Is the EV community working against itself ??

Compare 2 identical cars; one Electric vehicle (EV) and one gas engine (internal combustion engine or ICE), preferably from same manufacturer if possible. Upgrade them to same features and upgrades and then compare the prices and gas vs electric car saving if you drive them average , say 12000 miles a year, what will you find ?? As most of you would have probably guessed, ICE car will be cheaper and more economical to own even in 5 years time-frame, even though driving EV is way too cheaper. Why ?? Because EV is just damn expensive.

Now, add to it the federal $7,500 tax rebate. If you make $50,000 or less, you might even be able to consume this whole $7500 rebate, but that's a different story. Let us assume, this rebate is directly cost saving. What does the figure looks like now ?? ICE car will still out weigh the EV.

Now, add the different standard manufacturer promotions savings from time to time. Now, the numbers will start looking a little bit better.

But wait, what about an EV Charging stations, EVSE, a so called Level2 Charging station that you install in your garage, so that the car still charge in 3-4 hours but at least is ready full charge when you get up in the morning ? Between the unit itself and the certified electrician's charge, installation expense and permit etc.  ready to fork out another $1500-$2000 for that. So, with whatever little trick you tried bending the numbers in your favor, it just vanishes installing one 240V, 30Amp unit, all it does is to pass current to your car.


I own a Honda Fit EV, which I am leasing, taking advantage of Honda recent's drastically lowered lease price. I love the technology, love the car and love the experience of owning one (my experience here). But I am making this numbers work for me, somehow.

But talk to any EV enthusiasts and you will hear different arguments; Environment friendliness, quite car, no trip to gas station, new & complex  technology etc. Never mind the limitations of a typical EV; slow charging, limited range forcing you to have another car, drastic reduction in range when its too hot or too cold, small sizes, small trunk space etc. etc.  It is as if the whole community is in self denial. They naturally like the technology and want to see it grow, yet not accepting the realities and arguing how it can really survive and grow. And did i mention, an often quoted example of Tesla ?!!

Here are few things that I recommend to EV community:

1. Stop taking about Environments benefits if you ever want to see EV become a mainstream alternatives to ICE.
2. Universally argue for Price reductions; The price needs to be reduced by at least 50% overall (after all gimmicks) for it to survive. Federal Tax incentives is a good way to bridge the gap, but that should not be the only one. Remember the 'general American subsidizing EV'  arguments Republican put forward against  it. It has merits. How the price will lower otherwise; Besides the massive battery technologies i.e. Tesla is building is one way. Other way is simply manufacturer taking risks; otherwise it will be a simply catch22 situation. Remember if Apple would have priced iPhone $1000+, it would have still justified that price point under that time, when a good computer was costing that much, but then could it have been a household product ?
3. Argue for the need for a regular looking car. The dorky look is one of the biggest informercial ever for EV.
4. Change your messaging to employer and businesses. Businesses spending $5k/each new charging stations at their locations is a very skewed economic argument ever. This is surviving so far because employer like the 'green environment-friendly' status and branding. But what it does is to limit the widespread adaption within its organization. If you have 2 charging stations at your work and you find them always full, will you still think about owning your own EV. Or if there are 4 EV drivers already, always vying for a parking spot, will any of them be a good advocate for you to own yet another EV ? What if the employer placed a simple 120V wall charing to say or even 50 spots, at fraction of costs. An employee wont' have to worry about signing up to third party for charging service, wont' have to remove their cars after a couple of hours to avoid huge charge back and can simply leave it plugged in for the entire day, getting enough juice for an average commute daily needs i.e. 40 miles. At an average $1-$2/socket, it will still be cheaper for businesses to leave employees use the free electricity to majority, then to go for extra headache of Level2 charging stations. 

unless the EV community changes its line of arguments, and pushes for an economically superior car, EV will remain a small, niche market only for a few.

   

My FIT EV: 2 months and 4000 miles later

Since the day I got my Honda Fit EV (Electric Vehicle), one of the most frequent questions beyond the obvious one regarding its not really sipping any gas, has been whether it has been worth it; economically speaking.

Of course, it made sense to me when I got it i.e. exactly 2 months ago, but does it still made sense ? I decided to run the numbers.

The Basics:

Let me start though giving the details of the car first:

• Make and Model: 2014 Honda Fit EV
• Type: 5 seater small station wagon (EPA Class) 100% electric vehicle
• Ownership: Lease
• Lease cost: 0% down (paid only sales tax, as with any vehicle lease out of which got $1000 refunded by MD state) , $259/month for 3 years
• Lease terms:
• Unlimited miles
• Collision Insurance included at $0
• $0 maintenance
• Free Home Charging Station

Now, to see if this lease cost made economic sense, I should compare total cost for this car with the total cost of any other EXACTLY similar non-electric car with exact same lease terms. Fortunately FIT EV has a gasoline sibling, the regular FIT, which runs on gas.

The problem is Honda doesn't' give these features i.e. unlimited miles and $0 collision insurance and maintenance cost on its regular FIT. Browsing Honda site, the most base model regular FIT, with $0 down option the monthly is leased out at $200/month for a 36 months term.

 

but as the fine print shows its only for 12,000 miles /a year beyond which Honda charges $0.15/miles:

So, at my current need of  24000/miles/year lease would cost me an outrageous $200 + 1000*0.15 = $350/month for a regular FIT. 

But since a similar lease term is not available for a regular FIT, its not easy apple to apple comparison for regular FIT lease vs. FIT EV lease.

So, I decides to go with best (i.e. the cheapest case scenario) for regular FIT, to see if I were all lucky to get best deal possible in regular FIT, would FIT EV still be a better option. Meaning what if I got a similar type of regular FIT with similar leasing terms for only $200/month lease.

Next comes the mileage driven. In last 2 months I drove 4000 miles (And yes, going the EV route was exactly for that reason, I drive a whole lot to cover my 80 miles daily commute to work).

FIT EV Calculation:

I have also been getting anywhere from 5.2 to 4.7 miles/kwh. Let us take on average 5.0 miles/kwh

The 4000 miles in that case would translate to 4000/5 = 200 kwh.

My local "effective" energy rate is 11.02c/kwh (the details on one of my previous post)

so, 200 kwh will cost me 200*11.02 cents = $22.04

Lease payment for FIT EV for 2 months: 2 * 259 = $518

Total cost (lease cost + electricity) incurrent in FIT EV: $22.04 + $518 = $530

Regular FIT Calculation:

2013 Regular FIT gas economy: 31mpg

Gas to drive 4000 miles: 400/31= 129 Gallon

cost for 129 Gallon = 129 * 3.35= $432

Lease payment for Regular FIT for 2 months: 2 * 200 = $400

Total cost (least cost + gas) incurrent in Regular FIT : $432 + $400 = $832

Conclusion:

So, Even in the most conservative way (assuming a dealer would give me all the goodies for free while easing a regular FIT that I got in FIT EV, and assuming gas price was $3.35, though that's the lowest in last 2 months) if I would have got a regular FIT, it would have costed me $832 in gas & leasing, while driving and leasing FIT EV costed me only $530, i.e. is a saving of  36.3% 

So, if anyone asks me about my decision to go EV again, I can happily say 'so far so good' &#x263A

A Year On: Did the Panels live up to its Expectations?

It has been a little over a year since we installed our solar panels (also referred interchangeably as PV systems) on our roof with a promise to replace 100% of our electric bill. The offer looked too good to pass and the panels started cranking clean energy starting April of last year (April 13, 2012 to be precise).

A year on, the question is 'has it fulfilled its promise' ? In the spirit of transparency, let me share some real data and you can judge for yourself.

The System

First, a little bit about the system: It's a 5.59 KW DC system leased for 20 years from Solar City for a net upfront cost of $6321. The installer promised no more cost for next 20 years to come as far as maintenance etc for the panels are concerned and guarantees energy generation up-to 90% of its claim on the annual basis with 1% decrements yearly on the guaranteed kwh as the panels age.

Other details of the systems are:

• Panels: 26 Kyocera (#KD215GX-LPU) panels of 215 Watt each
• Inverter: 1 invertor Sunny Boy 5000-US
• mounting system: Solarcity Canopy -C 6"
• 20 years lease upfront cost with no monthly fee: 
• paid upfront: $6321
• Might get county property tax rebate of $3160 (about 5 year wait)

The Expectation

Below are the snapshot of our yearly electric consumption just before the panels were installed:

Bill Date	days	Electric Usage (kWh)	Electric Charges (distribution)	Alternate Supplier Charges	Total Charges	Effective energy rate ($/kwh)
2/23/2012	28	446	$31.29	$39.25	$70.54	$0.16
1/23/2012	35	390	$28.55	$34.32	$62.87	$0.16
12/21/2011	30	294	$24.95	$25.87	$50.82	$0.17
11/21/2011	29	421	$30.43	$37.05	$67.48	$0.16
10/21/2011	32	347	$17.52	$30.88	$48.40	$0.14
9/22/2011	30	560	$24.65	$49.84	$74.49	$0.13
8/19/2011	29	884	$36.16	$78.68	$114.84	$0.13
7/22/2011	32	832	$36.27	$74.05	$110.32	$0.13
6/21/2011	29	547	$26.07	$48.68	$74.75	$0.14
5/23/2011	30	332	-$13.18	$29.55	$16.37	$0.05
4/21/2011	31	413	$29.86	$36.76	$66.62	$0.16
3/23/2011	30	432	$29.19	$38.45	$67.64	$0.16
Total	365	5898	$301.76	$523.38	$825.14	$1.69
Average	30.42	491.5	$25.15	$43.62	$68.76	$0.14

Meaning our monthly bill were averaging $68.46 and we were consuming 491.5 kwh (monthly or 5898 kwh annually. The 5.59 kwh PV system that we signed for were supposed to generate about 9900 kwh/yearly with 4.86 hr sunlight average in our area (Maryland, US) as

5.59 kw * 4.86 hr * 365 days = 9916 kwh.

but since we consume less than 6000 kwh yearly,  we expected our bill to be completely 0 or even negative.

The Reality

So did the system produced what it was designed for ?

Not really. Looking at the solar city customer portal, which by the way, has a good feature rich customer front end to track their energy generation, this is what I see for 2013 and 2013 respectively,

that is it generated about 7027 kwh in its first 365 days cycle, much better than what's solar city guarantees (6212 kwh in year 1 and 6150 kwh on year 2 and so on, i.e. 1% lesser production guarantees in successive year) but less than what it informally promised. Now, to be fair no one has control over how much sunlight you will get and that's why they probably guarantee way lower than what the system is capable of producing..

The Dollars

Now what does this 7027 kwh of electricity generated  translates into, in terms of Dollar ? How much money it actually saved and what's our payback period ?

For this I needed to re-look into my electric bills from Pepco. And that's one piece of the most complicated numbers maze I have ever seen; even more complicated than our phone bills. 

Electric bills in Maryland has several parts and complicated formula; on peak, off peak and intermediate rates. And then for each such slab, you have the distribution, transmission and generation charges. And then tons of small fees or taxes and surcharges. And latly, there is also one big charge called customer service charge of about  $14.56 each months whether you consumed any electricity that month or not . 

Complicating this even further, In Maryland you have a choice of picking your own energy supplier which generally appears very promising since you can buy electricity from them at a predefined lower rates for years to come without any commitment or any penalty for early termination. And sure enough, that's exactly what I had done to complicate my life further :). I had signed up with WGES to buy electricity from them at 8.8 cents/kwh. 

So what does that mean ? Does that mean that by producing 7027 kwh of electricity I saved myself 8.2 * 7027 cents of bill from WGES ? Actually more than that. Since that 8.2 cents/kwh is just the generation part. Producing your own electricity also saves you from transmission and distribution charges.

For this let us look at stack of our last year bill again: $68.76 monthly with $14.56 as connection charges for 491.5 kwh of electricity monthly (all average numbers). Meaning I was paying 53.50/491 = 11.02 cents/kwh

So, what it meant was that last year our panels saved worth 7027 * 11.02 cents = $774 on our bill. So an investment of $6321 should be paid up in next 8.16 years. 

The Dilemma

The dilemma comes from the observation then that our bill still didn't' just go away. After all, the system generated over 7000 kwh of electricity whereas we were consuming less than 6000 kwh  yearly. 

The reasoning for that is 2 folds: 

First, even if you don't' buy no electricity from your supplier, i.e. don't switch on even a light bulb, you still will be slapped with the above mentioned 'consumer service charge' of about $15 a month. 

Second, installing panels, even if designed for 100% of your current capacity, isn't a license to do whatever you want and still expect to live bills free :) The system is just there to generate energy. If you start consuming more than it generated, that excess has to come from somewhere and its' not free. 

And in all fairness that's exactly what happened  to our case. We consumed  a lot more energy this year due to some life events (new local job, new addition to family etc.) and sure enough, there was a bill for that. 

Here are snapshot of our 2 yearly usage and bill summary; one before and one after the PV systems:

The Conclusion

So again, did our bill just vanished ? Not yet. Did it reduce it,  yes, it did by about $45 ($68 vs $23). Did we consume same energy as the year before ? I wish but in fact we consumed about 42% (5898 vs 8403 kwh) more electricity still paying $45/monthly less. 

Driving Nissan Leaf

After closely following the resurgence of (all) Electric Car in last few years, I thought of trying one; no, not buying but renting one.

Yes, there are just 2 companies which rents the electric cars: Hertz and Enterprise. The problem with Hertz is you would never know which make and model you will end up getting & from which location. Enterprise on the other hand shares its locations where you find one and then you can call the rental center to reserve one for you.

Currently Available (All) Electric cars in the market

As you might know in US there are only a few "pure" electric cars available:

Make/Model  (Year: 2013)	EPA Range in miles	mpge(city/highway/ combined) in miles	EPA Size Class	MSRP (US $)	MSRP after $7500 Fed credit
Nissan Leaf	74	129/102/114	midsize	$28,800	$21,300
Ford Focus Electric	76	110/99/104	compact	$39,200	$31,700
Mitshubishi i-Miev	62	126/99/111	subcompact	$29,125	$21,625
Tesla Model S (60-kw)	208	94/97/96	minicompact	$69,900	$62,400
Honda Fit EV	82	132/105/117	Small wagon	$36,625	$29,125
smart fortwo electric drive coupe	67	122/93/106	2 seater	$25,700	$18,200
Toyota RAV4EV	103	78/74/76	small SUV	$49,800	$42,300

Epa data came from epa.gov, price from edmunds.com & Smart car price from here on 5/10/2013

EPA calculates the range as

Range_epa = 0.7 * ( 0.55 * Range_city + 0.45 * Range_highway)

So in reality your range should be about 35-45% higher than the Range shown above.

Rent

I rented the Leaf from Baltimore downtown location. The enterprise.com doesnt' show the electric car  option but when I called them I was told that I should reserve that as 'premier' car which after corporate discount for home use coupon turn out to be $48/day including damage waiver and other basic insurance.

Range

The car fully charged showed a range of 107 miles (just when I rented) which dropped to 42 after I reached a destination 47.9 miles away loosing 56% of charge. Meaning 56% of charge should have given me 107 * 0.56 = 60 miles of range but it gave me only about 48. But to be fair, it was mostly highway driving.

Next Day I couldnt' charge it very well on my tickle home wall socket. & I mostly drove locally without paying much attention to my charge.
The third day I charged as much I could achieving 86 miles range & then drove to 66.7 (364.7-298.0) miles and the range dropped to 65 miles to 21 miles. This was mostly city driving. So range and actual miles driven were mostly in sync.

So in short, if your city and highway driving is almost half-half mix than you should get within 5-7 miles of the range shown on dashboard i.e/ about 100  miles of driving  per charge (in eco mode).

Charging

Charging on regular 110V household takes for ever; something that Nissan & even other sites very cleverly chose not to express. In my calculation a full 100% charge from an almost depleted level would take around 24 hours.  On a Level 2 charger (fortunately we have plenty of them around the MD/DC area, thanks to semaconnect and blink network mostly free unless the garage charges a parking fee) which gives a 220V and 30A current, this reduces to 5.5-6 hours. DC charger which this particular Leaf was capable of handling thru its quick-charge port, could reduce the charging to about half an hour or less as it pumps 440V DC @50KW, but there are very few ones close-by for me to try and see for myself.

Driving Experience

Car drove nicely with very little to no sound. It has 2 driving mode, regular and eco. In both the modes however you would feel the the scarcity of  power while accelerating. But once I got used to it, it wasn't  something that  bothered me or was a problem overtaking or merging on highways. 

Comfort

The car was comfortable with all the bells and whistles that you expect from a $20-$30K car range including  XM, Navigation, Climate control, cruise control, power everything etc. etc. Its 5 seater is kinda cramped though in the back especially if you are having a child seat. Being a hatchback  design, trunk space was OK too, almost like Toyota Prius.

Economy vs. Savings

The fuel economy data for owing an electric car is well published, nevertheless I wanted to do my own calculation. So here it goes:

This car:
Our electricity rate :  11.79 c/kwh (My Pepco May 2013 bill, generic rate available at  peak rate consisting of distribution, transmission +generation * tax)
Leaf Battery Bank Size: 24 kwh
$ amount to fill Leaf: 24 * 0.1179 = $2.83
useful miles it can drive on full charge : 100
fuel economy: 2.83 cents/mile

Gasoline car:
mpg assumed: 35
Local Best Gas Rate; $3.50 (5/10/2013)

cost to drive a mile: 10 cents/mile

Nissan gives a 100,000 warranty on battery. Assuming that's the life of battery is, 

Savings over lifetime = (10-2.83) * 100,000/100 = $7,170
Not doing the Oil change should bring about $700-$1000 savings as well as any state income tax credit for EV, but I am cancelling that out since level2 charger installation also costs money.

Since after Federal Tax Credit, Leaf price is almost in the price range of any regular gasoline car, the above gas savings (not to mention the maintenance cost) can be treated as pure savings.

Conclusion

In conclusion this is a good daily commuter car if your work is not very far which could save one a solid gas money. Having a 100+ miles range takes away the 'range anxiety' that is generally associated with electric car. After your work, you can still do plenty of running around before heading  home and you will have enough juice left. A level 2 charger is a must though otherwise you wont' be able to drive everyday. For a little DIYer type, creating a Level 2 charger point is not very complicated; just pull a 220V line from your main using a AWG-10/2 copper cable to your garage & a 30W circuit breaker and connect it to a Level 2 Charger kit available for about $1000 at amazon. 

But for my specific case in which I have a daily commute of 90 miles city (or 102 Miles if I take a longer but faster highway route), I can just about it with this Leaf. 

So, guess my search for a good Electric car (or a job little closer to home), is still not over :(

A New Energy Saving Initiative

Everyone these days keeps talking about having a National Level Energy plan; some folks arguing for permitting all offshore drilling and others for exploring all alternate energy sources. What about this simple step to increase the production by 2-3% almost without much effort:

A Solar Panel on Every roof

Yes, it's an ambitious target but assume out of 112M household in US, even if we achieve 25% success rate, that's still 28M new household with solar panels.
A typical family of fours typically consumes about 1 kwh energy per hour which can be met by a 5KW solar panel producing about 25 kwh a day.
A nation wide adaptation of such system would produce 700 Gwh (25 kwh/day * 28M installations)  energy every day, i.e. equivalent to  30GW new power plant of 30 GW capacity (700 per day/24 hours) right there.
In 2010, US total electrical power capacity was 1137 GW.
30 GW or 2.5% of that source will come thru this renewed effort.

 

Lease: 

Purchase and installation of solar panel is still way too expensive in US for an average family and the numbers don't' compete with the grid energy rate.
But a comparatively new price plan, i.e. leasing the panels, is catching up. Combine that with full prepay and you almost get your own system as the lease term is almost as long as the life of the panel itself. Not to mention all the support and warranty being provided by the installer throughout the lease term.

Financing and Low Rate  Loan

A 5KW system leased for 20 years thru a company called Solar city or BGI in Maryland  typically costs about five thousands. Now this is where the federal govt. can chime in and can provide further incentive on top of the 7.5K write off that they provide to the owner (in lease system, it goes to the Leaser). They can provide an affordable (say 0.5% rate for 10 years) loan to the homeowner to meet the upfront cost of prepay lease. This new loan shouldn't need any complicated paperwork and payment plan should also be as straightforward as possible. An example of that would be adding a one page form to the lease document, confirming that the lessee wants to meet the upfront cost thru federal loan. And automatically adjusting the loan premium to the tax return liability without adding that as a tax clause. That is, the homeowner will still file the tax the same way, but as soon as they are done filing, their tax liability will increase increase by say $5250 (yearly payment for a $5k loan for 10 years @0.5%) or their refund reduced by same amount. So, no complicated loan approval process, running to bank or mailing a check etc.


This new initiative will be almost cost neutral to Federal Govt even in the worst case scenario. . They do provide 28M * 5K = 140 B loan though but that's a loan at higher interest rate than currently being extended to bank (0.25%) and its the money directly extended to homeowners and directly working towards stirring the economy and creating jobs.

Personal Railroad Transportation

Thinking in terms of Saving energy, Independence from Gas and Usage of Clean energy, this idea crossed my mind. Will love constructive comments:

Out of the 4 main modes of transportation available today: Automobile, Railroads, Air and Ship (or any water-based transportation) , the last one can be filtered out right away; anything below say 50mph wont' fly here at US. Not to mention their lower fuel economy.


Among the rest, their best passenger mile per gallon numbers are:

• Automobile -car: 200 passenger-miles/US gallon for Toyota Prius
• Automobile -Bus 330 passenger-miles/US gallon (A diesel bus commuter service in Santa Barbara, California, diesel bus with  efficiency of 6.0 mpg_-US assuming all 55 seats full)
• Railroad: 468 passenger-miles/US gallon for Colorado rail
• Air:  78 passenger-miles per US gallon for Airbus 320

So, as expected Railroads has better fuel economy as it doesn't' have to fight gravity like airplanes and has much lower friction than ship or even automobiles.

A railroad based personal transportation can evolve in these 3 stages, co-existing with each other and also with the current modes of transportation:

Stage 1: Bringing masses to Trains

This can  be done by implementing  few major changes. The idea is to overcome the standard problems people face today in train ride :

• Runs only on certain times
• Tickets too expensive
• Takes forever

Below steps should help alleviate these shortfalls:

 

Automate Signalling, Monitoring & Controlling System (read No Driver)

Ever seen the shuttle mono-rails at airports ? Or What about the new driver-less cars traveling in bay areas by Google ? So, why not in trains ? It should not have drivers, train masters, ticket conductor or any supporting staffs, just passengers. After all, they are the only ones paying & they don't' (want to) pay a lot :)

 

No predefined start time times, stoppage etc.

It should all be dynamic, guided by passengers on-board or in-waiting.  We have way too better technologies now and its about time trains should start using them. Passengers run-time requests, tickets purchase, track occupancies etc. would feed into the intelligent train management system to make this happen.

 

Make it smaller

Having done the first two, now its time to reduce the trains length; literally. It doesn't' have to be 10 cars long. Just one car please. Car size can be different, say 10, 20 or even 50 passengers etc. Depending upon the ticket purchased and demand, one of such train cars pulls up at the station and off you go. No need for 10 minutes stoppage at each station to make it economically viable option.

A tiny little engine would be fitting nicely under the car running nicely on electric third rail. reducing the engine size need even further.
A similar rail bus was apparently tried long ago, but this time around, we have the advantage of technologies: ie automatic driving, signalling, smaller engine size etc.

 

And fast please !!

Now that the train is just one car long, there is no need for it to run it at  a slogging 40-45 mph rate. Why not to double the speed ? Current infrastructure should support it just fine without a multi billion dollar new high speed infrastructure change.

 

Stage 2: Making it "Personal" Train

Once the mass starts using the train because they can choose the timing, (almost the same way they set out to drive) and its way too cheaper because of much lower overhead  and its faster because of lesser occupancies and automation, the next step is to bring them even closer to that "personal" transportation experience;

 

Ride with your car:

There is no stone writing that trains should be the way it is. Or even the way it's proposed earlier. The new train car can be just a rack car i.e. four wheels platform with the engine underneath where a car can "ride". Why not to just drive your car instead ? Because car running on train platform will provide :

• Automatic driving 
• Better fuel economy (electric engine, no battery meaning no range restriction) 
• Free time to driver
• Free up from worries of packing your stuff
• Availability of your car at destination ie no more requesting friend & family or hassles of renting
• No Traffic Jam & predictive arrival

So, how this all will look like: You would drive up to the train station, will be redirected to the automatic auto loading yard and with a brief demo, etc. you and your car will be driving on a railroad track without you actually doing anything. Your car will be fed in power (for AC), Internet, Data, TV signals etc. thru from the carrier underneath thru one of the windows.

 

Stage 3: Little More Advance

Once the above 2 ideas are in place, ie once people start choosing trains as a more practical options than roadways and airways, its time to make it even more smart and efficient:

 

Moving Platform

A new train platform where passengers either come to ride a single-car train or drive to be fitted with undercarriage car, doesn't' need to be a regular current station platform. They can be moving platform, cutting down time further on boarding train or waiting to be fitted with undercarriage car.

 

Even faster please !!

Now its time to make the trains running even faster so that they can complete with Air travel in terms of time too. Here some big infrastructure change would be needed for high speed rail. But once the demand is there, driven from the above 2, this infrastructure change should be well perceived & funded. 

Time is money after all !!