Electric Garbage Trucks: Huge Energy Savings And They Won't Wake You Up In The Morning

Forbes ^ | March 4, 2015 | Peter Kelly-Detwiler

[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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[matt04]

Those compactors you see at malls, grocery stores, large office buildings, etc. usually have a 10 hp motor just to compact the trash. Once the store ak worked at had a prolonged power outage ad was running off a large 200+kW rental diesel generator. You could hear genset throttle up to pick up that load when we started the compactor.

[LogicDesigner]

A little bit. It seems like there is a high ratio of speculation to information out there. I’ve just resigned myself to wait until we hear something of substance about what Apple is actually doing.

[Star Traveler]

There will be nothing of substance from Apple because they NEVER EVER pre-announce what they are working on. All anyone will ever get, until the day a car is announced for sale “next week” ... is solely articles which are “sniffing around the edges” ... and nothing more. Apple is totally different from other companies in this regard.

[matt04]

One of my local garbage companies recently converted it’s curbside fleet to CNG. Much quitter than diesel, has the required range and no toxic battery pack to dispose of at the trucks EOL. Also the mechanics do not need tons of additional training as it is a just a dieel,engine converted to,run on CNG.

[LogicDesigner]

“...and no toxic battery pack to dispose of at the trucks EOL.”

Lithium ion batteries are not toxic, contrary to all the speculation that you may see in the comments section. Lead-acid batteries are far more toxic and we handle them just fine. (Just google lithium battery toxicity and read any of the results.)

Besides, the batteries are way too valuable to not reuse or recycle in some way. There is a market for second-hand automotive batteries out there for use as home backup electricity storage for people with solar panels. Tesla also has a recycling system set up for its batteries and Toyota recycles 100% of the components in their Prius batteries.

[Wonder Warthog]

"The vehicles use a gas turbine backup engine if the battery runs out."

I suspect that the GT engine would be run continuously to provide "baseline" power, with regenerative braking to provide "surge" power.

Has the additional advantage of keeping the battery compartment and cab of the vehicle warm (main reason for problematic battery operation in cold weather is that batteries simply lose charging and charge storage capability when cold).

[Wonder Warthog]

"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."

Hydraulics are actually pretty quiet in and of themselves. The noise comes from having to "surge" the diesel to power the hydraulic pump. With the hydraulic pump run by an electric motor, noise level should drop significantly.

[Ditto]

Ditto what both of you wrote.

Energy Density is the issue, and regardless of all the PR around EVs, they simply do not have the energy density to compete with fossil fuel.

Unless, or until, some fundamental break through in battery technology comes along, they will remain a niche and very expensive product.

The current (no pun intended) technologies are jokes for serious transport energy requirements.

[1010RD]

Think federally funded incentive programs. There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.

[Still Thinking]

It does not make sense to me for a heavy duty vehicle like a garbage truck. With all that battery, there wouldn't be much room left for job... which is collecting garbage.

That's no problem -- the greenies got the Forest Service to change their pickups from gas to CNG, and put the huge required tank in the back of the pickup, causing it to no longer be a pickup! D'oh! Libs and their propensity for unintended consequences. Doesn't matter if something works or not, if it gives lip service to some liberal shiboleth, it can't be a bad thing, right?

[chimera]

Conversion costs from diesel or gasoline to CNG can also be killers. I read or heard somewhere that to convert from one or the other to CNG requires an EPA-certified shop, and for something like a bus it runs around $100K with all the safety and QA required. Not that those are bad things for public transport, but my town looked at it for their public transit system and decided on a go-slow approach, where they'd do the conversions a few at a time and see if it panned out. The key issue was the cost per mile driven using diesel vs. CNG. At the time the equivalent cost for diesel vs. CNG was something like $3 diesel and 80 cents for CNG for the same number of vehicle-miles (I can't recall what that was). But given the conversion cost and vehicle lifetime it came out just a little on the positive side, (as long as CNG is cheap compared to diesel).

I guess it's worth looking at for a vehicle that is on the street a lot, every day, carrying a fair number of people. But, being retired, I'm driving less than 40 miles a week unless its vacation or a consulting job somewhere. So it doesn't make sense for a homebody like me to try either CNG or EVs. I'm gonna be dead before I see a net positive ROI.

[lacrew]

“Why not convert the skool buses to use the fryer grease from the cafe??”

My old high school dos this. Its a small school, and they only have two buses. There really isn’t much of a conversion to the bus...its really just a matter of filtering the grease to a useable fuel. Its not particularly a money saver, and they don’t have nearly enough to meet all the bus fuel needs, but an interesting science experiment.