351–360 of 579 posts
It gets even more complicated when EV fires happen in places like garages under buildings, because that makes it hard for fire fighters to dump the 40,000+ gallons of water needed to keep battery fires cool enough that they don't explode.
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…
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?
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I've been saying this for years. 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 woul…
Hows maintenance cost for hybrids compared to pure ice?
In some cases reliability actually improves, as the extremely reliable electric motor can replace things such as reverse gear and the starter motor, reducing complexity of the ICE system and transmission. The only parts being serviced that you pay for continue to be the gas bits exactly as before.
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People in row houses can't walk to the corner of the street? That's how it works in much of the Netherlands, underground bins spread over suburbia, which is like 90% row house. Works fine. I wish we had it here (still need to put my bin/bags out on the designated day).
By row house do you mean something like this? https://goo.gl/maps/XTDwyAZy6GoqPRXt7 That's 4-5 stories of ~4 apartments per floor, times however many of those buildings fit in the 900ft/247m length of a block. There's nowhere near enough space on the corner (here's the corner: https://goo.gl/maps/aszPHqrQVGftcqTCA ) to collect that much garbage, much less to do it three times a week. Yes they could build big undergro…
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> street car power lines can be a nightmare in densely crowded cities with a lot of pedestrian traffic and tightly packed buildings. It would be a nightmare to implement in a place like New York City They've been used in dense cities for generations. How hard can it be? > require an enormous geographic footprint What footprint is needed for additional overhead wires?
I wonder is it is more of less efficient for land use as they don’t need fuelling and the associated land that uses, but do need a pair of lamp posts every 10m.
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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. https://www.mbta.com/news/2022-01-27/beginning-march-2022-mb...
Yeah having street car power lines can be a nightmare in densely crowded cities with a lot of pedestrian traffic and tightly packed buildings. It would be a nightmare to implement in a place like New York City, and I'm not surprised that cities that have them are slowly removing them. Don't get me wrong, I think they are a great solution electrically and for efficiency / sustainability, but require an enormous geogra…
EVs in a place as dense as NYC seems like a risk. Battery fires can burn for hours and entire blocks might need to be closed off and evacuated due to the risk of battery explosions. It gets even more complicated when EV fires happen in places like garages under buildings, because that makes it hard for fire fighters to dump the 40,000+ gallons of water needed to keep battery fires cool enough that they don't explode.
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The issue is that garbage trucks drive serve each street equally often, for the most part. There's no streets where garbage trucks drive more often. It's not the situation that 20% of streets generate 80% of garbage that needs to be picked up [1]. It's block after block of townhomes and mid-rise apartments that are leaving out trash bags. Overhead lines inherently lend themselves to consolidated routes, but garbage d…
> It's not the situation that 20% of streets generate 80% of garbage that needs to be picked up Not that number exactly, but many streets or blocks have no trash - office buidings, the highrise apts you mention, parks, highways, etc. And it's time, not distance that matters - you can charge the trucks where they spend the most time. My point is that you don't need 100% coverage or likely near that. A drawback is that…
The fact that it's time, not distance, that matters makes matters event worse: garbage trucks will spend a brief period of time on a major thoroughfare to get to their trash pickup zone, but then spend hours and and hours working through block and after block of residential and low density (for NYC) neighborhoods with no overlap between truck routes. There are no roads where you can deploy power lines that will charge garbage trucks for any significant stretch of time. The only place where garbage trucks do spend long stretches of time is the depot: and you just need normal EV charges there. The low-density, distributed nature of garbage pickup fundamentally is at odds with overhead lines.
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> It's not the parking spots - residents have zero interest in walking to the end of their block with garbage. Nobody would have to do that. They'd have to walk an extra 10 ft from the front of their building to the curb. Unless they live in a multifamily building (which is most of the city), in which case the building superintendent would do that. > Have you been in NY? There's garbage everywhere. Because that's the…
> They'd have to walk an extra 10 ft from the front of their building to the curb. I mentioned in another post it's mostly row houses, sometimes with the 1st and 2nd floor separate living areas. Not huge apartments - you can't put a dumpster in front of every house. The dumpster would go at the end of the block, no one will support walking that far with their garbage. Not when they are used to a different way.
This is incorrect. That does not describe the majority of housing units in NYC.
> The dumpster would go at the end of the block, no one will support walking that far with their garbage. Not when they are used to a different way.
I don't know why you're so confidently making this claim, because that's not what's being proposed or being done. There already is a pilot program for containerized trash collection, and - surprise - there's not just one container per block.
