s not a Tesla train, nor a battery from Tesla, nor operated by Tesla, not even a new route (but granted an expanded timetable)

    I wish media hyped trains like this in general and not limited to implicitly attributing it to Musk (who made hyperloop specifically to distract from High Speed Rail, mind you)… “GIGA TRAIN brings commuters to work”, “Hyper train first electric regional service in California - you won’t believe the capacity!”

    • @skyspydude1@lemmy.world
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      49 months ago

      Now just imagine how the hype is for literally everything they’ve ever done, and it’s on the exact same level. Once Tesla/Musk does something related to your field, it’s abundantly clear what an absolute fraud he is.

  • @MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml
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    9 months ago

    Wait til they learn about twin story trains. Twice the capacity!

    Edit: And the first gen, a bit less comfortable tho but more reliable.

  • @rustydrd@sh.itjust.works
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    449 months ago

    Based on this dumpster fire of a headline, I think the take-away can only be that Siemens and other train manufacturers have to start calling their trains “OMEGA RAIL” and “CHUNGUS 3000” or shit like that so it’s worth a news article.

    • @Maggoty@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      And tablets

      And touchscreens

      And Mp3 players

      And Bluetooth earbuds

      And small form factor PC stacks

      God the list just keeps going. At least with them the marketing is annoying but the products are usually good. Instead of Elon promising the moon and delivering a pile of dog shit.

  • Zyratoxx
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    9 months ago

    NO WAY! Did they just copy the Siemens Mireo and made it a double decker

    It looks even more obvious in the German version of the site where the first picture is literally this one:

    Edit:

    Now that I have taken a closer look I question if the “Tesla” train is even a double decker or actually the Mireo

    Edit 2:

    And I am unsure if Yahoo just used a random train as their cover or if this is the Tesla train in question. I am so confused O.o

    Edit 3:

    Soo it’s not a double decker and it is “Tesla’s train” sooo… If I was Tesla I’d get back to the drawing board because I doubt Siemens will be happy with what they did here

    • @Thrashy@lemmy.worldOP
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      9 months ago

      From the industry journal I linked in another comment – it’s literally just an off-the-shelf Mireo Plus B. That’s it. The only thing Tesla about it is that it’s serving a spur line connecting Tesla’s factory to the existing Berlin light rail network, and was presumably financed by them for the PR benefit of not having the workers at an electric car factory arrive by diesel train.

      • Zyratoxx
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        9 months ago

        Yeah, I didn’t expect much more of this, and then a bunch of those bored Yahoo Tech Bros think Elon would really make a train :')

  • @Gammelfisch@lemmy.world
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    319 months ago

    The logo on the front is from the NEB, Niederbarnimer Eisenbahn AG, which runs in German province’s of Berlin and Brandenburg. No way in hell the Muskrat MAGAT is going to build trains.

    • @Maggoty@lemmy.world
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      89 months ago

      Apparently it runs from his battery factory and they provided batteries because the overhead line doesn’t run that far. That’s it. Everything else is normal German electric train.

  • db0
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    299 months ago

    oh, Adam Something is going to have a field day with this.

  • @hark@lemmy.world
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    279 months ago

    Hype over fake news like this is one major reason how tesla’s stock price has gotten as high as it has.

  • ODuffer
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    9 months ago

    Lol how novel, I use an all electric train every work day, a Stadler Class 777/1 electric multiple-unit fitted with batteries (BEMU).

  • Phoenixz
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    239 months ago

    We copied 1960 technology, declared it revolutionary and act as if we invented it all

  • @yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de
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    229 months ago

    The far more important question however is:

    Why tf did they use the color scheme of bwegt?

    I may be an idiot, but I’m 99% certain that this color scheme is only used in Baden-Württemberg - a state that’s like 500km away from the Tesla factory.