[collinc777]

I'm very interested in what infrastructure needs to be put in place to make EV fleet vehicles a reality.

Imagine you have a fleet of EV emergency vehicles. How do make sure they're operable in the event of a far too common electrical outtage?

You'd need EV lots, outfitted with chargers, and serious battery backup to make that happen.

We're pretty far away from that infrastructure existing. As much as I'd like to see ev fleet vehicles on the road, a too rapid, forced transition to ev's for fleet vehicles scares me.

[crazygringo]

Electrical outages aren't all that common as a regular thing in the first place, and for package delivery it's not unreasonable to expect packages not to be delivered during a multi-day blackout.

As for emergency vehicles specifically, that's what backup generators are for. And it's not like there are that many emergency vehicles in the first place. Keeping 3 fire trucks charged, or 4 ambulances, in a single location, with a generator, is pretty trivial all things considered.

The main vehicles that will probably remain gas are snowplows (often garbage trucks with a plow attachment). In major winter storms, snowplows need to operate continuously and are parked together rather than dispersed among small sites the way emergency vehicles are. But for that very reason, forced electrification isn't coming for them. Planners and lawmakers are very aware of these situations.

[KennyBlanken]

> for package delivery it's not unreasonable to expect packages not to be delivered during a multi-day blackout.

Except for plenty of people who rely upon package delivery for medications which can have very limited shelf-life, or require being chilled, with limited time before the icepack or dry ice melts?

[crazygringo]

If it's just your chilled weekly food cook-at-home kit, the company will just eat the loss usually. No biggie.

While if it's a medical emergency, you should always have a backup plan anyways since packages get delayed for days all the time even without blackouts. Just last month an Amazon package of mine took 3 weeks to arrive because the UPS had temporarily lost it I guess.

UPS is not a life-saving service, and nobody should be relying on it as such.

[orangepurple]

> Electrical outages aren't all that common as a regular thing in the first place

Oh my sweet summer child. You haven't spent enough time in the midwest. Power outages can occur on windless sunny days and last for a really long time.

[JKCalhoun]

Twiddling my thumbs in Nebraska for a few years now. No power outages in my neighborhood.

Maybe you mean Texas?

[crazygringo]

You're right I haven't. How often do they happen and for how long? Minutes or hours or days?

Is there anywhere that tracks stats nationwide?

[orangepurple]

Hours to a handful of days usually. If I knew where they were I would spend less time driving across the county trying to find places where the lights are still on where I can fill up my truck and gas generator. Since I got a briefcase sized gas generator I don't have to worry about food thawing or myself overheating in the summer since I can run box fans in the shade. They generally provide enough juice to power on a whole house natural gas heater in the wintertime.

[crazygringo]

Oh yikes, sorry to hear. Makes me more thankful for big-city grid reliability I guess. Thanks for the info.

[local_crmdgeon]

Never had a blackout in NYC or KC

[whoiskevin]

How to gas fleets operate during a power outage? After all gas pumps don't work.

These questions may be legit but they always feel like a veiled attempt to discredit a viable alternative to the noise and pollution that is the status quo.

[gamblor956]

Gas pumps in many states operate when the power grid is down. They simply switch over to backup generators (fueled by gasoline) to provide the electricity to run the pumps.

See e.g. https://www.abcactionnews.com/simplemost/how-do-gas-stations...

[collinc777]

Backup generators, pre stocked fuel, and manual pumps are all cheap ways to provide redundancy.

Providing redundancy for EV fleet vehicles is much more expensive.

It all relies on the cost of the battery going down.

[Robotbeat]

Backup generators And prestocked fuel? Sounds like the same approach, actually? Plus you can supplement with on-premises solar/battery.

[rnk]

We already know from many other hurricanes during the last few years that there is usually scattershot electricity supplies. It takes longer to get more gas. It's surprisingly the case that we know from the last 10 years that EVs work at least as well as gas cars, and when gas runs out and it wasn't resupplied gas cars work better.

[parker_mountain]

> How do make sure they're operable in the event of a far too common electrical outtage?

I never got this concern. Gas pumps are powered by electricity, and you're not going to hand fill a fleet's tanks.

[genter]

You need a much smaller generator to pump gasoline than you do to charge a van.

[orangepurple]

They should put a gas powered generator in a car to charge the battery while you drive /s

[r00fus]

That’s a Chevy Volt or BMW i3 + REX

[collinc777]

I'm from Texas. A hurricane here and a cold winter there and you start to realize that this infra isn't ironclad.

[sokka_h2otribe]

Texas deregulated grid is relatively cheap but also relatively unreliable compared to the rest of the country

[peer2pay]

There’s already plenty of cities with all-electric public transit systems, including bus fleets.

In the US, Lancaster CA is a model city & they have plenty of resources online documenting their transition

[floxy]

As long as your EVs have batteries, seems like you should be OK, as long as they're not all at 10% of charge. How many miles does an ambulance, fire truck, or police car put on in a week? What length of power outage are you guarding against? Weeks long?

[collinc777]

The range of these larger vehicles is currently ~100 mi. Most operators charge them once a day.

[floxy]

Anyone know where to find the range specs for the Rivian fleet vehicles/vans? On the Rivian website, the RT1 and RS1 have advertised models with ranges varying from 260 to 410 miles.

https://rivian.com/r1s#specs

[Robotbeat]

That’s the real problem. Undersized (“rIgHtSiZeD”) batteries. Consumer pure BEVs didn’t take off until >200 mile EVs became available.

[rnk]

No, the range is not 100 miles. Even 10,000 pound vehicles can go 300 miles these days, like a hummer.

[RandallBrown]

Rivian is 150 miles. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/14/what-its-like-to-deliver-for....

Ford is 100-126 https://www.ford.com/commercial-trucks/e-transit/

[wise_young_man]

The Rivian one was designed for Amazon specs. The Ford one is half the cost of a Rivian R1T. This is simply price economics. Amazon wanted to maximize space for packages, not batteries. They have charges at their warehouses and these are charged likely at night for off peak rates.

If we are talking about just an ambulance, the range could get higher, but there are diminishing returns eventually for a giant square so it probably needs an aerodynamic redesign.

[collinc777]

Every EV fleet i've talked to placed the range at <= 100 mi.

[rnk]

I see I misunderstood the question & context. The rivian delivery van is about 100 miles apparently, but that's only because the customer, amazon, gave them specs to meet. All they have to do is add more batteries to get more range. I could pull the rivian ev delivery truck on a trailer behind my r1t and get 150 miles easy, and at slow city speeds probably more. My truck probably cost a good bit more than a delivery van, but has better specs.

I thought the question wasn't about the delivery vehicle, I thought it was asking about rivians in general. There's nothing limiting that range inherently, it doesn't have the greatest aerodynamics, but the goal is carry all those packages.

[kraftman]

I think the way things are going you're considerably more likely to be near someone who has either a car or a home battery that could provide power to your vehicle, than you currently are to be near someone who has a gas tank at their house. There are already standards to allow cars to discharge to home batteries, and vice versa, theres no system to easily syphon of your cars fuel to another car, or to generate petrol at home.

[rnk]

Saying EVs don't work after emergencies because the power will be off ignores that places run out of gas too.

Previous post hurricane situations lead to gas shortages, electricity seems to be more available in a scattered way, gas runs out often. Infra of course can go bad, but the situation of (better have a gas car after a hurricaine/emergency instead of an ev) is another one of those things that has turned out not to be an issue. It's also a thing that places run out of gas for a while, or the gas station doesn't work because it lost power and they didn't wire for a generator. Unfortunately it requires saying that "evs don't work in this scenario" is another piece of fud, along with they catch on fire all the time, need new batteries all the time. EVs are made by humans, they have limitations, just like all vehicles, but they work fine generally.

There are lots of examples where post hurricane there wasn't much gas

2017 - https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/09/florida-gas-shortage-... Shortage of gas after hurricanes.

2012 - Gas runs short after a hurricane in NJ https://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/02/nyregion/gasoline-shortag...

https://cleantechnica.com/2022/09/28/apparently-we-need-to-t... - discusses the FUD accounts that become active after a disaster, evs actually good for idling in heavy traffic leaving hurricane.

[nickik]

Usually things like hospitals already have static fuel burning backups. You would just use those for charging as well. Then you only need 1 fuel source, and that can be gas for example.

Sure this means you need more static power generation capability, but I think its a worthwhile tradeoff.

[kalleboo]

Where I live we have typhoons.

The last typhoon disrupted gasoline supplies so bad that all the gas stations around were closed for 2 days due to lack of delivery.

Power grid didn't even so much as blip once.

It sounds like gasoline cars are the ones that aren't ready for prime time.