I confess to not knowing much about how modern RRs actually allocate their motive power resources for typical freight operations. Does the initial lashup of 4 or 5 locomotives remain the same for the duration of a run from the West Coast to Chicago (for example) - not counting whatever 'helper' power is needed to cross the Sierra or the Cascades or Cajon Pass? If they are the same units throughout, presumably they need to be refueled at some point? If you look at the distribution of the amount (tonnage or number of cars?) of freight hauled vs distance, what does that look like? Even if the average was, say, 700 miles (a straight up WAG on my part), then there is a significant fraction of freight that is moved within the range of a single charge (the abstract mentioned at the top of this post sez 450 miles).
What I think is interesting in all this is simply that advances in battery technology have moved the conversation about electric vehicles from 'they'll never replace ICE (remember the movie of about ten years or so ago called 'Who killed the electric car') to the major automobile manufacturers moving to all electric vehicle fleets within 20 or so years. I suspect that this hasn't been lost on the RRs and their motive power suppliers.
