> Ambulances should be EVs already. They have a lot of equipment on board that needs power, and they spend 99% of their life sitting in a garage plugged in to power all that stuff without running the engine.
No, they really shouldn't.
I've been a paramedic for 15 years.
Hybrid, perhaps, but not EV. It's not uncommon for our ambulances to put 4-500 miles on them in a shift (911 doesn't factor into this so much but then you have transfers - around Seattle, getting your patient to mental health inpatient can involve a 150 mile round trip to an available bed).
> The worst case for them is they is a rural ambulance needs an urgent transfer of someone to a big city hospital 150 miles away (more than that it either isn't urgent or they need a helicopter to get the required speed). Now this does require extra large batteries as those transfers are done at 90mph (which uses more power), but the total trip distance is limited by the fact that urgent transfers have a time limit and so the ambulance doesn't need to stop for a charge on a long trip.
That just sounds like an accident waiting to happen. If it's not urgent, you don't transfer a patient at 90mph - these rigs are heavy (and EVs would be heavier still) - handling is really not great, and people freak out at sirens and lights, regardless. Doing that trip at 90mph takes 1h40m, lowering your speed to 70mph takes 2h8m. If your patient is stable, that's 28 minutes (and this is at the high end). And if they're not stable, fly them.
(That's leaving aside the fact that, for better or worse, most private ambulance companies are not known for great / proactive vehicle maintenance. I'd be frankly scared for my life in the back of many of the rigs I've been in if we were at 90mph).
I have to imagine that the range of an ambulance at 90mph, entirely non-aerodynamic (even our ambulance vendor describes them as "having the aerodynamics of a brick"), pulling 15,000-20,000lb is going to be garbage.
The thing that makes response faster? Opticom (traffic light pre-emption).
If you're in a city and staying in town but not toooo busy, maybe there's a case for EVs, but I definitely think hybrid would be the better option. Or even similar to Audi's Dakar "EV", that has a small gasoline engine that is not used for driving, but just charging the batteries (IIRC).
> Fire trucks need to be able to handle the 10 hour fire (this doesn't happen often, but you have to buy for the worst case), so I'm not sure if EVs can handle them or not. We can do a battery swap at the scene, but that is tricky logistics, so I'm willing to agree they shouldn't be EVs yet.
Agreed. We will 'hot refuel' engines on large events as needed. But when the pump is engaged, it's typically going to have the engine running at a high RPM (for a large diesel... I want to say like 2, 2.5K?) and doing so for hours. There's no regeneration possible, so it's just a high draw. Plus you add in scene lighting (LEDs make that a lot less painful now) and potentially other tools.
For a while we had some (fire) engines that carried a small generator to enable turning off the (IC) engine while on scene but not needing to pump (emergency lights at an MVA, etc). They were plumbed in to the same fuel source, but ended up being less efficient than just keeping the engine running (however they did have - though questionable - benefits in suburban areas with lower noise - but still, you have lights and other activity).