A Garbage Truck That Would Make Elon Musk Proud

curtwoodward writes: Ian Wright knows how to build high-performance electric cars: he was a co-founder at Tesla Motors and built the X1, a street-legal all-electric car that can go from zero to 60 in 2.9 seconds. But he only cares about trucks now — in fact, boring old garbage trucks and delivery trucks are his favorite. Why? To disrupt the auto industry with electrification, EV makers should target the biggest gas (and diesel) guzzlers. His new powertrain is very high tech, combining advanced electric motors with an onboard turbine that acts as a generator when batteries run low.

Comments

General Moters

[Frosty Piss]

There where plenty of electric vehicles prior to General Moters buying all the street-car companies and replacing the cars with diesel buses.

Re:General Moters

[Anonymous Coward]

A complete LACK of HTTP skills. He meant this

Some of this is happening at PACCAR

[WillAffleckUW]

They make trucks, they're near Seattle, and there are some UW engineering projects in doing stuff like that there.

They already have a number of hybrid trucks, and I know that fuel cell powerplants scale well in truck form.

Low hanging fruit

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

SCHOOL BUSES. Usually low-speed, frequent starts & stops, usually only out for 2-3 hours at a time. Time to recharge between morning and afternoon routes. Current diesel models get terrible mileage. Perfect for teslafication.

Re:Low hanging fruit

[crow]

FIRE TRUCKS: They rarely have to travel more than a few miles at a time, with plenty of time to recharge. And they're all ridiculously expensive already, so the added cost of batteries is insignificant.

Wondering why it took so long...

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

The diesel-electric locomotive took over from the steam locomotives at incredible rate of adoption. Many steam locomotives pf Baldwin Loco Works, Philadelphia, made just one run from assembly line to scrap yard. It was that fast, technology changed before the order pipeline was flushed. In just 10 years, between 1950 and 1960. But even very large earth movers, even those that needed lots of electric power on board, stubbornly stayed with diesel instead of diesel-electric.

This conversion of diesel trucks to diesel-electric or gas-turbine-electric trucks is long over due. In the case of steam locomotives, the efficiency went from 6% for steam to 15% diesel-electric. But coal was much cheaper than diesel. Here the efficiency boost is probably from 20% to 30%. Going from expensive fuel to slightly cheaper fuel. It might not beat the speed at which steam was made obsolete. But it could come close.

At last a good idea

[Blaskowicz]

I believe electrics and hybrids are overrated most of the time : huge costs and environmentally friendly don't mix that well in my mind.
Garbage trucks are a nice low hanging fruit and are universally needed. Whatever place they're to be found before/after their work day so to speak is where you can do electrical charging and maintenance (and maybe the same for other municipal vehicles)

If electric somewhat hybrid garbage trucks make sense, they'd be welcome everywhere, even/especially in African and Asian countries.

Missed opportunity

[bugs2squash]

A Mr. Fusion, system would have been a better fit for the Garbage collection sector.

Engines are more than just for movement:

[Hartree]

Fire trucks have to use their engines for extended periods to run the on board pumps during major fires.

Bad enough having to find a hydrant. Imagine having to find an electrical outlet with sufficient current capacity to keep electric pumps going after the batteries are down.

1950.s Milk Floats in the UK

[nukenerd]

The UK at one time (certainly around the 1950s-60s) had the world's highest number of electric vehicles on the road - tens of thousands of them I believe.

They were milk delivery trucks (called "Milk Floats") which typically delivered milk around town in glass bottles to people's doorsteps at around 5-6 am every day. That was before most people had fridges but wanted fresh milk every morning. They ran on batteries and had a top speed of about 8mph.

It was ideal, like it would also be ideal for rubbish (US garbage) collection. Electric drives are good for the constant start-stop driving with long-ish pauses in between. Also the early morning milk floats did not wake people up as a IC-engined truck would have done.

Fridges and car ownership brought an end to most doorstep milk deliveries, but there are still some around.

Elon Musk had nothing to do with this

[ModernGeek]

The only purpose for putting Elon Musk's name in this is to grab the attention of the reader by dropping a popular name, I'm sure that he isn't proud of this truck; the article doesn't even mention his name. I'm sure that the "editor" that put this up didn't even realize they weren't talking about Elon Musk, they just skimmed through, saw "Tesla Co-Founder" and assumed said article was about Musk... I want to even say that the two aren't even on good terms anymore for some reason, something the "editors" should have looked into.. I'm with Steve Jobs on this one, Bloggers are not Journalists.

Re:Distance and Charge Time

[NoKaOi]

but the duration driving necessary by a fleet of garbage trucks isn't there unless you have a bunch of "tender" vehicles running them fresh batteries all day long.

Except garbage trucks don't actually drive that many miles. Time, yes, miles, no. That makes them perfect candidates for electric. As far as the "tender" vehicles, it mentions having an onboard turbine so this is essentially a plug-in hybrid, where the key is efficiency.

Re:Distance and Charge Time

[Adriax]

An electric drive train weighs a fraction of what an axle drive train does for those monsters, and an electric motor is MUCH better for a stop&go traffic pattern due to resting torque differences and regenerative braking.
Plus the generator can be tuned for a singular operating RPM since the battery bank will be buffering the energy. That right there simplifies the engine and boosts efficiency.

I'm a fan of the electric + generator hybrid setup. It can take advantage of the existing fuel infrastructure for distance, while giving efficiency gains and allowing designers to use a wider range of engine designs for the generator. I would guess there are a couple engine designs out there that are more efficient/powerful for the mass and/or volume but can't do the variable RPM a 4-12 piston IC does.

Re:Distance and Charge Time

[MichaelSmith]

Its just like a British milk float. It spends a lot of its time stopped, so an engine which doesn't need to idle is more efficient.

Good video on this

[Tailhook]

Capstone Turbine Corporation makes the LNG burning turbine for this application. Here is a good video about it, showing the vehicle in operation and explaining the trade-offs; basically high initial capital costs with good long term savings in fuel and maintenance. Regenerative braking is a big win both in fuel savings and maintenance for garbage trucks which can perform more than 1000 hard stops per day.

Technical details on the turbine include; 200 lbs, 250 hp, 40,000h service life between overhauls (13+ years @ 8h / day.) The turbine has air bearings to eliminate wear, which implies a gas generator/power section arrangement to drive the generator, I believe.

Re:Good video on this

[Firethorn]

Diesels in that size are much more efficient, more tolerant of abuse, more tolerant of contaminated fuels, and a lot cheaper to maintain.

Citation? In the video it mentions that a diesel replacement for the power of the turbine would be 2000 pounds, not 200. Not exactly the same size. He also specifies that the turbine requires less maintenance. The turbine(which shouldn't be running all day) is rated at 40k hours(4.5 years continual operation), doesn't use oil lubrication or have a cooling system to worry about. Service parts are filters - fuel and air.

Looking up diesel garbage truck information - I found a study where they had a service interval of 225 hours, probably about every 3-4 weeks. The study mentions going with special motor oil containing stuff that enabled them to 'extend oil change intervals by six times'. So I think that figuring on an oil change between 1-3 months is reasonable. That adds up.

As for contaminated fuels, is that such a big problem here in the USA? Besides, turbines are inherently multi-fuel, so as long as the fuel burns you should be good. If it doesn't even a diesel will hydro-lock and kill itself.

I think that the trick is that you might be thinking of aviation turbines, not power generation turbines. Looking up the Capstone turbine company, they produce power turbines, not aviation turbines.

The important bits I've heard about turbines is a bit that goes like "Small size, wide power band, efficiency, pick two". Aviation turbines aren't as efficient as they could be because they need to operate over a wide power band. However, the turbine isn't hooked to the wheels in this application - it can happily be either off or running in it's ideal power band charging the battery. At which point 1800 pounds saved DOES save fuel because a lighter vehicle can go further on a given amount of energy.

Re:Good video on this

[drinkypoo]

In the video it mentions that a diesel replacement for the power of the turbine would be 2000 pounds, not 200

Well, if he really said that, he's a dirty liar. You can trivially get 250HP from a 7.3 powerstroke, which weighs about 1100lb wet.

Looking up diesel garbage truck information - I found a study where they had a service interval of 225 hours, probably about every 3-4 weeks. The study mentions going with special motor oil containing stuff that enabled them to 'extend oil change intervals by six times'. So I think that figuring on an oil change between 1-3 months is reasonable. That adds up.

Sigh. No. You are applying statistics without understanding. The most common system to fail on a garbage truck isn't going to be the engine. The engine isnot receiving service every 3-4 weeks. A truck that unreliable would be sold for scrap. The most common point of failure is the hydraulic system. Diesel engines regularly run for literally hundreds of thousands of miles without anything more than regular scheduled maintenance service, unless they're six-liter Fords.

As for additives extending oil service life, dollars to doughnuts they're running AMSOIL. It really is a superior lube, as proven by independent testing. I'm running Schaeffer's now, which is similarly higher-synthetic. An oil can be described as a "full synthetic" when it actually contains only 10 or 15 percent synthetics (PAO, primarily - you can buy the pure stuff for A/C systems) because synthetic additives are packaged in dino juice and that's how they're added to the mix.

As for contaminated fuels, is that such a big problem here in the USA?

Water is the only common contaminant. It's not as unusual as it should be, though.

Re:Distance and Charge Time

[mlts]

That is exactly where electric motors shine. When a vehicle is stopped, an electric motor requires zero energy to function except for cab climate control and computer devices. If one drives a hybrid or EV, stop and go traffic sucks a lot less with one of those than a gas or diesel engine which is chugging away at idle burning fuel. (Yes, one can start/stop the engine, but that may be more trouble than its worth, especially if it is very hot or cold outside.)

It only will get better. Once we get battery technology within 1/10 of energy by volume as gasoline, the Otto engine is history.

Re:Distance and Charge Time

[Waffle Iron]

I can't wait for to be woken at 5 AM when the turbine generator fires up outside my bedroom window ;(

The garbage trucks active at wee hours are usually emptying dumpsters. The engine noise is least of your worries compared to the sound of them slamming a half ton steel box up over the truck then down onto the pavement.

As a former weekly 3:00am victim of this practice at an apartment I used to rent, I think that operating any garbage truck between 11:00pm and 6:00am should be made into a felony.

Re:Distance and Charge Time

[NormalVisual]

and an electric motor is MUCH better for a stop&go traffic pattern due to resting torque differences and regenerative braking.

Regenerative braking doesn't do a whole lot when the vast majority of your stop & go driving never gets above 10 mph with only 100 feet or so between stops.