37 ms·

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

227 points by IronWolve 4y ago

djtriptych 4y ago
This smells to me at least a little bit like union pressure to slow the transition to electric vehicles, which is just a hop from fully autonomous city vehicles, putting them all out of work forever.
- petermcneeley 4y ago
  Seems like a random excuse to Trash talk unions.
  - djtriptych 4y ago
    Well, a union rep is quoted in the article, which was weird. His statement was also a little weird. The conclusions and the math involved don't really add up for me. They laid the groundwork for a fight against _any_ conversion to electric vehicles by warning the city council about the possibly prohibitive cost of installing a charger network... I'm not sure it's too outlandish to postulate that the union would act in their own interest here. I think any plan to convert to autonomous vehicles should include a plan for these workers. But I don't think you get to be Sanitation Commissioner in NYC without union support.
    - petermcneeley 4y ago
      Perhaps the union organizers think this but it doesnt really make much sense given that the trains (subway) in NYC are the first thing I would automate and apparently still have drivers. Automating trash pick-up in NYC is probably harder than L5 autonomous driving.
      - djtriptych 4y ago
        It's hard now, but this is a 20 year plan to replace the fleet. Already a budget item for the city, and, possibly, the frontline for union concerns about automation.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > union pressure to slow the transition to electric vehicles, which is just a hop from fully autonomous city vehicles Wouldn’t this incentivise earlier fleet turnover to electric? If you’ve just bought an electric fleet, it’s tougher to justify turning it over again for autonomous only.
  - djtriptych 4y ago
    Interesting wrinkle I'd have to think any fully electric car is a better target for autonomous retrofitting, because the drivetrain is already completely fly-by-wire? Using a random estimate, a $100,000/vehicle autonomous retrofit probably pays for itself in like a year. The initial outlay of let's say a half billion to replace the city's fleet with EVs is a much bigger hurdle.
- redox99 4y ago
  How is it just a hop from fully autonomous city vehicles? The sensor suite and software doesn't really care about the type of engine. Waymo's Chrysler Pacificas are hybrids in fact.
jollyllama 4y ago
TIL some trash trucks are also snowplows in NYC https://www.trailer-bodybuilders.com/archive/article/21728886/trash-trucks-plow-snow-in-new-york https://www.trailer-bodybuilders.com/archive/article/2172888...
- nine_k 4y ago
  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.
  - angry_octet 4y ago
    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.
    - sethhochberg 4y ago
      "A few" undersells the scale of DSNY's operation. They've already got a few hundred specialized salt/plow trucks on top of the thousands in the mixed garbage truck fleet, and a couple dozen snow melters, about 80 dump trucks, and a few hundred front-end loaders. They recently bought about 50 narrow plows just for bike lanes and bridge sidewalks. After heavy snow are mostly plowed, its a very common sight on busy city blocks to see snow hauling/removal and melting happening overnight. Its just that nothing related to their snow removal obligations is small stuff.
      - angry_octet 4y ago
        If they had even a 10th of the organisation of Montreal they wouldn't have such problems. They're relying on the wrong tools. https://theprepared.org/features-feed/montreal-snow https://theprepared.org/features-feed/montreal-snow And this article makes it seem like a huge investment, but in reality these workers do other jobs most of the year, in construction, roadworks, gardening, waste management, etc. It really seems like NY are wedded to their old ways -- something that was a sensible reuse of an asset (garbage trucks) has solidified into the only possible way to do it. It might be bureaucracy and unions, unimaginative leadership, or inability to allocate the cost due to politics, but it isn't technical.
danielfoster 4y ago
Why does critical infrastructure need to be among the first to “go green?”
- quantified 4y ago
  Not that it needs to go first. It's visible and it's possible for a small number of decision-makers to decide and have an impact over a larger swath of infrastructure. 1000 vehicles can be the result of 10 people deciding, not 1000 people deciding.
  - LarryMullins 4y ago
    "Critical infrastructure" is critical because it has some job more important than being a billboard for a cause. If you can make it a billboard without compromising it's primary function, then great, but obviously EV garbage trucks isn't such a case.
    - quantified 4y ago
      EV snowplows isn't a case. I'd be interested if any discussion of electrifying included plowing. One thing that's clear: until battery-powered EVs are able to handle real muscular work (snow removal, hauling, plowing, etc.), diesel engines will be purchased, maintained and fueled by all levels of authority. Exactly how will roads be maintained without graders, pavers, etc.?
      - rootusrootus 4y ago
        It's not about muscle. Electric absolutely mops the floor with diesels. It's simple battery capacity.
- fulafel 4y ago
  We can't afford to make things "go green" serially, we need to move on all fronts at once.
agtorre 4y ago
I wonder what the longer-term solution is for this? More trucks? Exchangeable batteries? Faster charging?
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  All of the above. Must Run trucks should probably be gas turbine hybrids, that can burn anything for fuel (diesel, biodiesel, Jet A, etc), versus full electric. https://www.forbes.com/sites/samabuelsamid/2016/06/07/mack-trucks-to-demonstrate-wrightspeed-turbine-plug-in-hybrid/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/samabuelsamid/2016/06/07/mack-t...
  - jollyllama 4y ago
    This technology has been talked about lately in the context of Abrams tanks which could potentially be used in Ukraine. Doesn't it burn a lot more fuel?
    - toomuchtodo 4y ago
      Yes! But that might be a penalty you’re willing to make versus long turnaround times, especially if you’re in NYC vs a harsh military theater and fueling infra is solved. The truck doesn’t care if the battery slab is pulled and replaced with another battery or a hybrid powertrain, it just cares it has enough power to accelerate and decelerate. https://old.reddit.com/r/WarCollege/comments/r40x15/why_are_gas_turbine_engines_so_rare_in_tanks/ https://old.reddit.com/r/WarCollege/comments/r40x15/why_are_...
  - dsfyu404ed 4y ago
    >ust Run trucks should probably be gas turbine hybrids, that can burn anything for fuel (diesel, biodiesel, Jet A, etc), versus full electric. That's just high tech engineer fantasy though. Turbine is great for steady loads and terrible for cyclical loads which is what a garbage truck does all day. Electrical is great for cyclical but batteries just don't support the energy density to do it all day. You can theoretically bridge the gap real well with a hybrid system but it's only theoretical because in the real world other people's money is not actually an unlimited resource and you're not getting a turbine into anything cheaply. There's a reason you only see them in vehicles that are already fantastically expensive (tanks) and benefit greatly from some of the specific performance attributes. It would be really cool though... Right now the trucks can do 1/3 of what they need with the batteries they have. Commercial vehicles like this are very much constrained by weight. The "nearly free" and shovel ready solution is to just raise the weight limit for the vehicles in question so they can pack on the other 2/3 of the batteries they need and let them roll around at 120k+ all day like concrete trucks. Sure you'll get a little more wear and tear on stuff but this solution doesn't require an unforeseen technology (battery) or economic (turbines) breakthrough.
mariodiana 4y ago
Anyone else remember learning about the "Five Year Plans" of the old Soviet Union?
- whataboutismst 4y ago
  Yes and, unfortunately, conversation around these issues always falls into the Communism vs. Capatalism line of debate rather than ossification of systems consolidation of power - the far more impactful topic.
  - mariodiana 4y ago
    I understand "ossification of systems consolidation of power" as centralized planning, which is socialism, as opposed to laissez-faire capitalism. But, I'm guessing you mean something else. What do you mean?
- xsmasher 4y ago
  What's the similarity? They're both "plans?"
  - mariodiana 4y ago
    Essentially, yes—they're both examples of centralized planning, where the conceit of politicians drives complex economic systems arbitrarily, resulting in chaos.
legitster 4y ago
> “ 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.
- Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
  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 would help considerably when accelerating. It doesn't need to go 0-60 in 20 seconds while carrying 80K lbs like the Tesla Semi claims, but certainly having extra power could be useful in some scenarios. Heck, just having regen braking would be a game changer when going down hills. No noise from a Jake Brake, and no worries about burning up brake pads.
  - xenadu02 4y ago
    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.
    - dekhn 4y ago
      Uh, exactly how long can I go between running the ICE engine before... something(?) happens to my gas and engine?
      - hattmall 4y ago
        It's unlikely to be a one time thing. But recurrently letting gas sit for extended periods of time could cause issues. This mostly only applies to ethanol containing fuels. This is why boats need to use 100% gas. You should do the same for a plugin hybrid if you don't cycle the tank at least every 2-3 weeks. That's all it takes to damage a boat if it sits. Cars will be better but the repeated exposure would certainly take a toll.
ohelabs 4y ago
To me, this is hard to understand. There used to be a saying “right tool for the right job” and I’m sure when Ford released the model T lots of people said “horses can do X while automobiles can not” This is a step … where basically 9 months out of the year there is no emissions in the city and the trucks are effectively the same 1:1 replacement. I also understand that this is a much harder article to write “the city got away with using the wrong tool for the job for years and now has to address the problem they created” (this cuts both ways). It probably seemed like a win win at the time but now a solution will need to be engineered to solve it… im also sure having a hybrid fleet (some ICE and some EV) will be great for times of increased demand and having backups when something breaks…
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- RogerL 4y ago
  They say all of that, and more in the article.
countvonbalzac 4y ago
So we'll wait until batteries improve to the point where they can be used. Not a big deal. In the mean time personal transportation can be fully electrified. The subway has been running on electricity for more than 100 years.
legitster 4y ago
Some more context from an older article: https://www.fleetowner.com/operations/article/21694046/nyc-sanitation-trucks-do-much-more-than-collect-refuse https://www.fleetowner.com/operations/article/21694046/nyc-s... > Because of the requirement that it fuel the entire fleet within an hour in the event of a snow emergency, natural gas hasn’t proved practical especially since CNG fueling stations require too much space in such a dense city, according to Commissioner Garcia. Right now the fleet is about to undertake initial testing with renewable diesel, which is not only better in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, but can be used as a complete replacement for diesel, not just as a 5 to 20% blend. So they already forwent CNG (unlike most municipalities) because of this requirement.
nashashmi 4y ago
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?
- sfe22 4y ago
  If it were such an easy problem, why don't you fix it? Can become rich as well.
  - nashashmi 4y ago
    This is a timing and operations issue. In 17 years, better crafted solutions will appear. Any fix right now would only last five years. The problem is more optimized for manufacturers.
- ars 4y ago
  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?
  - nashashmi 4y ago
    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.
m-p-3 4y ago
As long as these part of the fleet are seen as a justifiable exemption, they can still deploy EV wherever possible. It's not a defeat in itself, just that the current technology still needs to figure out some shortfalls.
mrmckizzle 4y ago
I'm surprised, I thought the electric engines would supply more torque. Thereby making it easier to plow snow.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- i_am_proteus 4y ago
  While the headline references "power," the issue is that these electric trucks do not have enough battery capacity to plow snow for a full day before recharging overnight. I have always thought that municipal road services had great potential to be electrified via partial catenary: take power from (and charge batteries) where the roads are electrified, discharge battery where the roads are not electrified.
  - hef19898 4y ago
    Stupid question so, why would you use a garbage truck to plow snow? Over here, cities, towns and musipalities use different vehicles for different jobs, suxh as garbage, snow plowing, street cleaning and so on...
    - gopalv 4y ago
      > why would you use a garbage truck to plow snow? They're optimizing for trained drivers who can drive safely in the snow rather than hire two. For a dangerous job on snowy roads, I think the fewer people employed with better pay is better than more people with lower pay for the same skills. That said, there are a lot of places which can buy EV garbage trucks before we get to the snow or ice. Who's not buying them is not as relevant when we're supply capped on the production of decent trucks with batteries in them. Sure, it affects the total-market calculations & how the development is funded, but might not change how many are sold per-year until the production scales.
    - ElevenLathe 4y ago
      This is a guess but most cities have a road/right of way department that does snow removal. For whatever reason, in NYC this is apparently done by the sanitation department. I think this is a meatspace Conway's Law, unrelated to whether or not it is actually better to have separate trucks or not.
ecshafer 4y ago
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 well. There could be some solid engineering reasons for this, but I suspect that coolness is a big factor.
- jeffbee 4y ago
  NYC garbage trucks spend a very long time parked in front of the same building all night, crushing bags full of plastic coffee cups. Ask anyone who has ever tried to sleep in Manhattan. A completely reasonable solution that doesn't require a wholesale change in the way refuse is collected in that city would be to plug the truck in at the building where it is standing. That said, a wholesale change is what they need.
  - chitowneats 4y ago
    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.
    - jeffbee 4y ago
      They also call it "the city that never sleeps" but they misleadingly omit the reason.
      - chitowneats 4y ago
        That reason being what? Cocaine? Edit: oh, you must mean noisy garbage trucks
      - angry_octet 4y ago
        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.
mabbo 4y ago
Why are they using garbage trucks to plow snow? Looks, I get that I'm biased being in Canada, but do they understand that you can buy dedicated vehicles for plowing snow? They're called... snowplows. They're pretty fantastic. You need garbage trucks every day, all year. Electrify those. You need snowplows on a handful of days per year- and that number is falling thanks to climate change. So buy purpose-built snowplows for those days that use fuels instead of batteries. But it's silly to decide to have an all-fuel fleet of garbage trucks just because they can't also be used as snowplows a few days per year that you need them.
- rsstack 4y ago
  NYC has 30,000 streets and only a handful of days of snow in the year. By having garbage trucks that can deal with a few inches of snow, you avoid the need of buying dozens of dedicated vehicles that will rot 360 days a year.
  - mabbo 4y ago
    You're not wrong. I agree with you. I just see that as a better option than continuing to burn fuel in trucks that don't need it 360 days per year.
    - kspacewalk2 4y ago
      Better for whom or what? Surely not for the New York City budget, or the folks who pay for it.
      - wolverine876 4y ago
        Better for those folks and the budget, both of which will feel the full impact of climate change. (But I don't think a separate fleet is the answer.)
        JumpCrisscross 4y ago
        It’s better for the environment to build and maintain a separate fleet of occasionally-used snow plows?
hourago 4y ago
The "Elektromote", the world's first trolleybus,[6] in Berlin, Germany, 1882. Maybe New York is lacking the infrastructure, but the technology has existed for a long time. A trolleybus may be expensive to implement in rural areas but in the biggest city in the USA it should be quite cost effective. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromote - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleybus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleybus
- MAGZine 4y ago
  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.
  - wolverine876 4y ago
    You don't need all streets electrified, just enough to keep the vehicles charged.
    - MAGZine 4y ago
      So, every time that the bus turns onto a non-electrified street, get out of the bus to take the wires off?
- kkfx 4y ago
  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 feasibility study about: - converting highways to rails with dual-usage vehicles (all vehicles, cars and trucks banning bikes) so vehicles can run normally on road but for just the long range usage they run full electric form grid, converting them to wheels only for going out or maneuvering on a faulty vehicles; - crafting a urban rail network again at least for some "important traversing roads". Perhaps the result would be negative anyway, but at least a broad simulation with public discussion, some eventual experiment etc...
KoftaBob 4y ago
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?
- redox99 4y ago
  Probably yes. More so, it charges to 70% in 30 minutes, so stopping twice to charge shouldn't be a big deal either.
gumby 4y ago
This is a non-issue. Like any other technology, EVs will (do) get traction where they provide a significant advantage, and then as the tech matures they will eat away at the rest of the problem space. One of the few business books worth reading, the Innovator's Dilemma, is all about this, and is supposedly beloved in the tech business. It's where "disruption" entered marketing discussion.
ilamont 4y ago
I was thinking about vehicles that can't switch to electric power. The tech's not there yet, and may never be. Cargo ships. Jumbo jets. Military aircraft. Specialized industrial vehicles, such as those used for mines. Unless these use cases are made obsolete (possible, such as military) society will depend on fossil fuels for many decades to come.
- carry_bit 4y ago
  Not fossil fuels, but rather hydrocarbon fuels. You can technically synthesize fuel for those use cases in a carbon-neutral manner.
- racnid 4y ago
  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.
  - ilamont 4y ago
    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, there are no electric-powered heavy-duty trucks on the market that meet the difficult operational and climate needs of open-pit mines. Faced with the industry’s new needs, IVI, Propulsion and the NRC brought together select partners to make the first-ever electric heavy-duty vehicle for the mining sector. To ensure the success of this major project, Fournier et Fils, a recognized operator in the mining sector, will provide the project with a Western Star 6900XD truck with a 40-ton loading capacity, as well as its technical experts, who will assist the electrification experts in converting the truck to accommodate the new components. The motorization aspects will be developed by Dana TM4, a world leader in electric motors. https://www.danatm4.com/news-events/a-first-for-canadas-open-pit-mining-industry-an-electric-heavy-vehicle/ https://www.danatm4.com/news-events/a-first-for-canadas-open...
tomohawk 4y ago
This application screams for diesel hydraulic hybrids.
wolverine876 4y ago
It's discussed elsewhere in the thread, but overehead wires seem appealing: * They solve the power availability problem * They reduce the need for batteries, reducing cost and waste from manufacturing and disposal. * They could be used for electrifying other vehicles like buses * Their ROI seems especially high in dense cities, especially NY: One overhead wire serves all the traffic on the road below. Plus, dense cities like NY already have infrastructure citywide, and experience servicing it. * What if we could provide power to electric cars in NYC. That could be transformative. I don't know that electric wires would be the best form for that, or how it could be done (is there a safe way to embed something in the ground?). * Some point out that the garbage trucks need to cover almost every street in the city. The power supply doesn't have to do that; it only has to be available enough to charge the vehicles sufficietly to plow/pickup on the side street and return to the main road.
- Manuel_D 4y ago
  They work for buses because buses follow set routes. There aren't overhead lines running through every single street. By comparison, garbage trucks do have to patrol essentially every street. Putting overhead lines through every street may be more expensive than batteries.
  - wolverine876 4y ago
    What do you think of my last point (in the GP)?
    - Manuel_D 4y ago
      It's largely irrelevant. Having walked around Manhattan and seeing people leaving trash out, garbage trucks are going to be overwhelmingly active on side streets and not the major thoroughfares. The potential charging time gained from overhead lines will be minimal. Furthermore, most garbage trucks have mechanisms to load and unload garbage which would prevent them from mounting trolley poles.
      - 4y ago
MR4D 4y ago
Maybe they should just heat the streets instead. Yeah, I know, climate change. Still, kindof a neat idea if we could figure it out.
- unregistereddev 4y ago
  Heated driveways (and heated sidewalks) are a real thing for wealthy homeowners who do not want to clear snow. It is a neat idea, but I also find it an appalling waste of resources. https://www.bobvila.com/articles/heated-driveway/ https://www.bobvila.com/articles/heated-driveway/
tinglymintyfrsh 4y ago
If they run a fleet, they should be swapping battery packs not waiting around for batteries to charge.
formvoltron 4y ago
wires over the streets. Even places like Budapest have this.
dripton 4y ago
The title of the post is not the same as the title of the article, and it's wrong. The problem isn't that the plows aren't powerful enough; it's that they can only plow for four hours before running out of battery life, and the city wants plows to last twelve hours.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
entwife 4y ago
Canada doesn't like the snowplow-garbagetruck hybrid, either. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/snow-plow-garbage-truck-1.4150479 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/snow-plow-garbage-truc... "Garbage truck turned snow plow gets mixed review from city staff; Snow plow-garbage truck hybrid did not perform as well as dedicated snow removal machines"
iblis23 4y ago
[flagged]
entwife 4y ago
What is needed is a means for removing weight from the garbage-collection apparatus when adding a front-end snowplow.
- lallysingh 4y ago
  Or swapping for an aux battery pack. I'm not sure the plow weight is a big issue, compared to the wet snow. Also I'm assuming they're not picking up garbage at the same time.
jbj 4y ago
I hope they will be as creative as in Michigan once they find a machine powerful enough: https://www.michigan.gov/mdot/travel/safety/road-users/winter-safety/mdot-snowplow-names https://www.michigan.gov/mdot/travel/safety/road-users/winte...
cdchn 4y ago
I thought I considered myself pretty well traveled but I've never seen a garbage truck plowing snow.
markstos 4y ago
The article says other cities use smaller vehicles for snow removal, so try that. In Canada there's been some recent success using an electric cargo bike as snow plow. I'm not suggesting that's right for New York, but maybe somthing a lot lighter than a garbage truck could work! https://electrek.co/2022/12/25/diy-e-bike-snow-plow/ https://electrek.co/2022/12/25/diy-e-bike-snow-plow/
- fatnoah 4y ago
  I don't think the article's comparison with Denver is particularly fair. Looking at Denver's municipal website shows that they have a main fleet of 70 large plowers, and a smaller fleet of 26 4x4 plows which are used to create paths for residential streets as a smaller plow isn't really suitable for clearing large avenues and highways. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, is the type of snow that falls in Denver. As a high altitude, inland location, Denver's snow is mostly dry and fluffy, while an East Coast city like New York is often on the edge of some rain/snow border and wet and/or slushy snow is far more common (and far, far, far heavier).
sh1mmer 4y ago
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 with replacements? Edit: Googling suggests that garbage trucks get 3mpg on average, with a 70-90 gallon tank and go 25k mi/yr on average (80mi/day 6-day week) so one tank would cover a whole day. 3mpg is awful though which does seem to support electrification being a good plan for this use case.
- newsclues 4y ago
  Is 3MPG really that bad, given the size and stop and go? I assume they are 10x the load of a pickup truck and F-150s don't get 30MPG city do they?
  - jcrawfordor 4y ago
    3MPG strikes me as pretty good for a garbage truck. Heavy diesel vehicles weigh a LOT more than passenger cars and 3-7MPG is pretty typical territory. Garbage trucks spend so much time idling and starting/stopping they're going to be about the worst case. They also run very heavy for their size.
    - sh1mmer 4y ago
      The bases of garbage trucks seems to just be a truck platform. So I don’t think they are much different from other equivalent vehicles. Given these trucks almost never get highway speeds, I would assume it’s even as good as 3mpg because heavy idling uses less fuel than highway speeds, but stop and go is much worse. I assume EVs would have some of the same stop/go efficiency issues for stop/start but that would gain somewhat on idling and breaking.
      - jcrawfordor 4y ago
        It's more that the category of "equivalent vehicles" is somewhat narrow. Mack dominates for garbage trucks because platforms of that size (18'-ish WB) rated for the 32-ton-ish GVW class aren't that common. Garbage trucks and dump trucks are two major applications, because both handle material that is much denser than typical truck cargo (once compacted, in the case of garbage trucks). Dump trucks of course are typically conventional cab, with the step-up cabover being a lesser-used option. There are some interesting design constraints that result in garbage trucks, particularly with pressure to minimize engine volume since putting a step-up cab over a large diesel engine is always a difficult space use exercise (and one that is almost unique to garbage trucks). This ends up meaning that the cabover version needs a pretty distinct frame from the conventional cab version because of the engine placement, and there ends up being implications on the suspension design. Historically some garbage trucks have been step-through, which is convenient for the operator, but extremely difficult to implement on modern truck platforms because the engine ends up occupying most of the middle of the cab. You pretty much have to go to rear-engine, which is rare and not really done to my knowledge except by Oshkosh for their generally very interesting front-end cement mixers. That was all sort of a tangent, the point is that most garbage trucks are built on a truck platform, the Mack LR, that is specifically a garbage truck platform. I believe I have seen cement mixers built on the LR platform too but Mack doesn't seem to advertise it for anything other than garbage trucks.
sethhochberg 4y ago
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/DSNY_N.C.-SFT-Series-Webinar_2021_final1.pdf 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-distance routes to the dump, they use a network of transfer stations around the boroughs. They're using DC fast charging. They're exploring other hybrid options. NYC isn't always great at avoiding its own special breed of "NYC exceptionalism", but in this case it sure looks like they're doing everything reasonably. The electric trucks are seemingly working well for garbage collection. They just can't take the whole fleet electric (yet) for double-duty as snow plows.
- cogman10 4y ago
  > 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, so probably needs more time" current level 3 chargers can kick out 350kW of power. Yet this report talks about putting in 50 and 150kw chargers. The mac trucks they are referencing have 350kWh battery packs in them. The solution is really quiet simple, recharge the trucks and buy a few more to account for the fact that you have to recharge an hour for every 4 in operation. Stop trying to run your trucks for 12 hours straight.
  - dizzystar 4y ago
    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.
heavyset_go 4y ago
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.
- tempestn 4y ago
  That small risk seems better to me in a densely populated area than burning fuels known to cause harmful fumes in their standard operation.
  - heavyset_go 4y ago
    You're mistaken if you think I believe that gas powered vehicles should be operated in Manhattan at all.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  EV fires are just an artifact of the first generation battery chemistry. Within a few years EVs will largely have switched to LFP and nobody will worry about it any more. I mean, car fires still happen, ICE vehicles are much more prone to fire than EVs for example, but LFP has a much less flammable electrolyte.
exabrial 4y ago
One idea: create significantly less garbage by outlawing US Postal Delivery of spam. That would probably offset the need for EVs for now.
bparsons 4y ago
Significant GHG reductions could be made by simply converting the engines to natural gas. This would allow existing vehicle assets to reach the end of their useful lifetime and allow for battery electric tech to catch up.
clouddrover 4y ago
Maybe hydrogen fuel cells can do it better. FCEVs retain more of their range in winter conditions and are faster to refuel: https://cte.tv/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Four-Season-Analysis.pdf https://cte.tv/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Four-Season-Analys...
gok 4y ago
read: NYC officials have not found an EV garbage truck manufacturer willing to pay a sufficiently high bribe.
steele 4y ago
NYPD should shovel, they have the budget.
acchow 4y ago
I'm ok with removing 98% of dead dinosaur burning but keeping a few use cases (I wouldn't want to be trapped in a city with the power grid downed from a snowstorm and the city being unable to charge its industrial vehicles)
- cypress66 4y ago
  Megawatt diesel generators are reasonably sized and could work as a backup for critical infrastructure. There's also things like the Tesla Megapack.
- GalenErso 4y ago
  I agree. The problem is the infrastructure to extract, refine, transport, and distribute oil. Does removing 98% of internal combustion engine vehicles on the road mean removing 98% of gas stations, 98% of oil platforms, 98% of drilling wells, 98% of tank trucks? I'm not sure that two or three gas stations for a city of two million people can survive in business, unless they charge premium prices for the 2% of use cases that will still use them. And it's not just gas stations, it's everything that becomes before, up to the drill that extracts oil from the ground. Can the oil business survive when scaled down to, like, 10% of what it is now? It could be an industry that can't survive below a critical threshold.
  - acchow 4y ago
    > Can the oil business survive when scaled down to, like, 10% of what it is now? How much gasoline was distributed back in 1930? 10% of today? 2%? Seems they did fine?
hbarka 4y ago
I think you editorialized the headline. It’s not an issue of “powerful enough”. Electric motors inherently have more power and torque.
sh1mmer 4y ago
There is an Australia company that are converting big rigs to electric including hot swapped batteries. https://thedriven.io/2022/02/10/janus-unveils-first-electric-truck-for-australian-east-coast-battery-swap-route/ https://thedriven.io/2022/02/10/janus-unveils-first-electric...
natch 4y ago
The future is not exclusively electric. The future will have a mix of technologies appropriate for different situations. We are still going to have horses and gas vehicles just as we do now, with EVs alongside them.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
j45 4y ago
Too often, can’t has a different manning in a bureaucracy: don’t want to change too fast.
ggm 4y ago
They did an entirely reasonable linear optimisation on the cost benefit, and it didn't work out. It's not a forever decision. They can review in the light of changes in power budget and recharge times, battery swap and fuel cost. I have read elsewhere that PepsiCo who committed to the Tesla truck are sticking to their shorthaul routes as a problem solution at first. Also entirely reasonable, and also probably a well studied cost benefit decision.
solotronics 4y ago
How hard would it be to make an EV garbage truck that turns some of the garbage into electricity?
- fencepost 4y ago
  Entirely impractical. The Back To The Future car-mounted fusion plant isn't going to be a thing, sorry. You might be able to capture methane produced at a dump and use it to drive generators, but that's effectively waiting for large scale decomposition to happen.
_huayra_ 4y ago
I really wonder which of the following will win: * a brand-new battery chemistry based on cheap and readily-available elements that avoids the issues related to existing lithium-based cells for vehicle applications (e.g. cost, cold, low power density, towing, large vehicles, etc) * a way to synthesize fuel via CO2 capture from the air, perhaps in a fluctuating demand way to soak up solar from solar-rich regions (to make it net neutral-ish for CO2 capture) or if we finally get it together and build a bunch of nuclear reactors, which become net negative for CO2 emissions (from building the plant) in a matter of weeks I would love to not have to deal with tedious car maintenance. I wish my car was as reliable as my phone, which never needs any sort of ongoing maintenance other than charging!
pifm_guy 4y ago
I believe snow could be moved with far less energy. Today's snow ploughs use a lot of force. But perhaps with better engineering, new ways to move snow could be invented - for example conveyor systems that move and compact the snow. Theoretically you can generate power by compacting snow, since the stuff at the top has gravitational potential energy and gives it up when compacted down. Find a way to collect that, and your snowploughs won't need any recharging.
Gordonjcp 4y ago
Why are they using bin lorries for snow ploughs, instead of using tipper trucks that can have a gritter mounted on the back? Something like this: https://www.glasgow.gov.uk/media/image/8/h/gritter1.jpg https://www.glasgow.gov.uk/media/image/8/h/gritter1.jpg That's one of the smaller ones, which Glasgow City Council ordered up with a hydrogen-powered engine. Most are still diesel but there are some diesel/propane dual-fuel ones too.

227 points by IronWolve 4y ago

This smells to me at least a little bit like union pressure to slow the transition to electric vehicles, which is just a hop from fully autonomous city vehicles, putting them all out of work forever.

petermcneeley 4y ago
Seems like a random excuse to Trash talk unions.
- djtriptych 4y ago
  Well, a union rep is quoted in the article, which was weird. His statement was also a little weird. The conclusions and the math involved don't really add up for me. They laid the groundwork for a fight against _any_ conversion to electric vehicles by warning the city council about the possibly prohibitive cost of installing a charger network... I'm not sure it's too outlandish to postulate that the union would act in their own interest here. I think any plan to convert to autonomous vehicles should include a plan for these workers. But I don't think you get to be Sanitation Commissioner in NYC without union support.
  - petermcneeley 4y ago
    Perhaps the union organizers think this but it doesnt really make much sense given that the trains (subway) in NYC are the first thing I would automate and apparently still have drivers. Automating trash pick-up in NYC is probably harder than L5 autonomous driving.
    - djtriptych 4y ago
      It's hard now, but this is a 20 year plan to replace the fleet. Already a budget item for the city, and, possibly, the frontline for union concerns about automation.
JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> union pressure to slow the transition to electric vehicles, which is just a hop from fully autonomous city vehicles Wouldn’t this incentivise earlier fleet turnover to electric? If you’ve just bought an electric fleet, it’s tougher to justify turning it over again for autonomous only.
- djtriptych 4y ago
  Interesting wrinkle I'd have to think any fully electric car is a better target for autonomous retrofitting, because the drivetrain is already completely fly-by-wire? Using a random estimate, a $100,000/vehicle autonomous retrofit probably pays for itself in like a year. The initial outlay of let's say a half billion to replace the city's fleet with EVs is a much bigger hurdle.
redox99 4y ago
How is it just a hop from fully autonomous city vehicles? The sensor suite and software doesn't really care about the type of engine. Waymo's Chrysler Pacificas are hybrids in fact.

jollyllama 4y ago

TIL some trash trucks are also snowplows in NYC https://www.trailer-bodybuilders.com/archive/article/21728886/trash-trucks-plow-snow-in-new-york https://www.trailer-bodybuilders.com/archive/article/2172888...

nine_k 4y ago
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.
- angry_octet 4y ago
  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.
  - sethhochberg 4y ago
    "A few" undersells the scale of DSNY's operation. They've already got a few hundred specialized salt/plow trucks on top of the thousands in the mixed garbage truck fleet, and a couple dozen snow melters, about 80 dump trucks, and a few hundred front-end loaders. They recently bought about 50 narrow plows just for bike lanes and bridge sidewalks. After heavy snow are mostly plowed, its a very common sight on busy city blocks to see snow hauling/removal and melting happening overnight. Its just that nothing related to their snow removal obligations is small stuff.
    - angry_octet 4y ago
      If they had even a 10th of the organisation of Montreal they wouldn't have such problems. They're relying on the wrong tools. https://theprepared.org/features-feed/montreal-snow https://theprepared.org/features-feed/montreal-snow And this article makes it seem like a huge investment, but in reality these workers do other jobs most of the year, in construction, roadworks, gardening, waste management, etc. It really seems like NY are wedded to their old ways -- something that was a sensible reuse of an asset (garbage trucks) has solidified into the only possible way to do it. It might be bureaucracy and unions, unimaginative leadership, or inability to allocate the cost due to politics, but it isn't technical.

danielfoster 4y ago

Why does critical infrastructure need to be among the first to “go green?”

quantified 4y ago
Not that it needs to go first. It's visible and it's possible for a small number of decision-makers to decide and have an impact over a larger swath of infrastructure. 1000 vehicles can be the result of 10 people deciding, not 1000 people deciding.
- LarryMullins 4y ago
  "Critical infrastructure" is critical because it has some job more important than being a billboard for a cause. If you can make it a billboard without compromising it's primary function, then great, but obviously EV garbage trucks isn't such a case.
  - quantified 4y ago
    EV snowplows isn't a case. I'd be interested if any discussion of electrifying included plowing. One thing that's clear: until battery-powered EVs are able to handle real muscular work (snow removal, hauling, plowing, etc.), diesel engines will be purchased, maintained and fueled by all levels of authority. Exactly how will roads be maintained without graders, pavers, etc.?
    - rootusrootus 4y ago
      It's not about muscle. Electric absolutely mops the floor with diesels. It's simple battery capacity.
fulafel 4y ago
We can't afford to make things "go green" serially, we need to move on all fronts at once.

agtorre 4y ago

I wonder what the longer-term solution is for this? More trucks? Exchangeable batteries? Faster charging?

toomuchtodo 4y ago
All of the above. Must Run trucks should probably be gas turbine hybrids, that can burn anything for fuel (diesel, biodiesel, Jet A, etc), versus full electric. https://www.forbes.com/sites/samabuelsamid/2016/06/07/mack-trucks-to-demonstrate-wrightspeed-turbine-plug-in-hybrid/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/samabuelsamid/2016/06/07/mack-t...
- jollyllama 4y ago
  This technology has been talked about lately in the context of Abrams tanks which could potentially be used in Ukraine. Doesn't it burn a lot more fuel?
  - toomuchtodo 4y ago
    Yes! But that might be a penalty you’re willing to make versus long turnaround times, especially if you’re in NYC vs a harsh military theater and fueling infra is solved. The truck doesn’t care if the battery slab is pulled and replaced with another battery or a hybrid powertrain, it just cares it has enough power to accelerate and decelerate. https://old.reddit.com/r/WarCollege/comments/r40x15/why_are_gas_turbine_engines_so_rare_in_tanks/ https://old.reddit.com/r/WarCollege/comments/r40x15/why_are_...
- dsfyu404ed 4y ago
  >ust Run trucks should probably be gas turbine hybrids, that can burn anything for fuel (diesel, biodiesel, Jet A, etc), versus full electric. That's just high tech engineer fantasy though. Turbine is great for steady loads and terrible for cyclical loads which is what a garbage truck does all day. Electrical is great for cyclical but batteries just don't support the energy density to do it all day. You can theoretically bridge the gap real well with a hybrid system but it's only theoretical because in the real world other people's money is not actually an unlimited resource and you're not getting a turbine into anything cheaply. There's a reason you only see them in vehicles that are already fantastically expensive (tanks) and benefit greatly from some of the specific performance attributes. It would be really cool though... Right now the trucks can do 1/3 of what they need with the batteries they have. Commercial vehicles like this are very much constrained by weight. The "nearly free" and shovel ready solution is to just raise the weight limit for the vehicles in question so they can pack on the other 2/3 of the batteries they need and let them roll around at 120k+ all day like concrete trucks. Sure you'll get a little more wear and tear on stuff but this solution doesn't require an unforeseen technology (battery) or economic (turbines) breakthrough.

mariodiana 4y ago

Anyone else remember learning about the "Five Year Plans" of the old Soviet Union?

whataboutismst 4y ago
Yes and, unfortunately, conversation around these issues always falls into the Communism vs. Capatalism line of debate rather than ossification of systems consolidation of power - the far more impactful topic.
- mariodiana 4y ago
  I understand "ossification of systems consolidation of power" as centralized planning, which is socialism, as opposed to laissez-faire capitalism. But, I'm guessing you mean something else. What do you mean?
xsmasher 4y ago
What's the similarity? They're both "plans?"
- mariodiana 4y ago
  Essentially, yes—they're both examples of centralized planning, where the conceit of politicians drives complex economic systems arbitrarily, resulting in chaos.

legitster 4y ago

> “ 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.

Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
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 would help considerably when accelerating. It doesn't need to go 0-60 in 20 seconds while carrying 80K lbs like the Tesla Semi claims, but certainly having extra power could be useful in some scenarios. Heck, just having regen braking would be a game changer when going down hills. No noise from a Jake Brake, and no worries about burning up brake pads.
- xenadu02 4y ago
  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.
  - dekhn 4y ago
    Uh, exactly how long can I go between running the ICE engine before... something(?) happens to my gas and engine?
    - hattmall 4y ago
      It's unlikely to be a one time thing. But recurrently letting gas sit for extended periods of time could cause issues. This mostly only applies to ethanol containing fuels. This is why boats need to use 100% gas. You should do the same for a plugin hybrid if you don't cycle the tank at least every 2-3 weeks. That's all it takes to damage a boat if it sits. Cars will be better but the repeated exposure would certainly take a toll.

ohelabs 4y ago

To me, this is hard to understand. There used to be a saying “right tool for the right job” and I’m sure when Ford released the model T lots of people said “horses can do X while automobiles can not” This is a step … where basically 9 months out of the year there is no emissions in the city and the trucks are effectively the same 1:1 replacement. I also understand that this is a much harder article to write “the city got away with using the wrong tool for the job for years and now has to address the problem they created” (this cuts both ways). It probably seemed like a win win at the time but now a solution will need to be engineered to solve it… im also sure having a hybrid fleet (some ICE and some EV) will be great for times of increased demand and having backups when something breaks…

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
RogerL 4y ago
They say all of that, and more in the article.

countvonbalzac 4y ago

So we'll wait until batteries improve to the point where they can be used. Not a big deal. In the mean time personal transportation can be fully electrified. The subway has been running on electricity for more than 100 years.

legitster 4y ago

Some more context from an older article: https://www.fleetowner.com/operations/article/21694046/nyc-sanitation-trucks-do-much-more-than-collect-refuse https://www.fleetowner.com/operations/article/21694046/nyc-s... > Because of the requirement that it fuel the entire fleet within an hour in the event of a snow emergency, natural gas hasn’t proved practical especially since CNG fueling stations require too much space in such a dense city, according to Commissioner Garcia. Right now the fleet is about to undertake initial testing with renewable diesel, which is not only better in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, but can be used as a complete replacement for diesel, not just as a 5 to 20% blend. So they already forwent CNG (unlike most municipalities) because of this requirement.

nashashmi 4y ago

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?

sfe22 4y ago
If it were such an easy problem, why don't you fix it? Can become rich as well.
- nashashmi 4y ago
  This is a timing and operations issue. In 17 years, better crafted solutions will appear. Any fix right now would only last five years. The problem is more optimized for manufacturers.
ars 4y ago
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?
- nashashmi 4y ago
  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.

m-p-3 4y ago

As long as these part of the fleet are seen as a justifiable exemption, they can still deploy EV wherever possible. It's not a defeat in itself, just that the current technology still needs to figure out some shortfalls.

mrmckizzle 4y ago

I'm surprised, I thought the electric engines would supply more torque. Thereby making it easier to plow snow.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
i_am_proteus 4y ago
While the headline references "power," the issue is that these electric trucks do not have enough battery capacity to plow snow for a full day before recharging overnight. I have always thought that municipal road services had great potential to be electrified via partial catenary: take power from (and charge batteries) where the roads are electrified, discharge battery where the roads are not electrified.
- hef19898 4y ago
  Stupid question so, why would you use a garbage truck to plow snow? Over here, cities, towns and musipalities use different vehicles for different jobs, suxh as garbage, snow plowing, street cleaning and so on...
  - gopalv 4y ago
    > why would you use a garbage truck to plow snow? They're optimizing for trained drivers who can drive safely in the snow rather than hire two. For a dangerous job on snowy roads, I think the fewer people employed with better pay is better than more people with lower pay for the same skills. That said, there are a lot of places which can buy EV garbage trucks before we get to the snow or ice. Who's not buying them is not as relevant when we're supply capped on the production of decent trucks with batteries in them. Sure, it affects the total-market calculations & how the development is funded, but might not change how many are sold per-year until the production scales.
  - ElevenLathe 4y ago
    This is a guess but most cities have a road/right of way department that does snow removal. For whatever reason, in NYC this is apparently done by the sanitation department. I think this is a meatspace Conway's Law, unrelated to whether or not it is actually better to have separate trucks or not.

ecshafer 4y ago

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 well. There could be some solid engineering reasons for this, but I suspect that coolness is a big factor.

jeffbee 4y ago
NYC garbage trucks spend a very long time parked in front of the same building all night, crushing bags full of plastic coffee cups. Ask anyone who has ever tried to sleep in Manhattan. A completely reasonable solution that doesn't require a wholesale change in the way refuse is collected in that city would be to plug the truck in at the building where it is standing. That said, a wholesale change is what they need.
- chitowneats 4y ago
  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.
  - jeffbee 4y ago
    They also call it "the city that never sleeps" but they misleadingly omit the reason.
    - chitowneats 4y ago
      That reason being what? Cocaine? Edit: oh, you must mean noisy garbage trucks
    - angry_octet 4y ago
      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.

mabbo 4y ago

Why are they using garbage trucks to plow snow? Looks, I get that I'm biased being in Canada, but do they understand that you can buy dedicated vehicles for plowing snow? They're called... snowplows. They're pretty fantastic. You need garbage trucks every day, all year. Electrify those. You need snowplows on a handful of days per year- and that number is falling thanks to climate change. So buy purpose-built snowplows for those days that use fuels instead of batteries. But it's silly to decide to have an all-fuel fleet of garbage trucks just because they can't also be used as snowplows a few days per year that you need them.

rsstack 4y ago
NYC has 30,000 streets and only a handful of days of snow in the year. By having garbage trucks that can deal with a few inches of snow, you avoid the need of buying dozens of dedicated vehicles that will rot 360 days a year.
- mabbo 4y ago
  You're not wrong. I agree with you. I just see that as a better option than continuing to burn fuel in trucks that don't need it 360 days per year.
  - kspacewalk2 4y ago
    Better for whom or what? Surely not for the New York City budget, or the folks who pay for it.
    - wolverine876 4y ago
      Better for those folks and the budget, both of which will feel the full impact of climate change. (But I don't think a separate fleet is the answer.)
      - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
        It’s better for the environment to build and maintain a separate fleet of occasionally-used snow plows?

hourago 4y ago

The "Elektromote", the world's first trolleybus,[6] in Berlin, Germany, 1882. Maybe New York is lacking the infrastructure, but the technology has existed for a long time. A trolleybus may be expensive to implement in rural areas but in the biggest city in the USA it should be quite cost effective. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromote - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleybus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleybus

MAGZine 4y ago
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.
- wolverine876 4y ago
  You don't need all streets electrified, just enough to keep the vehicles charged.
  - MAGZine 4y ago
    So, every time that the bus turns onto a non-electrified street, get out of the bus to take the wires off?
kkfx 4y ago
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 feasibility study about: - converting highways to rails with dual-usage vehicles (all vehicles, cars and trucks banning bikes) so vehicles can run normally on road but for just the long range usage they run full electric form grid, converting them to wheels only for going out or maneuvering on a faulty vehicles; - crafting a urban rail network again at least for some "important traversing roads". Perhaps the result would be negative anyway, but at least a broad simulation with public discussion, some eventual experiment etc...

KoftaBob 4y ago

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?

redox99 4y ago
Probably yes. More so, it charges to 70% in 30 minutes, so stopping twice to charge shouldn't be a big deal either.

gumby 4y ago

This is a non-issue. Like any other technology, EVs will (do) get traction where they provide a significant advantage, and then as the tech matures they will eat away at the rest of the problem space. One of the few business books worth reading, the Innovator's Dilemma, is all about this, and is supposedly beloved in the tech business. It's where "disruption" entered marketing discussion.

ilamont 4y ago

I was thinking about vehicles that can't switch to electric power. The tech's not there yet, and may never be. Cargo ships. Jumbo jets. Military aircraft. Specialized industrial vehicles, such as those used for mines. Unless these use cases are made obsolete (possible, such as military) society will depend on fossil fuels for many decades to come.

carry_bit 4y ago
Not fossil fuels, but rather hydrocarbon fuels. You can technically synthesize fuel for those use cases in a carbon-neutral manner.
racnid 4y ago
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.
- ilamont 4y ago
  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, there are no electric-powered heavy-duty trucks on the market that meet the difficult operational and climate needs of open-pit mines. Faced with the industry’s new needs, IVI, Propulsion and the NRC brought together select partners to make the first-ever electric heavy-duty vehicle for the mining sector. To ensure the success of this major project, Fournier et Fils, a recognized operator in the mining sector, will provide the project with a Western Star 6900XD truck with a 40-ton loading capacity, as well as its technical experts, who will assist the electrification experts in converting the truck to accommodate the new components. The motorization aspects will be developed by Dana TM4, a world leader in electric motors. https://www.danatm4.com/news-events/a-first-for-canadas-open-pit-mining-industry-an-electric-heavy-vehicle/ https://www.danatm4.com/news-events/a-first-for-canadas-open...

tomohawk 4y ago

This application screams for diesel hydraulic hybrids.

wolverine876 4y ago

It's discussed elsewhere in the thread, but overehead wires seem appealing: * They solve the power availability problem * They reduce the need for batteries, reducing cost and waste from manufacturing and disposal. * They could be used for electrifying other vehicles like buses * Their ROI seems especially high in dense cities, especially NY: One overhead wire serves all the traffic on the road below. Plus, dense cities like NY already have infrastructure citywide, and experience servicing it. * What if we could provide power to electric cars in NYC. That could be transformative. I don't know that electric wires would be the best form for that, or how it could be done (is there a safe way to embed something in the ground?). * Some point out that the garbage trucks need to cover almost every street in the city. The power supply doesn't have to do that; it only has to be available enough to charge the vehicles sufficietly to plow/pickup on the side street and return to the main road.

Manuel_D 4y ago
They work for buses because buses follow set routes. There aren't overhead lines running through every single street. By comparison, garbage trucks do have to patrol essentially every street. Putting overhead lines through every street may be more expensive than batteries.
- wolverine876 4y ago
  What do you think of my last point (in the GP)?
  - Manuel_D 4y ago
    It's largely irrelevant. Having walked around Manhattan and seeing people leaving trash out, garbage trucks are going to be overwhelmingly active on side streets and not the major thoroughfares. The potential charging time gained from overhead lines will be minimal. Furthermore, most garbage trucks have mechanisms to load and unload garbage which would prevent them from mounting trolley poles.
    - 4y ago

MR4D 4y ago

Maybe they should just heat the streets instead. Yeah, I know, climate change. Still, kindof a neat idea if we could figure it out.

unregistereddev 4y ago
Heated driveways (and heated sidewalks) are a real thing for wealthy homeowners who do not want to clear snow. It is a neat idea, but I also find it an appalling waste of resources. https://www.bobvila.com/articles/heated-driveway/ https://www.bobvila.com/articles/heated-driveway/

tinglymintyfrsh 4y ago

If they run a fleet, they should be swapping battery packs not waiting around for batteries to charge.

formvoltron 4y ago

wires over the streets. Even places like Budapest have this.

dripton 4y ago

The title of the post is not the same as the title of the article, and it's wrong. The problem isn't that the plows aren't powerful enough; it's that they can only plow for four hours before running out of battery life, and the city wants plows to last twelve hours.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

entwife 4y ago

Canada doesn't like the snowplow-garbagetruck hybrid, either. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/snow-plow-garbage-truck-1.4150479 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/snow-plow-garbage-truc... "Garbage truck turned snow plow gets mixed review from city staff; Snow plow-garbage truck hybrid did not perform as well as dedicated snow removal machines"

iblis23 4y ago

[flagged]

entwife 4y ago

What is needed is a means for removing weight from the garbage-collection apparatus when adding a front-end snowplow.

lallysingh 4y ago
Or swapping for an aux battery pack. I'm not sure the plow weight is a big issue, compared to the wet snow. Also I'm assuming they're not picking up garbage at the same time.

jbj 4y ago

I hope they will be as creative as in Michigan once they find a machine powerful enough: https://www.michigan.gov/mdot/travel/safety/road-users/winter-safety/mdot-snowplow-names https://www.michigan.gov/mdot/travel/safety/road-users/winte...

cdchn 4y ago

I thought I considered myself pretty well traveled but I've never seen a garbage truck plowing snow.

markstos 4y ago

The article says other cities use smaller vehicles for snow removal, so try that. In Canada there's been some recent success using an electric cargo bike as snow plow. I'm not suggesting that's right for New York, but maybe somthing a lot lighter than a garbage truck could work! https://electrek.co/2022/12/25/diy-e-bike-snow-plow/ https://electrek.co/2022/12/25/diy-e-bike-snow-plow/

fatnoah 4y ago
I don't think the article's comparison with Denver is particularly fair. Looking at Denver's municipal website shows that they have a main fleet of 70 large plowers, and a smaller fleet of 26 4x4 plows which are used to create paths for residential streets as a smaller plow isn't really suitable for clearing large avenues and highways. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, is the type of snow that falls in Denver. As a high altitude, inland location, Denver's snow is mostly dry and fluffy, while an East Coast city like New York is often on the edge of some rain/snow border and wet and/or slushy snow is far more common (and far, far, far heavier).

sh1mmer 4y ago

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 with replacements? Edit: Googling suggests that garbage trucks get 3mpg on average, with a 70-90 gallon tank and go 25k mi/yr on average (80mi/day 6-day week) so one tank would cover a whole day. 3mpg is awful though which does seem to support electrification being a good plan for this use case.

newsclues 4y ago
Is 3MPG really that bad, given the size and stop and go? I assume they are 10x the load of a pickup truck and F-150s don't get 30MPG city do they?
- jcrawfordor 4y ago
  3MPG strikes me as pretty good for a garbage truck. Heavy diesel vehicles weigh a LOT more than passenger cars and 3-7MPG is pretty typical territory. Garbage trucks spend so much time idling and starting/stopping they're going to be about the worst case. They also run very heavy for their size.
  - sh1mmer 4y ago
    The bases of garbage trucks seems to just be a truck platform. So I don’t think they are much different from other equivalent vehicles. Given these trucks almost never get highway speeds, I would assume it’s even as good as 3mpg because heavy idling uses less fuel than highway speeds, but stop and go is much worse. I assume EVs would have some of the same stop/go efficiency issues for stop/start but that would gain somewhat on idling and breaking.
    - jcrawfordor 4y ago
      It's more that the category of "equivalent vehicles" is somewhat narrow. Mack dominates for garbage trucks because platforms of that size (18'-ish WB) rated for the 32-ton-ish GVW class aren't that common. Garbage trucks and dump trucks are two major applications, because both handle material that is much denser than typical truck cargo (once compacted, in the case of garbage trucks). Dump trucks of course are typically conventional cab, with the step-up cabover being a lesser-used option. There are some interesting design constraints that result in garbage trucks, particularly with pressure to minimize engine volume since putting a step-up cab over a large diesel engine is always a difficult space use exercise (and one that is almost unique to garbage trucks). This ends up meaning that the cabover version needs a pretty distinct frame from the conventional cab version because of the engine placement, and there ends up being implications on the suspension design. Historically some garbage trucks have been step-through, which is convenient for the operator, but extremely difficult to implement on modern truck platforms because the engine ends up occupying most of the middle of the cab. You pretty much have to go to rear-engine, which is rare and not really done to my knowledge except by Oshkosh for their generally very interesting front-end cement mixers. That was all sort of a tangent, the point is that most garbage trucks are built on a truck platform, the Mack LR, that is specifically a garbage truck platform. I believe I have seen cement mixers built on the LR platform too but Mack doesn't seem to advertise it for anything other than garbage trucks.

sethhochberg 4y ago

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/DSNY_N.C.-SFT-Series-Webinar_2021_final1.pdf 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-distance routes to the dump, they use a network of transfer stations around the boroughs. They're using DC fast charging. They're exploring other hybrid options. NYC isn't always great at avoiding its own special breed of "NYC exceptionalism", but in this case it sure looks like they're doing everything reasonably. The electric trucks are seemingly working well for garbage collection. They just can't take the whole fleet electric (yet) for double-duty as snow plows.

cogman10 4y ago
> 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, so probably needs more time" current level 3 chargers can kick out 350kW of power. Yet this report talks about putting in 50 and 150kw chargers. The mac trucks they are referencing have 350kWh battery packs in them. The solution is really quiet simple, recharge the trucks and buy a few more to account for the fact that you have to recharge an hour for every 4 in operation. Stop trying to run your trucks for 12 hours straight.
- dizzystar 4y ago
  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.

heavyset_go 4y ago

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.

tempestn 4y ago
That small risk seems better to me in a densely populated area than burning fuels known to cause harmful fumes in their standard operation.
- heavyset_go 4y ago
  You're mistaken if you think I believe that gas powered vehicles should be operated in Manhattan at all.
rootusrootus 4y ago
EV fires are just an artifact of the first generation battery chemistry. Within a few years EVs will largely have switched to LFP and nobody will worry about it any more. I mean, car fires still happen, ICE vehicles are much more prone to fire than EVs for example, but LFP has a much less flammable electrolyte.

exabrial 4y ago

One idea: create significantly less garbage by outlawing US Postal Delivery of spam. That would probably offset the need for EVs for now.

bparsons 4y ago

Significant GHG reductions could be made by simply converting the engines to natural gas. This would allow existing vehicle assets to reach the end of their useful lifetime and allow for battery electric tech to catch up.

clouddrover 4y ago

Maybe hydrogen fuel cells can do it better. FCEVs retain more of their range in winter conditions and are faster to refuel: https://cte.tv/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Four-Season-Analysis.pdf https://cte.tv/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Four-Season-Analys...

gok 4y ago

read: NYC officials have not found an EV garbage truck manufacturer willing to pay a sufficiently high bribe.

steele 4y ago

NYPD should shovel, they have the budget.

acchow 4y ago

I'm ok with removing 98% of dead dinosaur burning but keeping a few use cases (I wouldn't want to be trapped in a city with the power grid downed from a snowstorm and the city being unable to charge its industrial vehicles)

cypress66 4y ago
Megawatt diesel generators are reasonably sized and could work as a backup for critical infrastructure. There's also things like the Tesla Megapack.
GalenErso 4y ago
I agree. The problem is the infrastructure to extract, refine, transport, and distribute oil. Does removing 98% of internal combustion engine vehicles on the road mean removing 98% of gas stations, 98% of oil platforms, 98% of drilling wells, 98% of tank trucks? I'm not sure that two or three gas stations for a city of two million people can survive in business, unless they charge premium prices for the 2% of use cases that will still use them. And it's not just gas stations, it's everything that becomes before, up to the drill that extracts oil from the ground. Can the oil business survive when scaled down to, like, 10% of what it is now? It could be an industry that can't survive below a critical threshold.
- acchow 4y ago
  > Can the oil business survive when scaled down to, like, 10% of what it is now? How much gasoline was distributed back in 1930? 10% of today? 2%? Seems they did fine?

hbarka 4y ago

I think you editorialized the headline. It’s not an issue of “powerful enough”. Electric motors inherently have more power and torque.

sh1mmer 4y ago

There is an Australia company that are converting big rigs to electric including hot swapped batteries. https://thedriven.io/2022/02/10/janus-unveils-first-electric-truck-for-australian-east-coast-battery-swap-route/ https://thedriven.io/2022/02/10/janus-unveils-first-electric...

natch 4y ago

The future is not exclusively electric. The future will have a mix of technologies appropriate for different situations. We are still going to have horses and gas vehicles just as we do now, with EVs alongside them.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

j45 4y ago

Too often, can’t has a different manning in a bureaucracy: don’t want to change too fast.

ggm 4y ago

They did an entirely reasonable linear optimisation on the cost benefit, and it didn't work out. It's not a forever decision. They can review in the light of changes in power budget and recharge times, battery swap and fuel cost. I have read elsewhere that PepsiCo who committed to the Tesla truck are sticking to their shorthaul routes as a problem solution at first. Also entirely reasonable, and also probably a well studied cost benefit decision.

solotronics 4y ago

How hard would it be to make an EV garbage truck that turns some of the garbage into electricity?

fencepost 4y ago
Entirely impractical. The Back To The Future car-mounted fusion plant isn't going to be a thing, sorry. You might be able to capture methane produced at a dump and use it to drive generators, but that's effectively waiting for large scale decomposition to happen.

_huayra_ 4y ago

I really wonder which of the following will win: * a brand-new battery chemistry based on cheap and readily-available elements that avoids the issues related to existing lithium-based cells for vehicle applications (e.g. cost, cold, low power density, towing, large vehicles, etc) * a way to synthesize fuel via CO2 capture from the air, perhaps in a fluctuating demand way to soak up solar from solar-rich regions (to make it net neutral-ish for CO2 capture) or if we finally get it together and build a bunch of nuclear reactors, which become net negative for CO2 emissions (from building the plant) in a matter of weeks I would love to not have to deal with tedious car maintenance. I wish my car was as reliable as my phone, which never needs any sort of ongoing maintenance other than charging!

pifm_guy 4y ago

I believe snow could be moved with far less energy. Today's snow ploughs use a lot of force. But perhaps with better engineering, new ways to move snow could be invented - for example conveyor systems that move and compact the snow. Theoretically you can generate power by compacting snow, since the stuff at the top has gravitational potential energy and gives it up when compacted down. Find a way to collect that, and your snowploughs won't need any recharging.

Gordonjcp 4y ago

Why are they using bin lorries for snow ploughs, instead of using tipper trucks that can have a gritter mounted on the back? Something like this: https://www.glasgow.gov.uk/media/image/8/h/gritter1.jpg https://www.glasgow.gov.uk/media/image/8/h/gritter1.jpg That's one of the smaller ones, which Glasgow City Council ordered up with a hydrogen-powered engine. Most are still diesel but there are some diesel/propane dual-fuel ones too.