Wabtec FLXdrive Battery Electric Locomotive Comes Home After Successful Testing
FLXdrive, the prototype of a battery electric locomotive designed at the Erie, Pennsylvania Wabtec plant rolled back into town, greeted by the cheers of its design team.
It's been under testing on the rails in California, where its "green" performance blew everyone on the project away. Jim Meyer, Wabtec Vice President of Technology said, "We're thrilled, the California research board's thrilled and then our customer BN is thrilled. Lots of great data and really a great great test run."
The prototype was built from on the platform of an existing locomotive. Using all the data from the test run, Erie Wabtec design engineers will begin developing the next battery electric locomotive, the designs are already on the drawing board. And like the first it will be built in Erie.
Shannon Horgan a Design Engineer who worked on the battery portion of the project was excited to be part of it from beginning to end, and is ready for the next chapter moving locomotives into the green future. "It did really well through the demo, we were super excited and now we're working on developing the next generation of the battery, so we were really happy that the demo went so well to get to propel us into the next design," Horgan said.
The FLXdrive is described as the locomotive version of a Tesla, that works like a hybrid Prius.
Inside the locomotive are bundles of 18,000 batteries.
The batteries work in tandem with diesel locomotives to harness and store energy normally lost or wasted in braking as full freight trains traverse different terrain.
The test project was done in conjunction with Wabtec customer BNSF, and the state of California.
The locomotive was tested for three months on real freight runs between Barstow and Stockton, California.
According to the design team, the battery electric locomotive did just what they hoped it would; improve fuel efficiency 11% or more, reduce emissions and Wabtec officials said the batteries never failed.
Bruce Bloomster, Commercial Projects Manager and the lead for this project said he's optimistic about the new manufacturing opportunities it may bring to the Erie plant in the future. "Certainly one of the top projects we have here and as you know it's very important because of the fact that it's enabling us to go green, not only as a company but to be able to help the nation and the world go green as well," Bloomster said.
Erie Wabtec was recognized just last week with Fast Company's 2021 World Changing Ideas Award.