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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

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.

CPLX 4y ago
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.
- cogman10 4y ago
  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.
  - CPLX 4y ago
    Right because the one thing you associate with New York City is surplus sparking spaces. And of course the only time you need snow plows is when every available place to put a motor vehicle has just become unsuitable for that purpose. Seems like a lot of hand waving going on.
  - ajsnigrutin 4y ago
    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.
  - kennend3 4y ago
    > A driver brings a truck to a charge location, grabs a truck that's been charging. Easy peasy. Tell us you have no idea how much a garbage truck costs without telling us. Must be nice to have a few million dollars in "spare" trucks lying around. Garbage trucks can run up to $400,000 EACH. This is how you propose to waste taxpayer money, by replacing perfectly working trucks with EV's where you need to buy "spare" ones as well?
lamontcg 4y ago
What if the city added batteries instead of plows? Have recharging stations that swapped batteries. Requires building the plows around hot swappable batteries and a station with some fixed hydraulics that can drop them in and out. Requires a bit of redundancy by having multiple stations to swap batteries and something like forklifts to drag them around and charge the spent batteries. Probably not a good consumer solution, but this is an industry, so industrial solutions would work fine.
- mike_d 4y ago
  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.
  - cogman10 4y ago
    > 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 they are always working on electrical things. > that have to be able to function for weeks at a time in a grid down situation. Generators are a thing that pretty much every one of these services will have. Because you can't have a fire station, EMT dispatch, etc go dark because of a grid down situation. And, consider this when thinking of a "grid down" situation. How do you pump fuel if the grid is down? There are few places where EVs are bad fits. The main ones are airplanes and ships where getting power is hard and the power density needs to be high. For everything semi-truck and smaller, batteries have a high enough capacity to service today.
    - RhysU 4y ago
      Are you serious?! If my town loses power for two weeks I want fire trucks, ambulances, tow trucks, and especially power company trucks to work! Civic infrastructure should anticipate tail events. > How do you pump fuel if the grid is down? Gravity. Siphons. Manual pumps. Etc. Real complicated stuff known since figuratively Roman times.
josephcsible 4y ago
Wouldn't a lot of the extra cost for the 33% more trucks get canceled out by each one getting driven that much less, so requiring less maintenance and lasting longer? Other than the part of depreciation that happens because of age rather than mileage/usage, what costs would remain?
- mattmaroon 4y ago
  I'm not even sure depreciation matters with these anyway! Idk how much of a resale market there is. You might just run it into the ground and then scrap it.
  - danuker 4y ago
    Meanwhile, batteries are consumables for purposes of EU warranty. Yet they make up the most expensive part of an EV.
- Spooky23 4y ago
  No. Capital costs tend to be bonded, and infrastructure to support idle trucks is expensive.
- bobthepanda 4y ago
  You need parking spaces for 33% more trucks. There isn’t exactly land freely available for that in New York.
beambot 4y ago
It's entirely feasible to do battery swapping if high uptime is a requirement -- e.g. see Monarch Tractors.

CPLX 4y ago

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.

cogman10 4y ago
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.
- CPLX 4y ago
  Right because the one thing you associate with New York City is surplus sparking spaces. And of course the only time you need snow plows is when every available place to put a motor vehicle has just become unsuitable for that purpose. Seems like a lot of hand waving going on.
- ajsnigrutin 4y ago
  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.
- kennend3 4y ago
  > A driver brings a truck to a charge location, grabs a truck that's been charging. Easy peasy. Tell us you have no idea how much a garbage truck costs without telling us. Must be nice to have a few million dollars in "spare" trucks lying around. Garbage trucks can run up to $400,000 EACH. This is how you propose to waste taxpayer money, by replacing perfectly working trucks with EV's where you need to buy "spare" ones as well?

lamontcg 4y ago

What if the city added batteries instead of plows? Have recharging stations that swapped batteries. Requires building the plows around hot swappable batteries and a station with some fixed hydraulics that can drop them in and out. Requires a bit of redundancy by having multiple stations to swap batteries and something like forklifts to drag them around and charge the spent batteries. Probably not a good consumer solution, but this is an industry, so industrial solutions would work fine.

mike_d 4y ago
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.
- cogman10 4y ago
  > 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 they are always working on electrical things. > that have to be able to function for weeks at a time in a grid down situation. Generators are a thing that pretty much every one of these services will have. Because you can't have a fire station, EMT dispatch, etc go dark because of a grid down situation. And, consider this when thinking of a "grid down" situation. How do you pump fuel if the grid is down? There are few places where EVs are bad fits. The main ones are airplanes and ships where getting power is hard and the power density needs to be high. For everything semi-truck and smaller, batteries have a high enough capacity to service today.
  - RhysU 4y ago
    Are you serious?! If my town loses power for two weeks I want fire trucks, ambulances, tow trucks, and especially power company trucks to work! Civic infrastructure should anticipate tail events. > How do you pump fuel if the grid is down? Gravity. Siphons. Manual pumps. Etc. Real complicated stuff known since figuratively Roman times.

josephcsible 4y ago

Wouldn't a lot of the extra cost for the 33% more trucks get canceled out by each one getting driven that much less, so requiring less maintenance and lasting longer? Other than the part of depreciation that happens because of age rather than mileage/usage, what costs would remain?

mattmaroon 4y ago
I'm not even sure depreciation matters with these anyway! Idk how much of a resale market there is. You might just run it into the ground and then scrap it.
- danuker 4y ago
  Meanwhile, batteries are consumables for purposes of EU warranty. Yet they make up the most expensive part of an EV.
Spooky23 4y ago
No. Capital costs tend to be bonded, and infrastructure to support idle trucks is expensive.
bobthepanda 4y ago
You need parking spaces for 33% more trucks. There isn’t exactly land freely available for that in New York.

beambot 4y ago

It's entirely feasible to do battery swapping if high uptime is a requirement -- e.g. see Monarch Tractors.