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Comment by taeric | Hacker News Reader

I'm a bit more bullish on it. It makes some sense in dense areas, I think. Which almost certainly accounts for the majority of areas that are covered by delivery.

However, the range is not to be discounted. Assuming a delivery van will operate for basically the full working day, I'd assume 200 miles is not unheard of for driving, and I see the range is about 150 miles for them.

That said, https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/14/what-its-like-to-deliver-for... seems to indicate that the range is working out ok? I'm curious if that is strictly in the dense areas? Mayhap the lower density also translates to fewer deliveries such that you have a lower "duty cycle" as it were?

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> since usage is predictable

I think this is the important bit. Amazon knows on exactly which routes a full battery and a full load of packages line up, so they can put the EVs on those routes.

Another thing I was just thinking of this morning was that you could implement possible charging into a route of packages -- pushing an automatic break in for a driver to stop for 10-15 minutes and grab a DC fast charge somewhere. It'd almost be a win-win: the driver gets a predictable break on the route (and knows they get a break!) and you can keep the vehicle on route longer.

On top of that, while plugged in, they can keep cool/warm in the vehicle without having to idle it or have additional wear and tear...

It ultimately doesn't pan out that well. Will work right up til someone finds that they can get a % more delivered without doing the stops.

You can see this in long race formats that have breaks. Teams that find a way to not do the break wind up winning. Such that you then have to mandate them, which works for things that people don't get value out of.

We already have similar mandates for truck driving, and I think most folks would be surprised that that exists. And they are far looser than what would be required for last mile driving.

> Teams that find a way to not do the break wind up winning

Teams that don't take the break will be inhibited by the limited range of their un-recharged vehicles. Are you suggesting that some people will find out how to swap their vehicles, and keep the shift going? (Or add an extra length of hose to the fuel line, for a virtually bigger tank? That type of trick isn't going to work well with battery vehicles...)

How is it you propose that someone is going to get more work done in less time, when their total range / route length is reduced by the extra effective distance they would have been able to continue with 15 minutes of fast charging added in, at the one or two points where it makes sense to add a stop in their shifts?

Mandated breaks being what they are, you are going to find it hard to codify it in such a way that fits all locales, ultimately. Some routes will just take more power, for reasons.

Then, later, they would find that the newer batteries actually can get by with smaller breaks. Or other efficiency gains that we just aren't thinking about.

My point wasn't that it would fail immediately, but it would eventually.

> How is it you propose that someone is going to get more work done in less time, when their total range / route length is reduced by the extra effective distance they would have been able to continue with 15 minutes of fast charging added in, at the one or two points where it makes sense to add a stop in their shifts?

By throwing the furthest of their deliveries into the nearest lake, and coming back early with an empty truck and charge remaining.

Drivers don't want to sit around waiting for a recharge. They want to clear the truck and go home.

That's not an optimization, lol, and it's not an answer. If the 20 minute recharge was built into a break, with a fast charger, that's going to add an extra 120 miles onto the delivery route range. IDK how many miles Amazon routes are expected to drive in an 8-10 hour shift, but given that the top range of the vehicles is about 350-400 miles with the biggest battery, that's almost an extra 35% of range.

If the trucks go far enough, and the drivers don't need breaks, then say that I guess. Drivers don't want to do their job is not an engineering problem, whereas delivering more packages per shift could be one.

Amazon workers don't get breaks. They work until they break.

DPD does all their deliveries in my area(medium size city in the UK) with Nissan NV100 electric vans and they get 100 miles of range on a good day(more like 60-80). The biggest chunk of that is warehouse to the city, then in-city driving makes very little impact on battery range since you're starting and stopping constantly(which is actually directly opposite to the efficiency of ICE cars)

I'm curious if they have to have more vans than they would otherwise need, then? That could easily let you cover the day with lower range.

I'm also open to challenges in my thoughts on typical range needed for a city fleet in deliveries. Will try and take a dive to find more data there.

I feel like loading whilst charging would minimize the impact charging makes quite significantly. Fast charging takes what, 20 minutes? I'm not sure loading a van is much faster.

Truck operators already do that - Volvo was saying that in the trials for their fully electric truck, charging while the truck is being loaded at the depot is fast enough for all day of operating. Of course that's not long distance driving, but plenty of customers for this kind of thing already.

could potentially supercharge them over lunch breaks if needed. fleets could also battery swap with less complication than normal end user cars.

they also have to be WAY easier to drive. they just scoot out of there rather than having to shift 9 times to get up to speed.

Not just lunch breaks. They have to return to the warehouse to reload every couple hours.

> they also have to be WAY easier to drive. they just scoot out of there rather than having to shift 9 times to get up to speed.

All Amazon delivery vans are automatic.

Agreed, they'd outperform in stop and go driving. Delivery in urban areas is their sweet spot. Since the workload is largely over the work day, supercharging needs are probably limited and vans can be just overnight on level 2 chargers.

Bearish?

Ha, yeah, I used the wrong term. :( Apologies on the confusion.

My main point is still on the "contra to my view" side, though. I'm skeptical that they are as good of an idea as stated, but evidence is positive on them.

You ride a bull, you run from a bear.

Nice! I actually knew the correct term, though. Have a bad habit of switching binary things a lot. :(

Edit: Amusingly, I think I was thinking that I was bullish against it. Such that I flipped a different part of the sentence. Still, wrong as written.

Or: bears hibernate, bulls charge

It's confusing, because people generally don't ride bulls. Where I'm from you gently back off from both bulls and bears.

I remember it as bears hibernate, so they will stockpile resources and not let go of them.

I don't really have an analog for the bulls, oddly.

I was taught it was how they attack.

Bears: stand and swipe down with their paw

Bulls: start with their head low and jut upwards with their horns

Also considering that it's policy UPS (maybe others?) to turn off the engine at every stop, and starting a vehicle is fuel intensive in an ICE vehicle

I don't think that is correct, many vehicles now have the auto start/stop as a way of meeting emissions requirements.

If it's so intensive, why is auto-stop/start such a common feature on many vehicles? Especially since it seems to improve city-cycle mpg ratings...

Auto stop/start requires some (mostly minor) modifications to the engine, as well as updated software so that it is used only in “ideal” conditions. And the engine shutdown is done in a way that makes it quick and easy to restart.

I’m not sure, is it even possible to use these systems on diesel motors?

Of course - I've had a diesel Nissan Qashqai with a start stop system all the way back in 2013. Never had any issues with it.

This is an amusing place where most of the advancement was probably in the starter. The same thing that lets you have a small charger for your laptop has helped get a smaller starter that won't drain after a few starts. There is a lot of work that goes into starting an engine.

It takes less fuel than most people think.

This is almost certainly one of those things where the tech has moved on. It definitely used to use a fair bit of fuel to get started. Not so much anymore.

Probably also depends on where you are? I'd imagine colder climates need to keep the engine running.

Even way back when it used a lot of fuel to get started, it only took a few seconds of engine off the make up that fuel.

I've had cars need jumping from too many starts draining the battery, though. So, mayhap it was less the fuel and more the battery/starter?

Modern cars will disable stop/start if the battery is low. My car won't even use the start/stop feature if the HVAC is operating at a 100% of it's capacity.

> to turn off the engine at every stop, and starting a vehicle is fuel intensive in an ICE vehicle

This is backwards. The whole point of these systems is that it costs more in fuel at idle than it does to stop and restart.

Lots of "pure" ICE cars have this now with some smarts about operating temperature, battery etc.

Idling was worse on carbs, sure, but even with injectors your fundamental problem is you don't have enough airflow, and you counteract that by richening the mix so you don't stall.

Not actually true.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Start-stop_system

Great link and a good resource for folks curious on this. I had posited that it was likely changes in the starter getting more efficient that has caused this to become more common. However, the article makes it clear that it is largely changes in how things are powered in the car. The specific point about the belt being used to power AC and such is likely the largest factor on why this is slowly going out. (And why it is more common in hybrids, since they had to be designed to power all systems without the belt.)

Is a very interesting case study in what software folks would call "tech debt."

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