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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

#371

Post by askvictor »

akira2501 wrote: post #307
fencepost wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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…

> 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 times per day.. and during one of those legs the truck is fully loaded with possibly up to as much as 20,000lbs of trash.

Swappable batteries at the dump depot? There's a company in Australia doing swappable batteries for trucks (https://thedriven.io/2022/03/25/worlds-largest-electric-truc...)

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

#372

Post by legitster »

notinfuriated wrote: post #211
ericmay wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of just being argumentative you should read my original post and the post I responded to.

Yeah, I don't understand this pattern of comment-making on the internet. For whatever reason, your comment was downvoted slightly so then you got targeted by people over and over again, even in subsequent replies, with the least generous interpretation of every comment made. I suspect your initial comment also triggered a reaction in saying "it's not a big deal", to which a bunch of people thought, "Oh yeah, well it'…

HN's guidelines are to downvote if something doesn't add to the discussion.

I think in this case it's fine to argue something "is not a big deal" but I think you have got to add more to the discussion than "technology always gets better".

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

#373

Post by askvictor »

sh1mmer wrote: post #305

For these industrial use cases I’m surprised hot swappable batteries aren’t being considered more. Are these current trucks doing 12 hour shifts plowing snow and hauling garbage on a single tank of diesel, or are they refueling? I get that fast changing infrastructure is hard and waiting 15-90 minutes to charge a battery isn’t ideal. But couldn’t they stop to swap out batteries or have another vehicle meet each truck…

They start and stop a lot, with a really heavy load. That's brutal for fuel efficiency, but with regenerative braking, would surely be much less of a factor.

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

#375

Post by vinaypai »

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…

You would need to install power lines on every single street for that to work. Streetcars for transportation can just electrify a few routes.

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

#376

Post by vel0city »

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…

Staten Island isn't as big as Raleigh or Atlanta. Its much smaller population and area-wise, focusing on just their metro areas. Denser for sure, but not larger.

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

#377

Post by nashashmi »

ars wrote: post #146
nashashmi wrote: post #20

Small problems. They should have several battery rotation stations spread out everywhere. I wonder if their trucks can do 8 hours of driving without refueling?

So you think they should buy triple the number of battery packs they actually need, in order to support snow plowing 3 or 4 times a year? Oh, and don't forget creating fully staffed battery depots scattered around the already very full city?

It is not just for snow plowing. It is also for garbage collection. At snow plow time, other city fleets of trucks are not moving. So that supplies the other battery packs.

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

#378

Post by rootusrootus »

j33zusjuice wrote: post #323
jeffbee wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is also how they do it in Zürich. You walk your garbage down to the corner. Recycling is the same way. The only thing that gets picked up from houses is paper and cardboard. In NYC, in very dense areas like of Manhattan, I would expect it would make sense to put a container in the bottom of every building, but in rowhouse areas it is reasonable to expect the occupants to walk down to the corner. The main thing i…

And neither of those things happen in the USA. We kicked England out like 250 years ago, and our general belief is that Europe hasn’t had a good idea since they chose to colonize the Americas. Reasonable people think this is stupid, but we have a lot of unreasonable people here.

If I'm to believe what I read online, especially here on HN, Europe has everything figured out and is so much better than the US. So yes, we do have a lot of unreasonable people here (on HN).

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

#379

Post by prmoustache »

jacquesm wrote: post #228
wolverine876 wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed on all points, though I notice everyone says they are so expensive and hard to maintain, but nobody cites anything (not a criticism - I have no idea myself). However, you don't need availability on every street, just enough to charge the vehicles sufficiently for the smaller streets.

Arnhem in NL and Riga in Latvia, both cities I spend a lot of time in still have them, but I wonder for how long. They're pretty iconic but every few years there is debate about whether or not it is still worth it. Another problem I forgot to mention is that these systems are not very flexible in dealing with mishaps, you can't overtake another trolley bus so if one has a problem the whole system grinds to a halt. An…

Trolley buses in Lausanne are(were?) equipped with small auxiliary ice engines that would take over in case of loss of power. In the hills with passengers it was just enough for the bus to go at walking speed but that was enough to move out of the way or overtake a stranded vehicle.

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

#380

Post by RC_ITR »

TylerE wrote: post #369
RC_ITR wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Tramlining is when the topography of the road causes cars to move differently than how they are steered (somewhat similarly to tram tracks) and has nothing to do with overhead electric or actual trams.

https://www.tirerack.com/tires/tiretech/techpage.jsp?techid=...

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