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

gothamist.com

391–400 of 579 posts

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

#391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I dunno if "farmers as a whole" is acceptable, nor necessary. I was just speaking of NYC garbage trucks.

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

#392
post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Would you believe that every house requires power lines to be run to it too? It only seems like a daunting problem on roads because we don't already do it.

A much bigger problem than the lines are the switches. Switching of trolley buses at intersections is not really all that well solved of a problem as is, and the solutions available right now (up to the most sophisticated based on radio signaling) are a primary failure point, maintenance intensive, and expensive and complex enough that the cost of a four-way intersection set up for four-way electric travel is going to be pretty formidable.

Further, electric lines exist mostly on shared poles. For safety reasons, shared poles require a buffer space between MV and distribution voltage power lines and communications lines. This means that the typically 600 VDC trolley bus power cannot be added at the level of communications lines (well, can be with some work, but in practice it is expensive and complex) without compromising this safety buffer, requiring deenergization when communications utility work is underway. In many cases they cannot be near communications cables even if communications work is prohibited when the system is energized, because of the risk of inadvertent contact putting 600VDC on coaxial or telephone lines which could create fatal situations. Additional expense is required to mitigate this problem.

Trolley lines also have more complex physical loading requirements than power lines because they must cope with the lateral forces of vehicles, so they usually need to be anchored to both sides of the street on crosswires, to poles that were engineered for that use. Most of the time attaching trolley lines to existing poles will not be feasible for these reasons and they will need to either go on dedicated supports, be attached to buildings (the engineering and real estate paperwork for this is complex), or have existing poles replaced with ones engineered to support trolley lines as well.

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

#393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This more than doubles the complexity, increases weight, has much lower battery capacity, and still sticks you with the maintenance work required for the ICE. Plus gas is a very volatile mix that degrades; you must run the ICE regularly to ensure the tank gets cycled.

If you know ahead of time that the engine is going to run infrequently, there are lots of ways to mitigate this. The ICE is tantamount to a backup generator, and there are very reliable backup generators. > This more than doubles the complexity, increases weight I mean, US consumers already put up with this when it came to automatic transmissions. But the cost/maintenance problems were a fair trade-off for convenienc…

> US consumers already put up with this when it came to automatic transmissions.

Europeans, too. Automatics crossed over 50% in the last couple years.

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

#395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree about the trolleys on rails and obstacles, which I've seen for myself, but electric vehicles would likely have some battery and run on tires, allowing diversions from the route. Anyway, I'm guessing it's been considered and I'd love to see the study.

I've been reading a bit more about it in the meantime: so, the trolley network in Arnhem is slowly diminishing in size, but it's still there and it will likely be there for quite a while to come. They are looking at ways to use a combination BEV / trolley system to allow the buses to recharge when they're on the line so they can depart from the route for longer stretches. The maneuvering in case of trouble situation…

I think that battery vehicles with substantial batteries (and so could be run on lines without ANY overhead infrastructure in a pinch) but that usually charge via overhead lines on a portion of the route is the ideal option. No charging time, no massive new infrastructure (the catenary only needed on a small fraction of total served lines) but also full flexibility. Actually better than fossil fuel variants which need usually to be refueled at the end of the shift at a depot or whatever.

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

#396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in an apartment. I drive a full EV and the 200+ miles range allows me to get away with charging at public chargers intermittently rather than having to plug in basically every night. If I had a plug in hybrid, it wouldn’t get plugged in.

If you could charge at home with your own dedicated charger, would you plug in a plug-in hybrid?

[deleted]

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

#398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

few cities have ALL streets electrified. usually just main corridors where buses will operate. These buses usually have some battery, but not a lot, and coming on and off the wires is often a manual procedure.

You don't need all streets electrified, just enough to keep the vehicles charged.

So, every time that the bus turns onto a non-electrified street, get out of the bus to take the wires off?

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

#399

There's a lot of discussion here, but I haven't seen anyone link this slide deck which (albeit a couple of years old) does a great job describing DSNY's efforts to electrify and some of their results with pilot programs: https://dsny.cityofnewyork.us/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/DSN... A lot of the things being proposed as solutions by posters here are already being tried in the real world. They're not running long-dis…

> We found that they could not plow the snow effectively – they basically conked out after four hours. We need them to go 12 hours This doesn't sound like they are trying to do short routes or fast charging stations. Rather, it sounds like they want to run their EV plows like they run their regular plows. The majority of LI batteries can be recharged in 1 hour with enough juice. Even if you say "well, it's a truck, s…

The city has to then add trucks to cover this downtime. It's not only the 3 hours of charging every day, it's the time the truck takes to drive to a station, so maybe 4 hours a day.

NYC has 2800 snow plows. They would have to increase their fleet another 33% or so. That's 900 to 1000 trucks for a tax-funded service. This extra cost excludes the change in logistics, etc.

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

#400
post #28

> “ 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.

Yes! I love my plug-in hybrid (Toyota RAV4 Prime). It gets about 40 miles on battery and then switches to gas. I've managed to drive 9000 miles on 3 tanks of gas (with a much larger energy bill, of course!) and I always have the confidence I could go on a long drive without depending on either slow, busy, or rare charging stations. I now even drive more slowly to maximize my EV range.

I wanted a RAV4 Prime. But they are difficult to get, and without a credit they no longer make financial sense. The TCO is lower just buying the hybrid.
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