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I assume they are planning to have some kind of rescue vehicle. But the problem with this will be the traffic jam the stuck vehicle will cause. Not only will al
by hasoleju 3y ago
I assume they are planning to have some kind of rescue vehicle. But the problem with this will be the traffic jam the stuck vehicle will cause. Not only will all the vehicles behind it need to stop as well, they also need to be rerouted in order to let the rescue vehicle pass.
The main difference of pumping water or gas through pipes is that the consumer does not care which part of the pumped product he gets. It's all the same. Delivering customer specific goods through pipes requires a very good management of the vehicle flow.
- hanniabu 3y agoSimply back the other vehicles out, it's not rocket science
- KennyBlanken 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-line_working https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-line_working They're likely only running a single tunnel during very early testing in order to keep costs down. Their idea is basically a cargo-carrying, miniature version of a rubber-tyre metro: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber-tyred_metro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber-tyred_metro ..which is a century old concept. Thus well-understood, as evidenced by the wikipedia article listing their benefits and downsides versus rail.
- nvy 3y agoYeah but if a Paris Metro train gets stuck, the tunnels are enormous and your maintenance staff can walk from the nearest station to repair and un-stuck the train. It's not clear to me that these tunnels will be sufficiently large.
- KennyBlanken 3y agoYou send a recovery vehicle down the line to fetch it, capable of hooking it, and strong enough to tow/ drag it to an exit point or service "vault" just like "vaults" on underground tunnels for power, data, gas, etc. The tow vehicle basically just needs to weigh enough. Or you send a human down the line on a platform with wheels. The tunnel would have to be at least as high as those crates and at least twice as wide. There are far bigger challenges here, like the absolutely massive cost of digging / boring the tunnel and trying to amortize that over what you're delivering. You have to move a fuckton of Big Macs to have this make financial sense, and your competitors include "a guy on an electric bike making tips who uses a few KWhr of electricity over an 8-10 hour shift." It's really hard to compete against massively subsidized public infrastructure (roads and ICE vehicles) when you're not subsidized at all.
- scarface_74 3y agoHas any private company in the last decade or so had a successful startup that had to build massive infrastructure? While I’m no fan of Musk and his management of Twitter has been a shit show, I must begrudgingly admit that he is damn good at building companies that produce real tangible hardware based products that require infrastructure
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 3y agoOk get this. We make a spider bot that suctions to random cars going in the general direction that we want to deliver the package. If the car turns to go in the wrong direction, the spider bot jumps off and hitches to the next vehicle. Free transit, no infrastructure costs.
- smolder 3y ago
- adrianmonk 3y agoYou could design all vehicles to be capable of some basic rescue functions. I would bet the most common situation is the stuck vehicle is just stalled and could be pushed and/or pulled by the car behind or in front of it. For pulling, you might use an automatic coupler like railways use: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_coupling#Automatic_couplers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_coupling#Automatic_cou...