> But obviously they are dwarved by the single commuters, or else the average wouldn't be 1.4 persons per car. Well, 1.4 persons per car is already quite a bit

> But obviously they are dwarved by the single commuters, or else the average wouldn't be 1.4 persons per car. Well, 1.4 persons per car is already quite a bit higher than your original claim of "at least 2500kg of material to move 1 person". > Let's look at the numbers again. To not disadvantage the car, we assume 20% capacity, which is the minimum possible for a car. Yes, OK, let's look at some actual numbers about kWh per 100 passenger km, averaged over all times and not just rush hour. Here is something I could find: https://www.forschungsinformationssystem.de/servlet/is/342234/ https://www.forschungsinformationssystem.de/servlet/is/34223... https://www.forschungsinformationssystem.de/servlet/is/342234/Stadtverkehr_gross.jpg https://www.forschungsinformationssystem.de/servlet/is/34223... So a subway car or a commuter rail car gets 12.5 kWh per 100 person kilometers. That is still better than a tesla model 3 of 160 Wh / km or 16 kWh / 100km. But not by much. https://insideevs.com/news/347916/tesla-model-3-epa-energy-consumption/ https://insideevs.com/news/347916/tesla-model-3-epa-energy-c... If you assume 1.4 people on average, you get 11.4 kWh / 100km / person, so basically the same. And if you have 3 or 4 people, the model 3 is significantly more efficient than the average commuter rail. > In my area the actual train during communiting hours is at least 70% occupied, BTW. But trains also go outside commuting hours. That is the whole problem with a system that has large units and is not on demand. > I'm not trying to win internet points here; there just is no way around the fact that electic cars are not in any way a meaningful solution to our climate problem. Neither am I. I was doing back of the envelope calculations about what it would take to do a battery powered commuter rail for the relation I frequently use, and was genuinely surprised how inefficient commuter rail is on average.