[lamontcg]

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]

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]

> 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.

[catiopatio]

Fire trucks would be terrible EVs:

- Fire departments cannot afford to have their apparatus out-of-service for hours while they recharge.

- The truck alone weighs around 10,000-15,000 lbs, without water, and they carry anywhere from ~500 gallons of water (attack engines) to upwards of ~2600 gallons (tenders). That’s 14,175lbs to 36,710lbs of truck.

- The engine powers the apparatus itself, its pumps, and often, a huge alternator for its electrical systems, and an inverter supplying 110V for use with fans, portable lighting, etc. It has to do this for hours.

> 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.

There is a several order-of-magnitude difference between the power required to service the station, dispatch, etc, as opposed to what’s required to rapidly recharge the kind of massive batteries an EV fire apparatus would require.

> And, consider this when thinking of a "grid down" situation. How do you pump fuel if the grid is down?

Local government maintains diesel generators and a fuel supply to handle this kind of extreme infrastructure failure.

> For everything semi-truck and smaller, batteries have a high enough capacity to service today.

Fire trucks aren’t semis. They have very different energy demands, usage patterns, risk profiles, and failure modes.

[Gordonjcp]

We have a couple. They're pretty good.

[RhysU]

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.

[cogman10]

> 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.

[RhysU]

"Shouldn't" and "can't" are different things.

I can power a couple of radios with far less than a full generator.

[jtbayly]

And you need a giant generator to charge any large vehicle in a reasonable amount of time, not just a generator that can keep the electricity on in the building.

[the_mar]

what if i told you, you still need to charge ur fire truck

[lelanthran]

> 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.

Okay, work out the size of a generator needed to power one truck vs the dispatch offices. Now tell us how many generators you need.

[anakaine]

Ever heard of diesel-electric drive trains? The vehicles have electric motors at the wheels and a much smaller then usual internal combustion engine that is an onboard generator.

You can have both at once. This is what happens with some trains, frequently happens in mining, and happens in some large industries. It is what occurs with hybrid electric vehicles.

The latest round of electric vehicles are getting 80km (50 miles) off the battery. That sort of thing is find for most of the service vehicle types you listed, and meets the requirements for greening a fleet and having alternative power options.

[XorNot]

> Gravity. Siphons. Manual pumps. Etc. Real complicated stuff known since figuratively Roman times.

This is one of those statements that sounds reasonable when its you with your consumer-grade whatever, and has absolutely no relevance to large scale logistics and planning.

Fuel in ground tanks when the black out starts is...fuel in the ground tanks which is going to stay there because no amount of human labor is getting enough of it out to keep multiple trucks going.

[spott]

Fuel in ground tanks can be pumped out by manually pumping enough to power a generator to power the regular pumps... which is pretty trivial to set up.

[988747]

Or you can just keep the generator fueled (they tend to come with built-in fuel tanks), and have a spare 50-gallon barrel of fuel stashed somewhere.

[anakaine]

Fuel in ground tanks can be pumped out with a manual hand pump. It's not that hard and frequently used on remote property tanks.

[TEP_Kim_Il_Sung]

Omly need to get one truck going: The pump truck.

[hoseja]

You are really blind to the amount of established infrastructure needed to get dinosaur juice to all the boonies.

[prottog]

Isn't the point that the established infrastructure is already established?

[Kon-Peki]

> fire trucks

> Would be excellent EVs. They have super low millage and you'd not have to worry about things like stagnant fuel.

Yeah, so I don’t know much of anything about NYC, but I used to live in Chicago and did some volunteer work that put me in a fire station for a few hours every few months. Fire trucks are busy vehicles. They probably would indeed be excellent EVs, but they get used a lot (even if actual fires are rare). Also, firefighters are used to plugging them in! Modern fire stations maintain good internal air quality by having an exhaust system that connects a hose to the diesel exhaust of the fire truck when it comes into the station and detaches when it leaves.

On the other hand, an extended family member is the fire chief in a small western town. Those fire trucks would be terrible EVs, as they spend days or weeks at a time out in the field dealing with large scale wildfires.

[fwungy]

Target response times for fire trucks are measured in minutes. Fire damage increases on an exponential curve, a couple minutes can make a huge difference when lives and homes are on the line.

EVs are a great technology for urban settings in moderate weather conditions, like in the big California cities where travel needs can be predicted, e.g. I travel < 40 miles/day and can recharge at home overnight.

Jamming them into applications for which they are not yet viable is a recipe for failure. People will only tolerate so much cost and inconvenience for the sake of climate change, it is important we not waste it on foolishness, because it's of urgent importance that we succeed in addressing it.

[bayindirh]

> ambulances [are] Generally low mileage vehicles, no idea why you'd not be able to use them as EVs.

Because they are neither low mileage and the medical equipment behind needs power. You never want your battery to go flat in an ambulance and lose the mobility and life support at the same time. Also, they're used the way EVs hate most. Accelerate and decelerate constantly while trying to plow through traffic in city centers and rush hours.

> fire trucks Would be excellent EVs. They have super low millage...

I wouldn't want an inextinguishable box of lithium near something hot like a fire. Would you?

> power company trucks [are] Excellent option for EVs because they almost never haul equipment

I don't know how yours operate but the power company trucks I see carry a whole workshop behind, and some of them carries enough spare parts to build a sizeable transformer from scratch. If we are talking about cranes, their hydraulics will consume enough energy to affect their mileage considerably.

> Generators are a thing that pretty much every one of these services will have.

You'd need a couple of 1.2MVA generators to charge these vehicles if you want to do it quickly, with redundancy. And these things are neither small, nor silent or can be deployed anywhere you like. We have a couple of them outside, and boy, they're literally shipping container sized things. This excludes the fuel tanks and other infrastructure they need to be able to generate electricity.

> And, consider this when thinking of a "grid down" situation. How do you pump fuel if the grid is down?

Uh, just pour fuel to the tanks or pump with a manual pump?

[kennend3]

> I wouldn't want an inextinguishable box of lithium near something hot like a fire. Would you?

This.

My brother is a captain for a fire department. I visited the hall many times with him and found the station design odd. He told me it is built that way because there have been cases of fire trucks being too close to major fires, and the truck catching fire back at the station.

The station has "blast doors" that automatically close if the bay is on fire to protect the rest of the station. (sounds funny right.. fire halls catching fire??)

Not sure they would want a "flammable metals" fire in their bay.

[cogman10]

And how do they deal with the tank of explosive fluids inside fire trucks today?

Precautions around keeping a fuel tank from catching fire work the same for batteries. Better, because lithium batteries have an ignition temperature at 2000F and gasoline's is 500F and diesel at 410F.

[bayindirh]

Explosion proof, fire arresting, multi layered tanks, which are in use since forever (planes and other critical vehicles also use that technology).

Also, you can’t ignite fuel without a spark. A cigarette can’t light a tank of fuel, but an overheated battery can catch fire by itself.

Lastly, you can extinguish fuel fires, but you can’t extinguish metal fires.

[kennend3]

This is a shockingly high amount of FUD but little facts.

Lets start at the top shall we?

Diesel doesn't "burn" like gasoline does.

"If you toss a lit match into a puddle of diesel fuel, it'll go out."

You need to atomize it first, or heat it up a lot so it starts to "flash" or it wont "burn".

So, a firetruck with a large diesel tank is fairly safe because it takes a LOT to get it to start burning. At first all the heat is simply absorbed by the diesel slowing warming it up until it reaches its flash point.

Next, your temperatures are beyond MESSED UP.

Ignition temperature for a lithium battery is just 121 C

https://www.nature.com/articles/srep07788#:~:text=The%20crit....

The Auto-ignition temperature of pure lithium is just 179°C

https://inchem.org/documents/icsc/icsc/eics0710.htm

https://webwiser.nlm.nih.gov/substance?substanceId=284&ident...

I have no idea where you get 2,000F (1,093C) from but this is so wrong it is embarrassing. This temperature is almost to the point Iron catches fire:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoignition_temperature

Batteries are also prone to shorts and spontaneous fires which may explain stories like this : https://www.republicworld.com/world-news/us-news/tesla-model...

There is also the "fun" reaction between Lithium and water, which firefighters often use on fires...

[kennend3]

> Would be excellent EVs. They have super low millage and you'd not have to worry about things like stagnant fuel.

There is no "/s" so it is hard to tell if you are being sarcastic or not. Assuming you are not... EV's make TERRIBLE fire trucks.

How long does it take to fuel a fire truck? How long to recharge one?

You are blissfully unaware of how fire trucks work. Many are also diesel pumps, they arrive at fires and the truck itself is a massive water pump. Tell us, how many hours can a EV drive the water pump for? The diesel version can probably run for several days if needed.

My brother is a firefighter, they are AFRAID of electric vehicle fires because well.. Something about electricity + water?

If i call 911, i expect a fire truck to arrive, not some BS about how they had a power failure and their rechargeable truck isn't working.

PS - Stagnant fuel isn't a real thing. Fire trucks are generally very well maintained, they are expensive, they are essential life saving machines. They don't just sit somewhere forgotten and have their fuel go "bad".

They are driven almost daily because firefighters are expected to know their area and so they drive around to see where hydrants are, look at new subdivisions and sometimes simply to make sure it runs property.

They also have detailed logbooks and are inspected a LOT.

>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?

First.. Fire stations use batteries then generators.

Second, you point out they have generators.. wouldn't that be used to transfer fuel answering your own question?

[manigandham]

What this basically does is (in a grid-down situation) is move the fuel usage from the truck's engine to the station's generator, greatly limiting the vehicles overall mobility precisely when they might be most needed.

[rad_gruchalski]

> you'd not have to worry about things like stagnant fuel.

> Generators are a thing that pretty much every one of these services will have.

So … you do have to worry?

[marssaxman]

> Some things will just never go electric.

And yet they will have to, if we want to continue having a civilization...

[the-rc]

There are many stations already, every few blocks. And the company running them, Citibike, already wants to connect them to the grid. Now you have a more tractable problem: when there's snow coming, some of the (many) unused bike racks can be dedicated to recharge truck batteries instead. I don't know what the hydraulics would look like and if that's something that can be installed seasonally or perhaps just a few days in advance.

[lazide]

Uh, those bike racks have nowhere near the infrastructure required to charge huge truck battery packs.

You can’t be serious?

[lamontcg]

I'm assuming the trucks are parked somewhere in depot(s) so you'd probably put the infrastructure there to swap them out and charge them.

[the-rc]

There are many more bike stations than truck depots. You could conceivably swap batteries multiple times during a 12h shift without having to make detours. And if you know there's going to be a lot of plowing, you could place batteries throughout the city ahead of time. Heavy storms rarely show up without warning signs. Elsewhere I suggested stockpiling batteries from other non-essential vehicles, so you don't need excessive redundant capacity that sits idle 95% of the year. That's why repurposing bike stations could help: you're not stuck with a lot of infrastructure that is needed only 5% of the year.