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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

#461

Post by canadianfella »

Dalewyn wrote: post #419
cogman10 wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

If the EV plows aren't drop-in replacements for ICE plows, then they are not fit for service. Be an EV fanboi all you want. There are practical tasks that must be accomplished, and if one option achieves those tasks while another doesn't then the one that couldn't needs to either meet the competition or drop out.

[dead]

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

#462

Post by maxerickson »

ilamont wrote: post #217
racnid wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of mine & industrial vehicles are electrified. In underground mining it's attractive because the vehicle is in a very confined space (easy to run cables to) and it's doubly attractive because of the emissions issue (venting underground). It can make sense for above ground too. But for aircraft and ships you're likely correct.

I was thinking more of the giant open-pit mining excavators and trucks. However, I see that people are attempting to bring EVs to this market: The mining industry is in a full swing transition towards a low environmental impact mode of operation, and its key players are working to phase out diesel vehicles, which are responsible for significant greenhouse gas emissions and generate high operating costs. Currently, th…

Mega-trucks too:

https://investors.caterpillar.com/news/news-details/2022/Cat...

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

#463

Post by Kon-Peki »

cogman10 wrote: post #443
mike_d wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if we had some type of fluid that carried potential energy that we could quickly pour into a giant tank on the trucks? Some things will just never go electric. Like fire trucks, ambulances, tow trucks, power company trucks, etc. that have to be able to function for weeks at a time in a grid down situation. Dead dinosaurs are the best answer for some problems, just not every car on the road.

> fire trucks Would be excellent EVs. They have super low millage and you'd not have to worry about things like stagnant fuel. > ambulances Generally low mileage vehicles, no idea why you'd not be able to use them as EVs. > tow trucks Perhaps the only one that would be bad given the amount of power required to tow a vehicle. > power company trucks Excellent option for EVs because they almost never haul equipment and…

> fire trucks

> Would be excellent EVs. They have super low millage and you'd not have to worry about things like stagnant fuel.

Yeah, so I don’t know much of anything about NYC, but I used to live in Chicago and did some volunteer work that put me in a fire station for a few hours every few months. Fire trucks are busy vehicles. They probably would indeed be excellent EVs, but they get used a lot (even if actual fires are rare). Also, firefighters are used to plugging them in! Modern fire stations maintain good internal air quality by having an exhaust system that connects a hose to the diesel exhaust of the fire truck when it comes into the station and detaches when it leaves.

On the other hand, an extended family member is the fire chief in a small western town. Those fire trucks would be terrible EVs, as they spend days or weeks at a time out in the field dealing with large scale wildfires.

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

#464

Post by angry_octet »

jeffbee wrote: post #80
chitowneats wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It never ceases to amaze me that the self styled "Greatest City on Earth" can't come up with a reasonable solution for its garbage.

They also call it "the city that never sleeps" but they misleadingly omit the reason.

Except that it does sleep, and deeply... The bars close really early, cabs get very hard to find shortly after, the streets of Manhattan are deserted. The only thing that’s 24H is some rent a cop telling you not to sit on some park bench.

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

#465

Post by rad_gruchalski »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #429
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 or third rails for every lane of every roadway? Do you think adding hundreds of KG of batteries to two billion cars is more reasonable? We produce enough conductors to wire every street in America in a couple years. At the current rate of battery production, replacing all cars in the world will take over 100 years.

kg, not KG. K is Kelvin, G is giga - this unit does not make sense.

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

#466

Post by angry_octet »

nine_k wrote: post #106
jollyllama wrote: post #2

TIL some trash trucks are also snowplows in NYC https://www.trailer-bodybuilders.com/archive/article/2172888...

Snow is a rare enough problem in NYC (1-2 weeks in a year), and having a whole fleet of dedicated snow-removing machines is not reasonable.

But a few dedicated snow machines would make the work go so much faster. They’re more effective also because they actually remove the snow (in concert with a heap of regular construction dump trucks) rather than just shoving it onto the gutter/sidewalk. Sure, in NYC it melts fairly quickly, but for main avenues it would be a huge improvement.

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

#467

Post by manigandham »

cogman10 wrote: post #443
mike_d wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if we had some type of fluid that carried potential energy that we could quickly pour into a giant tank on the trucks? Some things will just never go electric. Like fire trucks, ambulances, tow trucks, power company trucks, etc. that have to be able to function for weeks at a time in a grid down situation. Dead dinosaurs are the best answer for some problems, just not every car on the road.

> fire trucks Would be excellent EVs. They have super low millage and you'd not have to worry about things like stagnant fuel. > ambulances Generally low mileage vehicles, no idea why you'd not be able to use them as EVs. > tow trucks Perhaps the only one that would be bad given the amount of power required to tow a vehicle. > power company trucks Excellent option for EVs because they almost never haul equipment and…

What this basically does is (in a grid-down situation) is move the fuel usage from the truck's engine to the station's generator, greatly limiting the vehicles overall mobility precisely when they might be most needed.

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

#468

Post by ajsnigrutin »

cogman10 wrote: post #445
CPLX wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus the drivers. Plus the fact that the streets are full of snow at the time which in addition to making the whole thing timely complicates things logistically quite a bit.

You don't need more drivers, just more trucks. A driver brings a truck to a charge location, grabs a truck that's been charging. Easy peasy. There's no reason to have drivers wait for the trucks to fully charge.

But those drivers still have to drive to the charging station and then back with the second truck... through new york traffic... on a snowy day.

Good luck with that.

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

#469

Post by angry_octet »

wolverine876 wrote: post #216
kkfx wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a nice point for some aspects: we have (had) all over the world trolleybus of various kinds, those on rails have some co-existence with cars and asphalts issues (like slippery passages for bikes, complex ops when the asphalt need to be re-do etc) but beside that have worked HYPER well for decades. Those on tires have proven to be full of issues to a point most who have had them have given up. I see so far no f…

Trolley rails seem carefully designed to be deathtraps for bicycles, as if someone looked up bicycle wheel widths and depths, grip on varius surfaces, etc., then tested iteration to come up with the rails. Still, if it reduces carbon output, I'm all for it.

There is usually separation between tram tracks and cycling lanes. It really isn’t a problem unless you mix them -- the only place I’ve had a wheel caught is Amsterdam, where pedestrians/bike/trams share the space.

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

#470

Post by fwungy »

cogman10 wrote: post #443
mike_d wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if we had some type of fluid that carried potential energy that we could quickly pour into a giant tank on the trucks? Some things will just never go electric. Like fire trucks, ambulances, tow trucks, power company trucks, etc. that have to be able to function for weeks at a time in a grid down situation. Dead dinosaurs are the best answer for some problems, just not every car on the road.

> fire trucks Would be excellent EVs. They have super low millage and you'd not have to worry about things like stagnant fuel. > ambulances Generally low mileage vehicles, no idea why you'd not be able to use them as EVs. > tow trucks Perhaps the only one that would be bad given the amount of power required to tow a vehicle. > power company trucks Excellent option for EVs because they almost never haul equipment and…

Target response times for fire trucks are measured in minutes. Fire damage increases on an exponential curve, a couple minutes can make a huge difference when lives and homes are on the line.

EVs are a great technology for urban settings in moderate weather conditions, like in the big California cities where travel needs can be predicted, e.g. I travel Jamming them into applications for which they are not yet viable is a recipe for failure. People will only tolerate so much cost and inconvenience for the sake of climate change, it is important we not waste it on foolishness, because it's of urgent importance that we succeed in addressing it.

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