Maybe for the time being at least a serial hybrid drivetrain could work - I'd rather a small engine running at constant revs keeping the battery (and maybe a capacitor bank for the acceleration) than the very noisy revving up and down every few metres.

Of course, with all that stopping there's potentially huge regenerative breaking potential so maybe it's not incredibly hard.

They already exist.

Battery-electric garbage trucks are proving very successful to due to the short range, stop-start nature of the job.

They have been in service for a while here in the UK, and the operators are happy with their performance: https://chargedevs.com/newswire/dennis-eagles-new-electric-r...

Some of the smaller authorities are 100% switched to electric: https://news.cityoflondon.gov.uk/clean-air-city-corporation-...