Biogas can be generated by fermenting sewage. All buses in Stockholm run on it, it burns extremely clean and is carbon-neutral since it utilizes carbon already in the present carbon cycle.
All yeast strains produce some amount of hydrogen sulfide during fermentation as a by-product of sulfate processing. [1]
You can barely call that biogas "burns extremely clean" with hydrogen sulfide in them, can you?
In The Netherlands, DHL uses bikes : http://www.dhl.com/en/press/releases/releases_2014/express/d... I absolutely hate DHL as a recipient in NL, but this is pretty cool. They have other green vehicles too ( gas, electric ).
I rode my push bike from Portland to Cheyenne, WY. I figure I burnt 10,000 calories a day.The environmental cost of logistics of growing and shipping that many human consumable calories probably drastically out weighs that of burning gas in a car to travel that distance. Maybe someone can do the math.
80 mile electric-only range is great, and it gets electric incentives (federal and more importantly for me, exempt from 40% import duty to Puerto Rico). The great thing as a pickup truck is it works as a stationary power source for tools, either from battery or generator. It's probably inferior to a Tacoma or something for offroad/etc. use, but is still adequate. Apparently their main market for these is the electric utility market, for outside plant maintenance/etc.
Germany’s Post Office built and used ~2,000 custom-built electric delivery trucks in 2016 and deployed ~10.000 per year since 2017. UPS’s 50 seems very low for 2018 in comparison. One article about them: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-24/even-germ... They are called StreetScooter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StreetScooter
This is a pilot run of 50. Think of them as prototypes. They will use what they learn from these prototypes to build a larger fleet. If they can make these purchase price competitive with their current trucks it will be a huge win.
Meanwhile DHL/Streetscooter has already sold at least a few hundred of these.
Rural American mail trucks are being replaced with barely-running junk minivans or really whatever can be purchased for the cheapest possible amount, probably the lease emission-aware solution I can think of. I’m not sure if these are workers providing their own transportation on contract or what, but I have seen some very sketchy vehicles delivering mail in multiple states around the US lately.
Rural delivery has always been private vehicles. Carriers with spouses who have good jobs buy right hand drive Subaru’s. Everyone else drives some hooptie mobile. A lot of farm spouses used to do this gig. A moderately reliable car and a mechanically inclination is a key to success — cars need brakes every 3-6 weeks. USPS in general started buying more low bidder commercial vehicles because their package volumes have…
Jeep used to sell a RHD Cherokee for delivery. I think, or maybe they were re-imported. But I've seen more than a few rural carriers driving these. Older Jeeps tend to rust out so there may not be many of them on the road these days.
Rural American mail trucks are being replaced with barely-running junk minivans or really whatever can be purchased for the cheapest possible amount, probably the lease emission-aware solution I can think of. I’m not sure if these are workers providing their own transportation on contract or what, but I have seen some very sketchy vehicles delivering mail in multiple states around the US lately.
The USPS is in a pinch for vehicles. Their LLVs (the boxy mail truck, Long Life Vehicle) are at end of service life and being extended with costly maintenance. They need to hit alternative fuel targets with the replacements, electric looks like the win for most of the trucks, but they aren't there yet so they keep fixing things.
It seems likely that stopgap vehicles are a reasonable answer. In my suburban area I'm seeing minivans where I used to see LLVs.
UPS has an interesting approach to their trucks. They call them "cars" first of all, and they are a custom design. Nobody else can buy them, and when they wear out and they are done using them they crush them.
I never really understood why that made sense, when all the other courier companies use Sprinters or some other standard vehicle. They must see it as a competitive advantage.
Regen cancells some (most?) of "aggressive driving" leaving speed (i.e. wind resistance) as the major killer of range. If they're deployed in thick urban areas that might not be an issue.
With aggressive driving, it's very easy to move braking loads into the friction brakes, making a 100% loss. Even when you cycle energy out of the battery and back in via regen, there are losses (to heat). Driving carefully in my LEAF, I can get 4.2-4.5 miles per kWh. Driving like an ass, it's easy to get that figure down under 2.
Agree with what you said mostly. The energy efficiency of EVs are also definitely vehicle dependent (brake regen design, power to weight ratio, power module design, motors, power electronics). I drove an i3 before and was getting 4.6 avg m/kWh and a few times that I've been testing Honda FitEV, that went up to 4.8-5.2 m/kWh without me changing my driving style. But since EV has full torque for the entire range of allowable RPMs, driving aggressive is easier and more manageable. In some of the strong regen EVs like i3, I can get it hover at around 4 m/kwh even with a fairly aggressive driving style (first shooting out of the red light stop, last coming to an stop at the red light etc.)
I put in a preorder for the Workhorse W-15 pickup at CES (I'd been following them for a year). $1k fully-refundable, same as Model 3. http://workhorse.com/pickup/ 80 mile electric-only range is great, and it gets electric incentives (federal and more importantly for me, exempt from 40% import duty to Puerto Rico). The great thing as a pickup truck is it works as a stationary power source for tools, either from batter…
I didn't see this mentioned on their site anywhere / had to Google it. The truck is $52,000.. I can't imagine picking that over a Tundra for $31,120.
With aggressive driving, it's very easy to move braking loads into the friction brakes, making a 100% loss. Even when you cycle energy out of the battery and back in via regen, there are losses (to heat). Driving carefully in my LEAF, I can get 4.2-4.5 miles per kWh. Driving like an ass, it's easy to get that figure down under 2.
Also get 4.2 miles/KWh here. Maybe they will build in some kind of feedback for the trucks. The leaf has (had) the little trees that appear on the dashboard; maybe UPS can track this and issue a token incentive (free meal, bonus) at the end of the month if the delivery schedule is accomplished with less energy.
With "one pedal" driving, the feedback mechanism is having to touch the brake pedal or not.