Technology company Intramotev is developing a prototype self-powered autonomous wagon, which it hopes can make rail freight more competitive over distances of up to 1 500 km.
Freight rail is a critical piece of the world’s supply chain. Each year in the US alone, goods worth $700 billion are moved by 1.6 million railcars. However, each day almost a million railcars do not move at all. And on each leg of a loaded railcar’s journey, it sits idle for an average of 24.6 hours waiting to be picked up by a locomotive.
The locomotives pulling these railcars burn 3.5 billion gallons of diesel fuel annually. That equals more than 37 million metric tons of carbon and other greenhouse gases emitted into our atmosphere.
Intramotev is creating a world where no railcar sits idle, and not a gallon of fossil fuel is used to move them.