31–40 of 282 posts
For once, mighty Amazon comes late to the show. Germany's parcel service DHL builds up a fleet of small electric delivery vans since 2014: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StreetScooter Living in Bavaria, I see these drive around everywhere now.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The more correct question is: Liftime EV-Van Footprint = Production-Footprint(EV-Van) + Operational-Footprint(EV-Van, lifetime-miles-driven) vs Lifetime ICE-Van Footprint = Production-Footprint(ICE-Van) + Operational-Footprint(ICE-Van, lifetime-miles-driven) This calculation overwhelmingly favors the EV van, increasingly so as the carbon footprint of the operational electricity source itself reduces in footprint (i.e…
I think it's clear the lifecycle calculation favors the EV, but I don't think it's night and day[1]. Likely the emissions associated with the manufacture of the ICE and EV vans are similar (the batteries in the EV may even make it a little worse). But there's no doubt that the EV is a huge improvement in use, and switching a large portion of the trucks in our cities to EV would be giant win for air quality. As you sa…
The difference in noise alone is unbelievable. The elimitation of tailpipe emissions is a huge bonus in a dence city centre. Even if the lifecycle emissions are the same it would still be worth it.
The only thing I don't like about them is the torque and instant reaction of the motor make it easy for inconsiderate bus drivers to make the ride quite unpleasant.
It's one of these if you are interested:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Dennis_Enviro200_M...
For once, mighty Amazon comes late to the show. Germany's parcel service DHL builds up a fleet of small electric delivery vans since 2014: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StreetScooter Living in Bavaria, I see these drive around everywhere now.
These seem like they'd never work in the US. They aren't fast enough to go on the highway and their range is limited to 62 miles.
There are also parts of Germany where delivery trucks need to be able to go on the highway and to drive farther than 62 miles.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do delivery trucks typically consume 90%+ of their battery on a daily basis?
I mean, if they're not being used most of the day, you bought too many...
As far as I'm concerned, this move is pure greenwashing until Amazon stops collaborating with oil and gas companies to extract fossil fuels faster. https://aws.amazon.com/oil-and-gas/
The sooner Amazon helps get all of the oil and gas out of the ground, the sooner we'll be forced to adopt electric cars.
There are trillions of barrels of unconventional oil shale (confusingly, not the same as shale oil) in the Green River formation in Wyoming/Colorado alone. If it was all extracted and burned and put into the atmosphere (assuming none makes it as ocean acidification, etc), it'd raise the CO2 level from the current 400ppm (about 3 trillion tons of CO2 in the atmosphere right now) to 500ppm. Just a single formation.
And there's 5 trillion tons of coal in Alaska, equivalent to about 15 trillion tons of CO2. Even if just half of that made it into the atmosphere (the other half going to ocean acidification, weathering, and biomass), we'd have something like 1400ppm in the atmosphere, which is a very stuffy room. And that's just one state. Assume Siberia and Canada has just as much or more.
I think if we extracted every last bit of fossil fuels in the ground, we'd have a CO2 level on the order of 10,000ppm and will have measurably reduced oxygen levels as well.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean, if they're not being used most of the day, you bought too many...
Delivery trucks run during the day mostly. Cities may prohibit deliveries at night for noise reasons. Deliveries at night might be more likely to be stolen, etc. Could be able to fix the first issue with the quietness of EVs perhaps.
* The extremely loud engine and exhaust. (They are loud and unpleasant to listen to - it ain't no Ferrari)
* The slamming of the doors open and closed.
If I hear a loud agricultural sounding engine and then a loud slamming sliding type door... I know it's UPS - 100%. I don't even need to look outside.
Wow, 100k is no small change. Hoping this accelerates the "tipping point" for electric vehicles - in my mind that's when the infrastructure for EVs (e.g. charging stations, or something in the future like battery swaps) actually makes it easier to own than a gas vehicle.
If you're interested in that route, there are a ton of used Chevy Volts on the market now for $15-20k. And PHEVs are great for people in areas without good public charging infra, or who can't afford the current crop of high-range EVs (the latter being my case).
If instead you live on i.e. the West Coast, and can afford a high range pure-EV, you can go almost everywhere on electricity alone.
For once, mighty Amazon comes late to the show. Germany's parcel service DHL builds up a fleet of small electric delivery vans since 2014: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StreetScooter Living in Bavaria, I see these drive around everywhere now.
In Chicago, FedEx has had electric delivery vans since at least 2005.
I saw a UPS truck in Nevada last month that I thought was a regular UPS truck until it sped away almost silently. I guess UPS has been converting its fleet, but I don't know for how long..
For once, mighty Amazon comes late to the show. Germany's parcel service DHL builds up a fleet of small electric delivery vans since 2014: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StreetScooter Living in Bavaria, I see these drive around everywhere now.
Good for DHL. I would buy such a thing if they sold them to consumers.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
tipping point, indeed... and not in a good way: let's take 100,000 vehicles with (I'm conservatively guessing) a 100 kWh battery each, that's a 100,000,000 kWh load each night! 100,000 Mega watt-hours is roughly the output of about 10 nuclear power plants in a 24H period. Unless a lot of new capacity comes online, it could easily overwhelm the existing electrical grid's capacity. Let's hope this is a gradual transiti…
Note that 100kWh/day * 100,000 vehicles is 10,000MWh/day. If a typical nuclear power plant output is about 500MW, that's 12,000MWh/day.