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NYC officials say they can't find EV garbage trucks powerful enough to plow snow

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Re: NYC officials say they can't find EV garbage trucks powerful enough to plow snow

#261

Post by moffkalast »

petermcneeley wrote: post #133
mabbo wrote: post #104

Why are they using garbage trucks to plow snow? Looks, I get that I'm biased being in Canada, but do they understand that you can buy dedicated vehicles for plowing snow ? They're called... snowplows. They're pretty fantastic. You need garbage trucks every day, all year. Electrify those. You need snowplows on a handful of days per year- and that number is falling thanks to climate change. So buy purpose-built snowplo…

Why have garbage trucks at all when you can have a series of tubes to transport garbage?

Well for one the tubes are not something you just dump something on, and if you don't understand, those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your garbage in, it gets in line and it's going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

Re: NYC officials say they can't find EV garbage trucks powerful enough to plow snow

#262

Post by josephorjoe »

SoftTalker wrote: post #195
yepguy wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do they even have their own fleet of garbage trucks, though? I'm pretty sure the garbage trucks where I live are all privately owned.

Waste hauling in NYC used to be run by the mob. It still may be to some extent, but that history has yet to be un-f*cked. They don't even use dumpsters, they just pile bags of trash on the sidewalk. And then wonder why they have a huge rat problem.

Most of NYC does not have the physical space for dumpsters or the roadway access for dumpster lifting garbage trucks.

There are some large buildings where it would be practical, but much of the residential housing consists of buildings with <10 apartments and no alleyways (let alone driveways).

Re: NYC officials say they can't find EV garbage trucks powerful enough to plow snow

#263

Post by Ichthypresbyter »

SoftTalker wrote: post #195
yepguy wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do they even have their own fleet of garbage trucks, though? I'm pretty sure the garbage trucks where I live are all privately owned.

Waste hauling in NYC used to be run by the mob. It still may be to some extent, but that history has yet to be un-f*cked. They don't even use dumpsters, they just pile bags of trash on the sidewalk. And then wonder why they have a huge rat problem.

The mob ran waste hauling for businesses who did (and still do) have to contract with private companies to take away their waste- the big trial that is supposed to have got rid of most of the mob control of this business was in the mid-90s.

Residential trash in NYC is hauled away by city employees at the Department of Sanitation, and has been since the late 19th century.

Both, though, expect trash (whether from a business or from an apartment building) to be simply piled up in bags on the sidewalk.

Re: NYC officials say they can't find EV garbage trucks powerful enough to plow snow

#264

Post by culi »

rsstack wrote: post #110
mabbo wrote: post #104

Why are they using garbage trucks to plow snow? Looks, I get that I'm biased being in Canada, but do they understand that you can buy dedicated vehicles for plowing snow ? They're called... snowplows. They're pretty fantastic. You need garbage trucks every day, all year. Electrify those. You need snowplows on a handful of days per year- and that number is falling thanks to climate change. So buy purpose-built snowplo…

NYC has 30,000 streets and only a handful of days of snow in the year. By having garbage trucks that can deal with a few inches of snow, you avoid the need of buying dozens of dedicated vehicles that will rot 360 days a year.

I was gonna suggest that they could simply share the snow plow vehicles for the rest of the year with other countries (like how we share firefighters with Australia) but then I realized the part of the world that would most likely need them when NYC doesn't is the opposite hemisphere and those vehicles are not easy to ship lol

Re: NYC officials say they can't find EV garbage trucks powerful enough to plow snow

#265

Post by ibejoeb »

pixl97 wrote: post #73
anm89 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Peak torque isn't the issue. It's how long the batteries can sustain sufficient torque

Cold weather and battery life are two things that do not get along.

That, and when it snows in NYC, we tend lose power, so I don't know what the contingency is there. Diesel generators, I suppose. Is that better?

Re: NYC officials say they can't find EV garbage trucks powerful enough to plow snow

#266

Post by culi »

gen220 wrote: post #247
mabbo wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not wrong. I agree with you. I just see that as a better option than continuing to burn fuel in trucks that don't need it 360 days per year.

Might the better option be a hybrid truck, which runs on electricity 90% of the time but has the capacity to use fossil fuels in situations such as these? (snow is but one example, I can imagine other exceptional circumstances where such a vehicle might need an extra boost). To balance your suggestion, the environmental cost of constructing, shipping, and maintaining a fleet of single-purpose snow plows is not close…

Along the same line, can we modularize these trucks? Like the specific parts useful for snowplowing, can we take them off the rest of the year (less gas wasted) and add them back on only when needed

Re: NYC officials say they can't find EV garbage trucks powerful enough to plow snow

#267

Post by simmonmt »

iancmceachern wrote: post #245
mabbo wrote: post #104

Why are they using garbage trucks to plow snow? Looks, I get that I'm biased being in Canada, but do they understand that you can buy dedicated vehicles for plowing snow ? They're called... snowplows. They're pretty fantastic. You need garbage trucks every day, all year. Electrify those. You need snowplows on a handful of days per year- and that number is falling thanks to climate change. So buy purpose-built snowplo…

Because it's brilliant. They need to do both: Drive a big truck around the city streets pushing a plow to clear them of snow and ice And Drive a big truck around to collect garbage It's much more efficient to do both at the same time, use the same trucks and skilled labor to run them. It's a classic two birds one stone situation

Nit: They don't do both at the same time. The trucks are either plowing snow or they're picking up trash. That's why the trash piles up until the snow is cleared. After big storms you can end up with pretty epic piles of garbage collecting on sidewalks.

Re: NYC officials say they can't find EV garbage trucks powerful enough to plow snow

#268

Post by KMag »

mabbo wrote: post #123
legitster wrote: post #11

> “ 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.

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 (ar…

> 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).

Nit: it's the low average speed of stop-go driving (less air resistance) that makes city driving more efficient for EVs. You'd get even better efficiency for the same average speed if it weren't stop-go driving.

Re: NYC officials say they can't find EV garbage trucks powerful enough to plow snow

#269

Post by smileysteve »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #170
alcover wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> only a handful of days of snow in the year I know modern economy has gone full-JIT but I naively wish we could just stop in this case and.. wait. Then this question of truck fleet would be moot.

> naively wish we could just stop in this case and.. wait Congratulations, you shut off logistics and emergency services for a population the size of Virginia.

There's a lot to be said that we should rethink logistics and emergency services to use other modes if it's more resilient to severe weather, supply chain shortages (fuel) - or everyday things like traffic and construction

Re: NYC officials say they can't find EV garbage trucks powerful enough to plow snow

#270

Post by thomascgalvin »

rsstack wrote: post #144
alcover wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> only a handful of days of snow in the year I know modern economy has gone full-JIT but I naively wish we could just stop in this case and.. wait. Then this question of truck fleet would be moot.

First: I don't go out in snow beyond a couple of blocks, things can wait. But that's me. Second: Just because the snow stops falling doesn't mean the problem goes away. The snow can take a couple of weeks to melt (essentially until the next rain, or a hot enough day), so stopping and waiting for nature to resolve the situation on its own would shut down the city for a month or so every year.

I wonder how much it would cost to heat the roads rather than plow them, and how that would compare to the current solution, long-term. NYC already has an extensive underground infrastructure ...
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