@New Haven Joe posted:There are big assumptions with this. 1. Battery life and power is better than today. I think that battery tech will evolve and be much better in the next 10 years. 2. A battery can be recharged in a reasonably short time. This would mean that an engine could recharge in about 20 minutes and have enough energy to go another 200 miles. 3. The recharging power is available from solar, the grid, or another source. 4. The savings in fuel and repairing diesel engines would justify the costs to convert the system and buy new battery engines.
Battery powered locomotives aren't going to happen anytime soon - and this isn't a political reason (on the surface).
The problem with any battery is that it's energy density is extremely low compared to diesel gasoline
Li-ion is around 250 Wh/kg (Watt-hours per Kilogram)
Diesel gasoline is around 12,700 Wh/kg
Therefore, to get the same performance characteristics (for example can pull same amount of x pounds of load for same time t in same distance d), the battery needs to be over 50 times larger. Obviously, you don't want the weight of your engine to increase that much so you're left with 1/8 the energy to keep engine the same weight.
Now, I don't want to sound like a pessimist when I say anytime soon - very good (and well funded) research is taking place aimed at increasing energy density of batteries. Most recently, a well performing solid state Li-ion battery has been in the news that doubles the current energy density (liquid electrolyte) Li-ion battery; no word on what the manufacturing cost is. However, this is still much lower than Diesel gasoline's energy density. We have a long ways to go.
The other side of the conversation is the cost of Lithium batteries from mining them to refining them. THIS is where politics start and where I stop 
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