There's a lot of discussion here, but I haven't seen anyone link this slide deck which (albeit a couple of years old) does a great job describing DSNY's efforts to electrify and some of their results with pilot programs: https://dsny.cityofnewyork.us/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/DSN...
A lot of the things being proposed as solutions by posters here are already being tried in the real world. They're not running long-distance routes to the dump, they use a network of transfer stations around the boroughs. They're using DC fast charging. They're exploring other hybrid options.
NYC isn't always great at avoiding its own special breed of "NYC exceptionalism", but in this case it sure looks like they're doing everything reasonably. The electric trucks are seemingly working well for garbage collection. They just can't take the whole fleet electric (yet) for double-duty as snow plows.
Battery operated garbage trucks don't sound like a great idea, at least for all day use.
With the push for EV I am not sure why we aren't seeing a push for the installation of streetcar power lines, these already exist and are used for busses. If we have a garbage truck that has the battery capacity for say 30 minutes, then it could be on the power line for the majority of the time.
This would limit battery waste as well. There could be some solid engineering reasons for this, but I suspect that coolness is a big factor.
Garbage trucks are probably one of the best places for it actually, because they stop so frequently. Unfortunately the article is about plow trucks instead which have a very different use case - New York just happens to use the same vehicles for both so they have a smaller fleet that's not as well suited to either task.
For garbage trucks you have stop and go movement so EVs eliminate idling. Given the size of the trucks it's probably not a big deal to make sure they have adequate battery capacity.
Plow trucks have a completely different use model where they're run at speed for long periods and one day of plowing could have the same distance traveled as weeks of trash collection. Hybrids would likely be an improvement in efficiency but the same way they do for other trucks - batteries support high demand periods while the generator is fine for the lower sustained loads.
Edit: a drawback of the smaller fleet for snow management is that garbage trucks aren't as well suited for salt/sand/deicer distribution. Nobody designs their garbage trucks to spray. I hope.
Edit2: garbage trucks also have a lot of additional mechanical systems that are probably already electrical, so among other things the ICE versions likely have an oversized alternator to power that.
I remember looking into this a little bit and the conclusion seemed to be that for most garbage truck uses the range was not the limiting factor. Pickup time was more important, and batteries are attractive given that most garbage pickup is stop-pickup-start-drive a short distance then stop again. In Seattle I believe I saw the longest route was less than 70 miles but I can't find a source. There was a purchase of battery garbage trucks with a range of 55 miles a few years ago. https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/05/seattle-makes-history-w...
Caternary lines have always seemed like a good solution but there must be a good reason they aren't more popular.
Here in Massachusetts we just removed our streetcar power lines (MBTA 71 and 73 trolleybus) because the wires needed to be removed during construction. This might be a logistical issue for NYC.
We think "Well gas cars transport their own energy source, so electric cars must too" and that will probably be one of the things future generations laugh at us for (in the same way older generations thought flapping wing costumes could generate heavier-than-air flight).
Hydrocarbons are an extreme outlier in terms of energy density (vs. weight) and the fact that we are trying to replicate that model with other non-outlier materials is crazy.
Cars travel on roads almost exclusively. In the US, 90%+ passenger miles are on roads that already have some amount of power infrastructure (lightposts) and if we just made it so that our vehicles could plug into electricity at all points of their journey, then EVs are basically solved.
The sad part of Elon being so successful is that all he does is see places where we used to do things well (we electrified the whole country very quickly, built an advanced space program in 2-3 decades, etc.), notices we lack the will to keep doing those things (even I understand the overhead wires thing is a moonshot), and comes up with the pragmatic "OK but not really great" solution.
Seriously, if you had said in 1960 "the richest man in 2020 will focus on cars, low-earth-orbit rockets, and tunnel boring machines" people would be extremely bummed by the lack of progress.
The power lines that trolleybuses use don’t cover an entire city. They’re only installed on the routes the buses are scheduled to run on, and only for the parts of the streets buses will use. They’re like train tracks in that way, but hanging in the air instead of embedded in the ground.
Garbage truck fleets are expected to cover every street and every block in their service area which adds up to more of a city than bus services cover since they don’t stop on every block at every house and building. The lines also require maintenance and you also need to train operators to re-establish the connections not if they drop but when they drop. Doesn’t seem worth it to me, at least not for New York.
NYC garbage trucks spend a very long time parked in front of the same building all night, crushing bags full of plastic coffee cups. Ask anyone who has ever tried to sleep in Manhattan. A completely reasonable solution that doesn't require a wholesale change in the way refuse is collected in that city would be to plug the truck in at the building where it is standing.
> “ With current technology, full electrification isn’t possible now for some parts of our fleet, but we are monitoring closely and really hope it will be,” Gragnani said.
We are really letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. At this moment in time, Plug-in hybrids are the superior technology for nearly every application. I don't understand why they get so overlooked by consumers and manufacturers alike.
Because they need both an ICE and battery powered engine it's a more complex & expensive solution than picking one or the other. Not only expensive in dollars but car weight, storage room, maintenance, and so on.
It's okay as an intermediate step but all electric is much better long term.
I just don't understand it. A car that can drive ~40 miles on pure electric that has an ICE for longer trips would satisfy the needs of everyone. For like 90+% of people, it would mean never using gas for their commute while also eliminating range anxiety.
I'm especially surprised about the lack of plug-in hybrids for semi trucks. I'd think having a little extra electronic torque would help considerably when accelerating. It doesn't need to go 0-60 in 20 seconds while carrying 80K lbs like the Tesla Semi claims, but certainly having extra power could be useful in some scenarios. Heck, just having regen braking would be a game changer when going down hills. No noise from a Jake Brake, and no worries about burning up brake pads.
Plugin hybrids have the worst of both options as well as the best.
They have to carry with them an entire gas engine, plus large electric motors, plus a huge battery. That's a lot of mass. This makes them inefficient as gas vehicles, and less efficient as EVs.
Take a look at the Toyota Prius Prime, considered a great PHEV. It's got almost the same gas milage in combined city/highway driving as my 2012 Honda Civic (around 50 mpg). The Prius has got a slight edge. But that's combined, which presumes 45% highway and 55% city. You don't want to take that car on a road trip because once the battery is dead, you'll be needing to stop to refill the gas tank every 90 minutes. My Civic will drive 600km or more on highways, easily.
PHEVs are the best vehicle if you drive less than 60km per day, and mostly have stop-go city driving (so you can recharge on braking).
Winter is still a problem for EV. My city (non US) tried to change all busses from diesel to electric. Diesel busses had an efficiency of about 98% (2% time spend in maintenance) while EV busses had about 94%. This ultimately resulted in transport companies to go diesel again in recent years. I think putting some public funds here would be very worth the gain.
Of course electric busses are vastly more convenient. They are almost silent compared to the heavy noise a diesel bus makes on acceleration. Their routes are predictable, so charging can be accounted for. Although a bus can also mount very large batteries to begin with.
But apart from the slight difference in maintenance quota, there also was a problem in winter. When it was cold outside many busses refused to work. They would need to stay within a depot in winter which increases costs again. Still electric busses seem to be an efficient way to curb in-city emissions and noise pollution to a large degree. And I think the problem with temperature can surely be solved somehow.
I do think perfect became the enemy of good here. But there are still valid economic reasons for the private companies that provide these vehicles. Ultimately they don't get paid for their vehicles to be more economical and less noisy.
I don't think it is worth to replace heavy machinery yet. There are just too few vehicles that the investment doesn't seem too reasonable yet as long as there are that many more efficient things to replace.
Yes! I love my plug-in hybrid (Toyota RAV4 Prime). It gets about 40 miles on battery and then switches to gas. I've managed to drive 9000 miles on 3 tanks of gas (with a much larger energy bill, of course!) and I always have the confidence I could go on a long drive without depending on either slow, busy, or rare charging stations. I now even drive more slowly to maximize my EV range.
The MTA actually went from using a lot of hybrid buses to fully diesel at one point[0], and now they're slow rolling out fully electric by...2040[1]. Just far out enough they can do basically nothing over the next couple years, and still claim they're on track.
> At this moment in time, Plug-in hybrids are the superior technology for nearly every application. I don't understand why they get so overlooked by consumers and manufacturers alike.
Plugin hybrids cars are expensive, not at the least because they require both a traditional ICE drivetrain and a large battery and electric motor, and specialized power split transmissions to make those work together.
Therefore, most plugin hybrids are higher end (just like EVs) and marketed at wealthier people who want to drive electric most of the time but have range anxiety or don't want to deal with DC fast charging. Look for yourself:
That said, they can make a lot of sense if you need 1 car that can do everything, both short daily drives and long trips. The sleeper hit here is the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV. The new ones have 38miles electric range and seat 7.
However, the falling price of batteries and growth of DC fast charging infrastructure means that they will PHEVs will be a bridge technology.
Many city buses however are starting to convert to some form of plugin hybrid, although even their
However, even city buses are moving towards full electrification since the maintenance and fuel costs tend to dominate the total cost of ownership for them, and those are much lower with full electric.
Or just to extend this a bit further, maybe we keep ICE for a few specific applications?
I want a full conversion just as much as anyone who lives on this planet does, but I can see some cases being allowed for as our technology catches up to the lingering problems.
For a commuter car, a plug-in hybrid is great if its all-electric range fits within your commute distance. Otherwise it's just a more expensive hybrid.
For a snow plow that needs to run for hours at a time, I suspect that the additional cost of the batteries of a plug-in hybrid isn't worth it over a normal hybrid, or just a diesel-powered engine.
We don't need to electrify everything, and even if that will happen in the long run, we don't need to rush to do it now. What percentage of total NYC emissions come from these trucks? Probably a pretty small portion.
It's not politically correct for NYC to buy more diesel trucks, but it is probably what they should do.
Because their small batteries being too much stressed do not last longer and in the end you run on ICE with the extra weight of battery, inverters and powertrain...
Another tempted but so far not promising was the hybrid-series EVs (like ships, with electrical engine powered by a generator) so far Nissan have tempted again, but honestly sound to be a failure...
It's discussed elsewhere in the thread, but overehead wires seem appealing:
* They solve the power availability problem
* They reduce the need for batteries, reducing cost and waste from manufacturing and disposal.
* They could be used for electrifying other vehicles like buses
* Their ROI seems especially high in dense cities, especially NY: One overhead wire serves all the traffic on the road below. Plus, dense cities like NY already have infrastructure citywide, and experience servicing it.
* What if we could provide power to electric cars in NYC. That could be transformative. I don't know that electric wires would be the best form for that, or how it could be done (is there a safe way to embed something in the ground?).
* Some point out that the garbage trucks need to cover almost every street in the city. The power supply doesn't have to do that; it only has to be available enough to charge the vehicles sufficietly to plow/pickup on the side street and return to the main road.
Plows running on overhead lines makes for very bad failure cases. Power outages are common in heavy snow storms. Emergency services and repair crews usually need to reach areas without power urgently. With plows run by overhead lines, these would be the areas not plowed.
Even if you kept a percentage of plows gas, you'd be risking the scale of power outages not overcoming your back up capacity
They work for buses because buses follow set routes. There aren't overhead lines running through every single street. By comparison, garbage trucks do have to patrol essentially every street. Putting overhead lines through every street may be more expensive than batteries.
For these industrial use cases I’m surprised hot swappable batteries aren’t being considered more.
Are these current trucks doing 12 hour shifts plowing snow and hauling garbage on a single tank of diesel, or are they refueling? I get that fast changing infrastructure is hard and waiting 15-90 minutes to charge a battery isn’t ideal.
But couldn’t they stop to swap out batteries or have another vehicle meet each truck with replacements?
Edit: Googling suggests that garbage trucks get 3mpg on average, with a 70-90 gallon tank and go 25k mi/yr on average (80mi/day 6-day week) so one tank would cover a whole day.
3mpg is awful though which does seem to support electrification being a good plan for this use case.
They start and stop a lot, with a really heavy load. That's brutal for fuel efficiency, but with regenerative braking, would surely be much less of a factor.
> Because of the requirement that it fuel the entire fleet within an hour in the event of a snow emergency, natural gas hasn’t proved practical especially since CNG fueling stations require too much space in such a dense city, according to Commissioner Garcia. Right now the fleet is about to undertake initial testing with renewable diesel, which is not only better in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, but can be used as a complete replacement for diesel, not just as a 5 to 20% blend.
So they already forwent CNG (unlike most municipalities) because of this requirement.
This is a non-issue. Like any other technology, EVs will (do) get traction where they provide a significant advantage, and then as the tech matures they will eat away at the rest of the problem space.
One of the few business books worth reading, the Innovator's Dilemma, is all about this, and is supposedly beloved in the tech business. It's where "disruption" entered marketing discussion.
I'm ok with removing 98% of dead dinosaur burning but keeping a few use cases (I wouldn't want to be trapped in a city with the power grid downed from a snowstorm and the city being unable to charge its industrial vehicles)
The "Elektromote", the world's first trolleybus,[6] in Berlin, Germany, 1882. Maybe New York is lacking the infrastructure, but the technology has existed for a long time. A trolleybus may be expensive to implement in rural areas but in the biggest city in the USA it should be quite cost effective.
* a brand-new battery chemistry based on cheap and readily-available elements that avoids the issues related to existing lithium-based cells for vehicle applications (e.g. cost, cold, low power density, towing, large vehicles, etc)
* a way to synthesize fuel via CO2 capture from the air, perhaps in a fluctuating demand way to soak up solar from solar-rich regions (to make it net neutral-ish for CO2 capture) or if we finally get it together and build a bunch of nuclear reactors, which become net negative for CO2 emissions (from building the plant) in a matter of weeks
I would love to not have to deal with tedious car maintenance. I wish my car was as reliable as my phone, which never needs any sort of ongoing maintenance other than charging!
To me, this is hard to understand. There used to be a saying “right tool for the right job” and I’m sure when Ford released the model T lots of people said “horses can do X while automobiles can not”
This is a step … where basically 9 months out of the year there is no emissions in the city and the trucks are effectively the same 1:1 replacement.
I also understand that this is a much harder article to write “the city got away with using the wrong tool for the job for years and now has to address the problem they created” (this cuts both ways). It probably seemed like a win win at the time but now a solution will need to be engineered to solve it… im also sure having a hybrid fleet (some ICE and some EV) will be great for times of increased demand and having backups when something breaks…
That's one of the smaller ones, which Glasgow City Council ordered up with a hydrogen-powered engine. Most are still diesel but there are some diesel/propane dual-fuel ones too.
They did an entirely reasonable linear optimisation on the cost benefit, and it didn't work out.
It's not a forever decision. They can review in the light of changes in power budget and recharge times, battery swap and fuel cost.
I have read elsewhere that PepsiCo who committed to the Tesla truck are sticking to their shorthaul routes as a problem solution at first. Also entirely reasonable, and also probably a well studied cost benefit decision.
Wouldn't Tesla's Semi truck fit the bill in terms of power? If so, could the motor and batteries used in the Semi theoretically power an EV garbage truck for long enough to plow snow for more than the 4 hours they state they're currently seeing?
So we'll wait until batteries improve to the point where they can be used. Not a big deal. In the mean time personal transportation can be fully electrified. The subway has been running on electricity for more than 100 years.
The future is not exclusively electric. The future will have a mix of technologies appropriate for different situations. We are still going to have horses and gas vehicles just as we do now, with EVs alongside them.
[+] [-] sethhochberg|3 years ago|reply
A lot of the things being proposed as solutions by posters here are already being tried in the real world. They're not running long-distance routes to the dump, they use a network of transfer stations around the boroughs. They're using DC fast charging. They're exploring other hybrid options.
NYC isn't always great at avoiding its own special breed of "NYC exceptionalism", but in this case it sure looks like they're doing everything reasonably. The electric trucks are seemingly working well for garbage collection. They just can't take the whole fleet electric (yet) for double-duty as snow plows.
[+] [-] ecshafer|3 years ago|reply
With the push for EV I am not sure why we aren't seeing a push for the installation of streetcar power lines, these already exist and are used for busses. If we have a garbage truck that has the battery capacity for say 30 minutes, then it could be on the power line for the majority of the time.
This would limit battery waste as well. There could be some solid engineering reasons for this, but I suspect that coolness is a big factor.
[+] [-] fencepost|3 years ago|reply
For garbage trucks you have stop and go movement so EVs eliminate idling. Given the size of the trucks it's probably not a big deal to make sure they have adequate battery capacity.
Plow trucks have a completely different use model where they're run at speed for long periods and one day of plowing could have the same distance traveled as weeks of trash collection. Hybrids would likely be an improvement in efficiency but the same way they do for other trucks - batteries support high demand periods while the generator is fine for the lower sustained loads.
Edit: a drawback of the smaller fleet for snow management is that garbage trucks aren't as well suited for salt/sand/deicer distribution. Nobody designs their garbage trucks to spray. I hope.
Edit2: garbage trucks also have a lot of additional mechanical systems that are probably already electrical, so among other things the ICE versions likely have an oversized alternator to power that.
[+] [-] dendrite9|3 years ago|reply
Caternary lines have always seemed like a good solution but there must be a good reason they aren't more popular.
Also, garbage collection in NYC seems to be a weird mishmash of rules and providers. Again there must be a historical reason but from the outside it has never made sense to me. https://www.propublica.org/article/trashed-inside-the-deadly...
[+] [-] tapoxi|3 years ago|reply
https://www.mbta.com/news/2022-01-27/beginning-march-2022-mb...
[+] [-] RC_ITR|3 years ago|reply
We think "Well gas cars transport their own energy source, so electric cars must too" and that will probably be one of the things future generations laugh at us for (in the same way older generations thought flapping wing costumes could generate heavier-than-air flight).
Hydrocarbons are an extreme outlier in terms of energy density (vs. weight) and the fact that we are trying to replicate that model with other non-outlier materials is crazy.
Cars travel on roads almost exclusively. In the US, 90%+ passenger miles are on roads that already have some amount of power infrastructure (lightposts) and if we just made it so that our vehicles could plug into electricity at all points of their journey, then EVs are basically solved.
The sad part of Elon being so successful is that all he does is see places where we used to do things well (we electrified the whole country very quickly, built an advanced space program in 2-3 decades, etc.), notices we lack the will to keep doing those things (even I understand the overhead wires thing is a moonshot), and comes up with the pragmatic "OK but not really great" solution.
Seriously, if you had said in 1960 "the richest man in 2020 will focus on cars, low-earth-orbit rockets, and tunnel boring machines" people would be extremely bummed by the lack of progress.
[+] [-] SllX|3 years ago|reply
Garbage truck fleets are expected to cover every street and every block in their service area which adds up to more of a city than bus services cover since they don’t stop on every block at every house and building. The lines also require maintenance and you also need to train operators to re-establish the connections not if they drop but when they drop. Doesn’t seem worth it to me, at least not for New York.
[+] [-] jeffbee|3 years ago|reply
That said, a wholesale change is what they need.
[+] [-] heavyset_go|3 years ago|reply
[1] https://i.redd.it/zidqa2mbmav31.png
[+] [-] Our_Benefactors|3 years ago|reply
They’re ugly eyesores.
They only exist in a handful of cities in the USA to begin with.
They limit your driving speed.
They create additional noise.
They can detach fairly easily, impeding traffic. Much bigger issue if this could potentially happen to every vehicle.
[+] [-] vinaypai|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WWLink|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] legitster|3 years ago|reply
We are really letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. At this moment in time, Plug-in hybrids are the superior technology for nearly every application. I don't understand why they get so overlooked by consumers and manufacturers alike.
[+] [-] treis|3 years ago|reply
It's okay as an intermediate step but all electric is much better long term.
[+] [-] Sohcahtoa82|3 years ago|reply
I just don't understand it. A car that can drive ~40 miles on pure electric that has an ICE for longer trips would satisfy the needs of everyone. For like 90+% of people, it would mean never using gas for their commute while also eliminating range anxiety.
I'm especially surprised about the lack of plug-in hybrids for semi trucks. I'd think having a little extra electronic torque would help considerably when accelerating. It doesn't need to go 0-60 in 20 seconds while carrying 80K lbs like the Tesla Semi claims, but certainly having extra power could be useful in some scenarios. Heck, just having regen braking would be a game changer when going down hills. No noise from a Jake Brake, and no worries about burning up brake pads.
[+] [-] mabbo|3 years ago|reply
They have to carry with them an entire gas engine, plus large electric motors, plus a huge battery. That's a lot of mass. This makes them inefficient as gas vehicles, and less efficient as EVs.
Take a look at the Toyota Prius Prime, considered a great PHEV. It's got almost the same gas milage in combined city/highway driving as my 2012 Honda Civic (around 50 mpg). The Prius has got a slight edge. But that's combined, which presumes 45% highway and 55% city. You don't want to take that car on a road trip because once the battery is dead, you'll be needing to stop to refill the gas tank every 90 minutes. My Civic will drive 600km or more on highways, easily.
PHEVs are the best vehicle if you drive less than 60km per day, and mostly have stop-go city driving (so you can recharge on braking).
[+] [-] raxxorraxor|3 years ago|reply
Of course electric busses are vastly more convenient. They are almost silent compared to the heavy noise a diesel bus makes on acceleration. Their routes are predictable, so charging can be accounted for. Although a bus can also mount very large batteries to begin with.
But apart from the slight difference in maintenance quota, there also was a problem in winter. When it was cold outside many busses refused to work. They would need to stay within a depot in winter which increases costs again. Still electric busses seem to be an efficient way to curb in-city emissions and noise pollution to a large degree. And I think the problem with temperature can surely be solved somehow.
I do think perfect became the enemy of good here. But there are still valid economic reasons for the private companies that provide these vehicles. Ultimately they don't get paid for their vehicles to be more economical and less noisy.
I don't think it is worth to replace heavy machinery yet. There are just too few vehicles that the investment doesn't seem too reasonable yet as long as there are that many more efficient things to replace.
[+] [-] dekhn|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pastor_bob|3 years ago|reply
[0]https://nypost.com/2013/06/30/mta-hasnt-purchased-a-hybrid-b...
[1]https://www.timeout.com/newyork/news/200-electric-buses-are-...
[+] [-] danans|3 years ago|reply
Plugin hybrids cars are expensive, not at the least because they require both a traditional ICE drivetrain and a large battery and electric motor, and specialized power split transmissions to make those work together.
Therefore, most plugin hybrids are higher end (just like EVs) and marketed at wealthier people who want to drive electric most of the time but have range anxiety or don't want to deal with DC fast charging. Look for yourself:
https://www.caranddriver.com/features/g15377500/plug-in-hybr...
That said, they can make a lot of sense if you need 1 car that can do everything, both short daily drives and long trips. The sleeper hit here is the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV. The new ones have 38miles electric range and seat 7.
However, the falling price of batteries and growth of DC fast charging infrastructure means that they will PHEVs will be a bridge technology.
Many city buses however are starting to convert to some form of plugin hybrid, although even their
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_electric_bus#List_of_tr...
However, even city buses are moving towards full electrification since the maintenance and fuel costs tend to dominate the total cost of ownership for them, and those are much lower with full electric.
[+] [-] 2OEH8eoCRo0|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SpeedilyDamage|3 years ago|reply
I want a full conversion just as much as anyone who lives on this planet does, but I can see some cases being allowed for as our technology catches up to the lingering problems.
[+] [-] twblalock|3 years ago|reply
For a snow plow that needs to run for hours at a time, I suspect that the additional cost of the batteries of a plug-in hybrid isn't worth it over a normal hybrid, or just a diesel-powered engine.
We don't need to electrify everything, and even if that will happen in the long run, we don't need to rush to do it now. What percentage of total NYC emissions come from these trucks? Probably a pretty small portion.
It's not politically correct for NYC to buy more diesel trucks, but it is probably what they should do.
[+] [-] kkfx|3 years ago|reply
Another tempted but so far not promising was the hybrid-series EVs (like ships, with electrical engine powered by a generator) so far Nissan have tempted again, but honestly sound to be a failure...
[+] [-] wolverine876|3 years ago|reply
* They solve the power availability problem
* They reduce the need for batteries, reducing cost and waste from manufacturing and disposal.
* They could be used for electrifying other vehicles like buses
* Their ROI seems especially high in dense cities, especially NY: One overhead wire serves all the traffic on the road below. Plus, dense cities like NY already have infrastructure citywide, and experience servicing it.
* What if we could provide power to electric cars in NYC. That could be transformative. I don't know that electric wires would be the best form for that, or how it could be done (is there a safe way to embed something in the ground?).
* Some point out that the garbage trucks need to cover almost every street in the city. The power supply doesn't have to do that; it only has to be available enough to charge the vehicles sufficietly to plow/pickup on the side street and return to the main road.
[+] [-] russdill|3 years ago|reply
Even if you kept a percentage of plows gas, you'd be risking the scale of power outages not overcoming your back up capacity
[+] [-] Manuel_D|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JumpCrisscross|3 years ago|reply
[1] https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2021/06/03/the-mtas-new-electric...
[+] [-] rcme|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jollyllama|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sh1mmer|3 years ago|reply
Are these current trucks doing 12 hour shifts plowing snow and hauling garbage on a single tank of diesel, or are they refueling? I get that fast changing infrastructure is hard and waiting 15-90 minutes to charge a battery isn’t ideal.
But couldn’t they stop to swap out batteries or have another vehicle meet each truck with replacements?
Edit: Googling suggests that garbage trucks get 3mpg on average, with a 70-90 gallon tank and go 25k mi/yr on average (80mi/day 6-day week) so one tank would cover a whole day.
3mpg is awful though which does seem to support electrification being a good plan for this use case.
[+] [-] askvictor|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] newsclues|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ilamont|3 years ago|reply
Cargo ships. Jumbo jets. Military aircraft. Specialized industrial vehicles, such as those used for mines.
Unless these use cases are made obsolete (possible, such as military) society will depend on fossil fuels for many decades to come.
[+] [-] legitster|3 years ago|reply
> Because of the requirement that it fuel the entire fleet within an hour in the event of a snow emergency, natural gas hasn’t proved practical especially since CNG fueling stations require too much space in such a dense city, according to Commissioner Garcia. Right now the fleet is about to undertake initial testing with renewable diesel, which is not only better in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, but can be used as a complete replacement for diesel, not just as a 5 to 20% blend.
So they already forwent CNG (unlike most municipalities) because of this requirement.
[+] [-] gumby|3 years ago|reply
One of the few business books worth reading, the Innovator's Dilemma, is all about this, and is supposedly beloved in the tech business. It's where "disruption" entered marketing discussion.
[+] [-] acchow|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hourago|3 years ago|reply
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromote
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleybus
[+] [-] danielfoster|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrmckizzle|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _huayra_|3 years ago|reply
* a brand-new battery chemistry based on cheap and readily-available elements that avoids the issues related to existing lithium-based cells for vehicle applications (e.g. cost, cold, low power density, towing, large vehicles, etc)
* a way to synthesize fuel via CO2 capture from the air, perhaps in a fluctuating demand way to soak up solar from solar-rich regions (to make it net neutral-ish for CO2 capture) or if we finally get it together and build a bunch of nuclear reactors, which become net negative for CO2 emissions (from building the plant) in a matter of weeks
I would love to not have to deal with tedious car maintenance. I wish my car was as reliable as my phone, which never needs any sort of ongoing maintenance other than charging!
[+] [-] ohelabs|3 years ago|reply
This is a step … where basically 9 months out of the year there is no emissions in the city and the trucks are effectively the same 1:1 replacement.
I also understand that this is a much harder article to write “the city got away with using the wrong tool for the job for years and now has to address the problem they created” (this cuts both ways). It probably seemed like a win win at the time but now a solution will need to be engineered to solve it… im also sure having a hybrid fleet (some ICE and some EV) will be great for times of increased demand and having backups when something breaks…
[+] [-] RogerL|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Gordonjcp|3 years ago|reply
Something like this:
https://www.glasgow.gov.uk/media/image/8/h/gritter1.jpg
That's one of the smaller ones, which Glasgow City Council ordered up with a hydrogen-powered engine. Most are still diesel but there are some diesel/propane dual-fuel ones too.
[+] [-] ggm|3 years ago|reply
It's not a forever decision. They can review in the light of changes in power budget and recharge times, battery swap and fuel cost.
I have read elsewhere that PepsiCo who committed to the Tesla truck are sticking to their shorthaul routes as a problem solution at first. Also entirely reasonable, and also probably a well studied cost benefit decision.
[+] [-] KoftaBob|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] countvonbalzac|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] natch|3 years ago|reply