Electric Garbage Trucks!

[Ravenshire]

My community recently got a new trash provider (or more accurately, collector). They came around and dropped off huge, wheeled trash receptacles, one for each house. The first time they did a collection, there was tremendous rumbling like thunder but no engine sounds. I got to see it for the first time today. There is a side-mounted device to lift the trash receptacles and dump them. That was the rumbling I had heard. But the truck's propulsion was dead-silent. So strange to see this big-ass garbage truck accelerate away like a rocket and not make a sound.

I had thought before how electric propulsion makes huge sense for vehicles that make very frequent stops and spend a lot of time idling. Same-day delivery vans, mail trucks and busses are obvious candidates. I never thought about garbage trucks but someone obviously did. Electric cars can be pretty glamorous with their huge touch-screen displays and insane performance but electrifying the humble garbage truck is hugely practical. The difference in operating costs and maintenance has got to be enormous.

Now that I think about it, it would have made more sense from a practical standpoint to have started the electrical revolution with commercial vehicles like this. They get much more use than private cars and trucks so payback on the initial purchase price will come much faster. There is no range issue as these vehicles don't make long trips. In terms of making transportation more green, I would make an educated guess that replacing one fuel-burning commercial vehicle with an electric one will have an effect equal to replacing at least ten cars. Not that electric cars aren't a good thing but I can't help but think they missed the boat by neglecting commercial vehicles. Tesla did the semi but that is the one type of commercial vehicle that requires a lot of range and therefore the least practical to electrify! Dumb!

The first modern electric cars were lightweight with very short ranges, typically less than 100 miles. Heavy commercial vehicles, though better targets for carbon reduction, wouldn't have been viable candidates for early electrification. The battery packs would have been too small for the vehicle, or would have taken too much space to make the vehicle useful.

The Rivian RDV (electric Amazon delivery trucks) has a maximum range of approximately 120-160 miles, depending on specific configuration, and is based on the same platform as the Rivian R1T and R1S. The R1T and R1S have maximum ranges of approximately 260-400 miles. While range isn't as crucial for local stuff, it's more important than I think you're considering. The ranges available to a 20,000 pound GVD vehicle in the early 2000s would have been incredibly low. My immediate neighborhood (0.5 mi square) has over 6 miles of road that has to be traveled by trash collection trucks. 10 similar neighborhoods, 2.5 square miles, and we're well over 30 miles, not counting travel to and from the central starting point.

I can't fault the manufacturers for starting with cars. Not only were they far more viable early on, I would imagine it's easier to sell 100 new cars to individuals than to sell 10 enormously expensive vehicles to a company scraping by on thin margins.