Re: The key question
Domestic electricity is about 8p /kWh. Presumably if you're buying it in these quantities you can get a better deal but just to set an upper bound it would cost you about £750/hour for 9.3 MW, ie running the train flat out over a very long distance without stopping at intermediate stations so that the acceleration costs aren't significant relative to fighting the air.
That means this $6Bn dollars would be enough to run a TGV for 5 million hours, 570 years.
Of course you couldn't really run a TGV for 570 years with that money but that's precisely the point. The cost of overcoming drag is not the main factor, or even a significant factor.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
