Posted on 03/05/2015 5:37:16 PM PST by LogicDesigner
If one raises the topic of electric vehicles (EVs), everybody seems focused on Tesla these days. How many vehicles have they sold? Is Apple a would-be competitor? Where’s the stock going? And of course Tesla and its EV brethren have tremendous potential to reduce overall energy consumption and pollution, if sold in significant volumes. To date, there are over 250,000 EVs on the road, which is a solid start.
But if one really wants to cut down on fuel use through electrification of vehicles, it might make sense to focus on the types of vehicles in which the most energy consumption is concentrated. And one of the biggest, nastiest (and loudest) such vehicles – offering the greatest potential for improvement – is your unfriendly neighborhood garbage truck.
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"They are burning 14,000 gallons a year, and chewing up their brakes every three months. Doing on average of 130 miles day with 1,000 hard stops, drivers are going full throttle, full brakes 1,000 times a day."
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That powertrain upgrade includes battery packs that directly drive electric power to all four wheels, and a regenerative braking system so one doesn’t burn out brake pads as many as four times a year, as current trucks do. However, perhaps the most interesting element of the powertrain is the gas turbine range extender generator. Much like the Chevy Volt – which uses a gas engine to supplement the initial battery range – the Wrightspeed system uses a back-up engine as well.
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Wrightspeed’s CEO comments that the company is already out of the lab and has been on the road for the past 14 months with medium-duty FedEx delivery trucks. The technology has been proven and the company is converting 25 more delivery vehicles.
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(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
School buses might make even more sense.
They can charge all day long for the trip home so the high cost battery pack can be a good bit smaller.
Methinks the large load, coupled with energy required to crush each pickup, would yield a range shorter than a true sentence from Dorkbama.
Many fleets have already been converted to LPG and are considered to be ‘clean air’ type trucks. Now they want to convert them to battery power, again at the cost to the consumer, where the consumer gets little to no benefit. It doesn't pick up trash any quicker or cheaper, it just adds to the cost.
So while this is fascinating, and I'm glad that private commercial enterprises like FedEX are experimenting with this technology at their own cost, I see little to no reason to support outfitting even more vehicles at the cost of taxpayers or consumers where they don't have any input (IE competitive competition) to turn to.
Municipal vehicles like garbage trucks, street sweepers and busses are great candidates for use of alternative fuel technology. The energy demands can be defined clearly (X miles or Y hours of operation); they can return to centralized depots regularly for refueling and regular maintenance; and technicians can maintain extensive records for evaluating newer technology in the field.
Forcing the general public into adapting expensive golf carts as daily drivers offers none of these advantages, but it does give car companies plenty of opportunities to cozy up to their government overlords.
“They chew up brakes, engines, and transmissions. It’s quite variable but they don’t get 200,000 miles out of them. Maybe five years.”
But with the Wrightspeed system,
“The running costs are much lower, both maintenance and fuel. You can save about $35,000 per year on fuel per truck and about $20,000 per year in maintenance.”
Although, I think for many citizens, the reduction in noise pollution might be the biggest selling point.
Ya know what we could go to Steam powered trucks and cars...
What happens in the cold weather? Severe thunderstorms?
Good point however, taxpayers may be willing to pay ‘somewhat more’ for the extra sleep.
Of course, they shouldn’t be offered subsidies from other citizens of the state or country to choose e-garbage trucks!
Seems like a good application of the technology. IF a battery can carry the needed energy. There’s a lot of work to be done by a garbage truck, much more than moving an ultra-light vehicle around requires.
The vehicles use a gas turbine backup engine if the battery runs out.
I’m all for quieter hydraulics, which they ALWAYS seem to do at our house at 6:00 in the morning...
It isn't a selling point when the people are told exactly who their trash company is. All that does is help elect the people who negotiated the contract with the trash company to up the costs to embrace electronic vehicles.
the mechanics of the “scoop” that the garbage is loaded into would need a complete redesign to cut much noise..as any of the trucks Ive ever seen produce as much noise standing still moving the garbage into ithe big bin as they do whilst traveling.
Im all for a complete re do
Electric school buses might make sense, but I work for the biggest school bus operator in the North America, based in Cincinnati and they are CHEAP!!!!! The conglomerate head office is in Scotland so yes, they live up to the reputation of Scots!
A school bus is ‘timed out’ in many jurisdictions after 5 years. In Alberta, it is 25 years, so we get all the hand me downs and the chances of them buying electric school buses are slim to none. I drive one of the ‘newer’ buses in the local fleet, almost 15 years of age and over three hundred thousand kilometers (185,000 miles).
Yes, the hydraulics that run the loader and compactor make a lot of noise. I think you’d need to go to some type of electric screw mechanisms to be really quiet.
But that’s a whole ‘nother engineering project.
school buses, city utility vehicles, taxi cabs, any non-emergency city vehicle,...it could be done..so why NOT?
some place in the “silicon valley” with a huge tax base will likely be the first to give that a try
I’m surprised at the 5 year window. Those must really be affluent school systems.
Around here it used to be 10 and it’s gone to 12 in the last few years.
Why not convert the skool buses to use the fryer grease from the cafe??
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