LA recently bought its first electric firefighting apparatus! [1] is a marketing video talking about it.
That's fine and all, but I'd expect it to mostly displace range rovers and high-trimline full-sized trucks with spotless paint in the beds.
Have you seen either of those vehicles? I've driven the Ioniq 5, and have one preordered.
It's absolutely tiny, as far as SUV's go. Really it's a crossover, not quite an SUV and not quite a hatchback. It's a delightful vehicle and I can't wait to get mine, mind you.
And the EV6 is smaller.
The stop and go constantly, barely on the freeway, and this is the kind of driving where EV shines.
And they bletch tons of diesel exhaust on city streets. (Unlike trucks which are mostly in remote areas.)
They also all return to a depot, so there's a good place for them to recharge. The only issue I can see is if there's enough time for them to sit and recharge. But I think it should work out with some good scheduling, since obviously there's much less service at night.
> 18-wheeler segments
That's not going to work so well. Don't they sleep in their trucks on the side of the road? 18 wheeler cabs are almost always on the move, there's not really a lot of time for them to sit and recharge. I expect 18 wheelers to be one of the last segments to go electric.
They will only go electric when every truck stop has rows of fast chargers (so they can sleep and charge), and there's as many chargers as gas stations. This will take a long time.
https://ku.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troleybus
Does not need any rails and can navigate much steeper gradients & does not produce any local exhaust emissions.
They together with trams form the backbone of publich transport here in Brno, Czech Republic. Some city quarters are on top of a very steep gradient that buses have an issue to climb yet troley buses don't have a problem due to not really having to lug around a power source, just the powerful electric motor.
Most of the new troley buses now also have small bateries, which make it possible to navigate short stretches (couple km) where there are no troleys. This is super useful for both temporary redirections (where a street hosting a troleybus is being recontructed, it can go around without building new troleys) as well as for branching out to multiple destinations from the regular terminus when necessary.
The couple kilometers of range are really not a problem as the troleybus changes when traveling under a regular troley wire and thus does not need any dedicated charging stations or charging stops.
I really do wonder why more cities, especially in the west don't use more troley buses. My only theory being that they are somehow seen as outdated and not even considered when building new instrastructure.
Anyway, still it’d be nice to electrify them all, at least for air quality and noise.
That's not true. They might have lower CO2, but they are NOT cleaner. Diesel is uniquely bad in terms of air quality. Gasoline cars are very very clean.
Here's a study: https://www.driving.co.uk/news/public-transport-worse-than-d...
Plenty of long haul are also team drivers so they switch when they hit their legal limit for consecutive driving hours. So the downtime for charging is a bigger issue in that arrangement.
But there is still a non-trivial number of drivers who are home every night and only drive in a limited area. Range is still a sticking point, but if it is long enough then those trucks are ideal for an EV since they have regularly scheduled downtime.
A short term problem for sure but it is causing enormous problems in London (grid is really streched even for new residential towers, so adding a multiMW connection for depots is not trivial whatsoever).
> That's not going to work so well. Don't they sleep in their trucks on the side of the road? 18 wheeler cabs are almost always on the move, there's not really a lot of time for them to sit and recharge. I expect 18 wheelers to be one of the last segments to go electric.
Many of the trucks are out and back within a day, and need to travel only a few hundred miles. These trucks can potentially charge overnight and be ready the next day.
Work here, we're building them everyday!
I would also imagine that in the event of a disaster that we can restore electricity much faster than being able to deliver gasoline to all gas stations
As much as a quarter of the microplastics in our oceans are due to tire wear. So while it's hopeful that EVs represent the future of automobiles, far better would be a society that deprioritizes driving personal vehicles altogether.
https://www.jamesdysonaward.org/2020/project/the-tyre-collec...
They could also use software to nerf the instant torque. I'd probably leave my car in "tire save" mode most of the time. I leave it in eco mode, but even with that, it's on track to eat a premium set of tires every 15-20k miles(!).
Yeah, I think as public consciousness progresses, "tire save" mode will be an option, and hopefully the default. Also lighter vehicles, where ICE cars (and cars masquerading as trucks) have a long way to go, as well.
Although regenerative breaking would be really cool. A self-healing car? Sign me up!
The biggest impact won't happen until the most inefficient cars being used the most heavily get replaced; the big SUVs and showy pickups replacing three year old ICEs version leases and being driven 4,000 miles per year aren't going to do a whole lot.