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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

#361

Post by heavyset_go »

SllX wrote: post #129
ecshafer wrote: post #70

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…

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…

In 1875, Philadelphia had electric street car lines going through every numbered street in the city, and through every cross street in central Philly[1].

[1] https://i.redd.it/zidqa2mbmav31.png

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

#362

Post by Manuel_D »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #200
chitowneats wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't even hear people from LA or SF boast the way they do in New Yawk.

> don't even hear people from LA or SF boast the way they do in New Yawk Every borough except Staten Island is larger than San Francisco [1][2]. Manhattan together with Queens or Brooklyn is bigger than LA, the second-largest city in America. (Staten Island is about the size of Raleigh or Atlanta.) New York solves problems at a scale no other American city comes close to imagining. [1] https://www.nyc.gov/site/planni…

The LA municipal boundary is a small sliver of what people broadly call "Los Angeles. Here's Manhattan projected over the LA metro: https://i.imgur.com/ff7Vs1k.jpeg

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

#363

Post by pimlottc »

fencepost wrote: post #107
ecshafer wrote: post #70

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…

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 tr…

It’s also great for noise reduction, particular since they often run in the mornings.

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

#364

Post by SpeedilyDamage »

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.

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.

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

#365

Post by StrictDabbler »

lostlogin wrote: post #330
akira2501 wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so EVs eliminate idling. The vehicle, when stopped, has other functions to perform. It has hydraulic lifters and compactors that need quite a bit of power to operate. It's a working platform, not a simple garbage transportation mechanism. Even to the extent is isn't for transportation, see how far away the dump is from your home. That distance has to be covered twice at least once a day, and possibly as much as 3 t…

Somewhere as densely populated as NY is surely best served by those rubbish bins that empty into a trash vacuum tunnel. Massive upfront cost (infrastructure and NY seems to be a bit fraught) and also likely expensive to run, but with high population density it’s got to be better. However this would then have a fleet of snow trucks that weren’t used 99% of the time, as the rubbish was mostly sorted. https://en.m.wikip…

"[A] bit fraught" is an understatement. Any excavation under the right of way in New York immediately runs into undocumented tunnels, steam conduits, sewers, and water pipelines from the past 400 years of development.

They're trying to map these things out but it will probably take more than a decade. Until that happens you can't even begin to budget for a new city-wide underground infrastructure project. Any project has to be point to point and focused.

Let alone the issue of the rats.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-08-10/nobody-kn...

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

#366

Post by heavyset_go »

tempestn wrote: post #358
heavyset_go wrote: post #351

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.

That small risk seems better to me in a densely populated area than burning fuels known to cause harmful fumes in their standard operation.

You're mistaken if you think I believe that gas powered vehicles should be operated in Manhattan at all.

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

#367

Post by jdc0589 »

SpeedilyDamage wrote: post #364
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.

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.

thats what will happen. Think about farmers, people in more rural areas, homesteaders, etc... There is no high capacity supercharger network there and isn't likely to be. ICE machinery is incredibly important to them.

A total conversion to electric isn't feasible in a lot of places like that.

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

#368

Post by TylerE »

lostlogin wrote: post #330
akira2501 wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so EVs eliminate idling. The vehicle, when stopped, has other functions to perform. It has hydraulic lifters and compactors that need quite a bit of power to operate. It's a working platform, not a simple garbage transportation mechanism. Even to the extent is isn't for transportation, see how far away the dump is from your home. That distance has to be covered twice at least once a day, and possibly as much as 3 t…

Somewhere as densely populated as NY is surely best served by those rubbish bins that empty into a trash vacuum tunnel. Massive upfront cost (infrastructure and NY seems to be a bit fraught) and also likely expensive to run, but with high population density it’s got to be better. However this would then have a fleet of snow trucks that weren’t used 99% of the time, as the rubbish was mostly sorted. https://en.m.wikip…

Between the subways, underground rail lines, etc, you’d probably have to put them 100ft underground to get clearance. That’s 100ft through solid rock. Great for building skyscrapers, not fun for digging.

Ironically one of the largest vacuum trays system in the world IS in NYC… but it serves Roosevelt Island, not the “mainland”

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

#369

Post by TylerE »

RC_ITR wrote: post #335
dragonwriter wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. So, your solution for EVs is overheard wires or third rails for every lane of every roadway?

>So, your solution for EVs is overheard wires I think that is a much more solvable problem than charging and batteries yes. Do I think it will happen in my lifetime? No. But there's a reason that we don't have battery-powered trains, and it's not like in 2022, cars are that much more "off-road" than trains are "off-track"

Roads with tram lines are short to drive on. There’s even a phenomenon called “tram lining” where the road is toomhumped in the middle and makes lane changes sketchy.

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

#370

Post by legitster »

LarryMullins wrote: post #94
legitster wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about this. I don't think battery swapping scales up very well. Firstly, I know someone who works on Daimler's electric trucks and he assures me that their electric powertrains are EXTREMELY dangerous just from the amount of power represented. Union operators have expressed negative interest in connecting/disconnecting the batteries outside of the factory. Secondly, the economics - the battery pack on a…

> Union operators have expressed negative interest in connecting/disconnecting the batteries outside of the factory. To be fair, union operators express negative interest in anybody outside their union doing anything that might be construed as otherwise the union's work.

Well, in this case, someone was really badly electrocuted when trying to connect the power leads between the truck battery and motor. So customers apparently "noped" out of wanting them self-serviceable.
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