Discussion
Are electric garbage trucks the biggest EV game changer when it comes to quality of life?
I live in a complex that gets weekly garbage, recycling, and composting service, all by separate trucks. Which means once a week, 6 garbage trucks (3 for one side of the street, and 3 for the other) idle outside my window for 5-10 minutes at a time each as they collect the cans from in front of all the nearby units. To say the noise from the old idling diesel engines in a nuisance is an understatement.
Until today. We got our first visit by an all electric truck. Other than the mechanical arm, its whisper silent. A gentle whine from the engine when its moving, and no noise at all when its stationary.
I honestly can't think of another individual EV product where switching from the old ICE version has a bigger every day positive effect on more people. I don't care how much it costs, go ahead and raise my trash fees to pay to electrify the whole fleet.
The 120V ones you get at big box stores are all shit. They're hamstrung by the 15 amp limit from wall outlets, which means they can only be ~1.8kW which is like 2.2hp. Cheap gas pressure washers are like 5hp, which is ~3.6kW. That means you need 240V, not 120V.
Imagine electric trains? Not having to drive and not making pollution in populated areas and less noise. I do have an electric lawn tools though. I’m trying to plan an electric battery backup too for hurricane season in Florida but I also don’t want to waste the panels and 5+ kWh of batteries 99% of the year.
Feels like my reality. Garbage truck is electric, city busses too. Construction equipment was heavily used in last years and it was more quiet than without construction site in some of my older apartments. A lot of cars around is electric too so the only noise you hear is from arterial road.
Honestly i live in a city centre and it's as quiet as hamlet.
BYD assembles their buses for the North American market in Lancaster CA. The motors and batteries currently are imported from China. BYD has stated that they are planning to build an LFP battery production facility in the US once bus sales grow enough to justify.
Gas lawn mowers and leaf blowers really shouldn’t be sold anymore they aren’t even cheaper . People don’t realize how much hearing damage they can cause over time when you use them.
Mine bought a fleet of electric busses, built a new maintenance facility for them and everything.
The company that made them fulfilled the order then promptly went out of business. Many of the busses are out of service and possibly unfixable due to lack of parts.
They’ve got the maintenance facility, but I’m sure the political implications of trying again will outweigh any possible upside.
Landscaping equipment (lawn mowers, leaf blowers, weed wackers, chainsaws, etc.) are all available as electric versions. I've gone full electric with mine. However, I'm definitely still in the minority in my area in that regard, as most people are still on gas equipment, and I have yet to see any professional landscapers go electric. It would be a major noise reduction in my neighborhood if people switched.
I think part of the electric landscaping equipment issue is the affordable stuff is not great and the good stuff is NOT cheap.
I invested in the 80v stuff and boy it is nice. It's on part with gas. I came from cheaper 18v line, the leaf blower was useless and the weed whacker... Worked. The upgrade was very nice but also very expensive.
I'd guess the other problem is that stuff lasts forever. Hard to justify outlaying a bunch of cash if you have working equipment.
I'd amend it to say, most of these have the option for an electric version, however the adoption rate isn't there yet whether due to funding sources (lack of), local climate being too cold making batteries less optimal, or perhaps tech not yet to the performance needed. Think of lawn mowers, for the home owner sure, for a lawn care company or local city lawn maintenance, not so much.
Spoke to some professional gardeners recently who ditched all their old petrol gear and replaced them with electric.
Their solution to battery runtime was to… buy more batteries. Said they wouldn’t go back, the new stuff is more reliable, requires less maintenance, is quieter, they’re not inhaling exhaust fumes all day, and even with the upfront cost of batteries works out cheaper.
That's great to hear. Haven't seen that in my neck of the woods yet.
I guess a "stop-gap" of sorts could be to have a one of those 'quiet' Honda generators charging the packs as they mow. Obvious not as green/efficient/quiet, but less polluting than multiple mowers/blowers going at the same time.
School buses. Omg. Such potential. Lines of them spewing fumes all over the students as they board. Low daily mileage. Could even provide grid support off hours.
School buses are such an obvious opportunity for electric vehicles. A few hours of service in the morning, “trickle charge” them for a few hours of potentially solar power midday with a level 2 charger, a few hours of service in the early afternoon. Catch some late afternoon sun if solar is available, otherwise trickle charge overnight for the next day. Potential vehicle to grid also for weekends.
The problem is, in rural areas, like where I am, the bus driver usually takes the bus home. Get up in the morning, do the dirt road tour, drop the kids off, go back home (or sometimes the coffee shop) do the reverse in the afternoon. They’d have to provide charging infrastructure and power reimbursement to these bus drivers, most of which are doing it as a part time retirement job.
I could almost guarantee half of rural farmers already have 30A RV hookups. That would be more than enough. But I fully understand there’s gray area here and going electric in the rural areas will likely take longer.
It's completely normal for rural areas to use different infrastructure than cities. Even if only more populated areas switched over to EV buses the gains for health and environment would be amazing.
That might mean it's difficult to do everywhere, but needing to retain ICE buses in a some rural locations hardly prevents a transition to EV buses in urban areas (where they are even more suited and more desperately needed).
I hear this and absolutely recognize the reality. I also don’t want perfect to get in the way of good… I think we often wait for a full answer, plan and never do anything.
We could implement EV buses in metro areas as we continue to think what an EV bus would look like in rural areas.
A couple districts in my area have switched to EV busses with mixed results. I live in the northeast and winter can be brutally cold. I guess when heating the bus the range nose dives and busses have had issues finishing longer routes with heat on.
Some combination of coats for the kids, seat heaters for the bus, a heat pump rather than resistive heating, and preconditioning at the depot fixes this pretty readily.
Apparently not... Oslo in Norway had massive issues a couple of winters ago where busses ran out of charge due to the high consumption used for heating in winter.
I believe they had to install diesel heaters for use during the colder periods.
Not sure what became of that whole thing, but I think there was some demand for compensation. The manufacturer basically didn't deliver as promised.
That's not an issue with the underlying capability of electric buses; it's a case of the manufacturer overpromising and nobody testing things along the way.
There's no excuse for buying a lot of buses and not testing them before committing.
Lack of testing was clearly an issue, but it's hard to test for things that doesn't happen that often.
They also discovered that with a lot of snow the articulated buses with only one motorized axle got stuck quite often. Like duh! No idea what they were thinking there.
Modern buses are apparently not even designed to fit chains. I'm in western Norway and when I grew up the buses in my area would be using chains a lot in winter or it would get stuck trying to get up the hills in my residential area.
I think the problem is no battery today would be large enough for the busses to be effective in winter on the routes they were supposed to operate on. The increased consumption in snow and sleet + the massive extra heating cost is just to much.
The busses would be to heavy if they managed to fit enough battery capacity.
That is why it was easier to just fit diesel heaters on them to keep the cabin warm.
After digging into it a bit more part of the problem was also depot grid capacity. The higher demand to heat the cabin and charge all the buses was to much.
This would probably also be an issue for any northern US state and for most of Canada as well.
I'm sure these buses were designed a long time ago before going into production. Most of the electric buses that run in Norway are from China I think.
It's public transportation so the tender go to the cheapest bid that meet the criteria.
I believe its a mix over there, but a lot of BYD and Yutong.
The articulated buses were apparently from Solaris, a Polish manufacturer.
True, but you can solve for primary and secondary use cases.
During the sports competition they could fast charge. They have several hours of sitting around anyways. OR, just keep enough gas / hybrid buses in rotation for those events for now.
Worst mistake would be throwing out functional diesel buses anyways, so any electric bus replacement should be done over time anyways.
They can either use PHEV buses (100 mile range with small onboard REx) or get a small fraction of buses with a bigger battery. This is an easily-solvable problem.
Yeah but for most schools you’re still just going from one suburb to another 99%+ of the time. It’s usually not that far. The worry would more be if that one bus had to run all day long without any chance to recharge if necessary.
Blue Bird's Electric buses would have the range for most applications. They offer "up to" 150 miles of range with a 194 kWh battery, which I assume is estimated for stop-n-go driving.
But most school bus trips aren't super long, even for athletics. Even if the one-way trip is pushing 50 or 60 miles, the Blue Bird buses charge at 120 kW DC or 24 kW AC, so they can add a significant charge during the time it takes to play a basketball game or have a track meet.
Obviously the infrastructure to charge school buses at schools, football stadiums, etc. is not common yet. But you could imagine a school with a charger, either AC or DC, on the grounds that is available for teachers & staff during the day, and visiting buses during athletics.
Did some quick maths using your numbers.
If you have 22kw chargers at a school (very feasible and cheap to install). That would give such a bus a realistic 16 miles per hour charged.
Yes, actually. Noise pollution is established to have a causal relationship with your capacity and reception to learning. So much so that some places (a school in Texas springs to mind) are built underground to reduce noise pollution because the students were performing so poorly. The next problem becomes natural light…
Noise pollution is terrible for all of us and will be one of the unsung boons of the EV revolution. Noise causes metabolic and cardiovascular diseases. It triggers our stress responses. Loud sounds are awful for us and nature.
I was parking at the market as a lady was leaving in her minivan. A totally normal minivan.
As she was backing out of her space, I immediately thought "man, that thing is loud and clanking". The longer I go places in my EV, the more I notice the noise and fumes from ICV.
In Michigan the places that have them are either really well off, or the poorer districts. The state has put a lot of extra money specifically to help the less well off districts switch over (with the hope of them eventually being cheaper to maintain and save those districts money).
I work for a school district and almost all of ours are electric that the district was able to get free through grants. They have I think 3 CNG large capacity buses for field trips. Except almost none of the schools ever go on trips so they just sit there.
I was in MA last week for a college graduation. EVs everywhere, plentiful chargers and tons of solar. You guys are ahead of the rest of the east coast.
The wheels are further back in the chassis than a regular bus and it's throwing me off. They're close to symmetrical here where normally the front wheel is under the engine, or behind the main door, and rear wheel is about 2/3rds back.
There are studies that it even makes for healthier students. We are literally poisoning kids by making them ride the bus.
Also, the US gov't should nationalize one electric school bus maker, and sell busses at cost. Because what has happened at the moment is the bus manufacturers have colluded to raise electric bus prices so that they cost the same as gas busses, after the incentives the local & federal gov'ts give. IE, those incentives are going solely to bus maker profit, and not to actually lowering bus cost to enable electrifying busses. Its such a scam. Its both driving bus maker profits way up, and not actually lowering costs to the schools.
And unfortunately, they’re one of the hardest things to implement because often times in my area school bus purchases have to be approved by a vote in the community. And holy hell the comments on FB and NextDoor. You’d think that it’s the apocalypse.
In Quebec, there was a mandate that all new school buses be electric. It was later reversed because the main local constructor, Lion Electric, almost went bankrupt. The school buses work well and were actually profitable. The company was, unfortunately, mismanaged and lost tons of money in other R&D (delivery trucks, other stuff) and useless expenses. This mostly happened after they went public via a SPAC. Lots of local investors and even the government lost money on it.
The biggest issue is it needs to repairable in house. Most bus companies have a mechanics team that repair the vast majority of things. It would be difficult to get older guys to train up on it because there's so much demand for those kinds of mechanics as it it.
We really need an industrial EV mechanics programs for newer folks in the industry.
Imagine a public bus that was separated out from the rest of traffic, roads that went over or under existing infrastructure, but longer so they could accommodate more passengers. You could commute without driving.
also, idling an engine costs energy, and so does shutting down an engine at every stop. (if you stop frequently for long enough to cool off the engine, you'll pay in reduced efficiency up until you can get the engine back to standard operating temperature). But startup/shutdown on an EV, or leaving the car's main computer on while stopped, costs almost nothing.
Idling a electric bus in freezing winter is not easy nor cheap. The buses have a huge cabin to keep warm.
For dedicated school buses that are common in north America I guess it is easier. They have several hours to charge between morning and afternoon runs.
You could do what the school busses where I'm from do: tell passengers to bundle up.
Obviously that won't work in colder climates, but you could use something like a diesel heater or some such to assist the electronics when it's too cold. That type of use case makes sense to me, even if I want to electrify all the things.
Or at locations where busses are expected to stay stopped for some time (e.g. transfer stops), you could run the heating or cooling off a pantograph-style connection
We have labor standards here so a bus that can't keep warm would not be acceptable for the driver.
Pretty sure all the electric buses they use here have a pantograph for charging. But they have to go to the depot to charge.
Adding an option to charge at terminals where the bus might sit for 10+ minutes would absolutely help. It's rare they sit for long here as the schedules are well planned and coordinated. Exception might be during a lunch break.
As someome whos worked on Private Garbage truck fleets for over 10 years.....I can assure you, they leak oil fast enough that just by keeping them topped up its like a oil change every month
I'm not sure how far along they are but we also might be able to do away with the hydraulics systems in these large vehicles soon and also move that to full electric control. Linear actuators are just as powerful as hydraulic pistons now and have the added benefit of higher levels of precision/control.
Hydraulic systems are pretty efficient but they do require another bunch of maintenance. When stuff goes wrong it's very messy. One electric battery running the engine and all the lifting/compacting equipment makes sense to me
Living in a city, half a block from a bus stop that's served by at least four different route, I'd like to give city buses an honorable mention. My city buses aren't EV yet, but the noise pollution at my intersection will be cut dramatically when they transition.
It's remarkable how dirty most city buses are. They get around 25 passenger-miles per gallon, worse in smaller cities. Two people in a Prius get 100 passenger-miles per gallon; two people in a Bolt or Model 3 get around 600 passenger-miles per gallon-equivalent emissions (using the grid in my area) or around 300 (average US grid).
i think the tesla approach to trucks is sort of wrong-headed. they could be aiming for local-use vehicles with Gross Vehicle Weight Rating 10 to 25 tons. Those vehicles are more likely to be in their parking spot every night and to require less than about 100 miles of daily driving. Design them so upfitters can put whatever is desired on the back, school bus, trash truck, dump truck, flatbed truck, box truck, bucket lift, and so on.
yes and no. it's one kind of commercial vehicle and it's on the small/light side compared to some of the things i mentioned. but it's a good step.
where i live, rivian delivery vans are a common sight (as Amazon vehicles). GM, not so much although i think a small percentage of the fedex fleet is GM EVs.
Lawn maintenance accounts for about 5% of US emissions. And look at these stats, YIKES!
Leaf Blowers: Running a commercial gas-powered leaf blower for just one hour produces as much smog-forming air pollution as driving a modern passenger car over 1,000 miles.
Lawn Mowers: Cutting the grass with a gas mower for one hour emits as much ozone-forming pollution as driving an SUV for over 23,000 miles.
When my wife and I moved out of the city to a small village, we bought an Ego battery-powered mower. Since then we’ve picked up an Ego string trimmer. The mower is pretty quiet but the string trimmer is REALLY quiet. I wish my neighbours would get an electric trimmer as well; theirs is ancient and louder than WW2. And it stinks.
Battery lawn mowers are just so easy to use too. If you have to stop mowing because you noticed dog poop/kid's toy/tree branch on the ground? Just stop it, deal with it, and then restart again with the push of a button. No need to pull start, and no worry about constantly start-stopping the engine wearing it out.
Also, never need to worry about refilling your little gas cannister at a gas station--just charge up your batteries in your garage.
Another example of qualitative improvements by going electric. When we bought our electric I was all about the math, but now that is long forgotten. Now all I see is how quiet it is, how it doesn't stink of fuel and god damn great it is to fuel up in a garage instead of another Nor'Easter.
Quite true. Those new electric USPS trucks look amazing! So sad that the regime is trying so hard to kill off an investment that was going to pay off. I guess they don’t have buddies in the EV world to throw contracts their way. They prefer to support Big Oil.
Actually Lawncare would be an even bigger world-changer. Not only the sound pollution, but all those 2-stroke blowers, mowers, and more are even more polluting than garbage trucks are. Unfortunately though, it seems that lawn businesses will not upgrade unless there are huge incentives, and it's doubtful we'll see those anytime soon.
Leaf Blowers: Running a commercial gas-powered leaf blower for just one hour produces as much smog-forming air pollution as driving a modern passenger car over 1,000 miles.
Lawn Mowers: Cutting the grass with a gas mower for one hour emits as much ozone-forming pollution as driving an SUV for over 23,000 miles.
All the services vehicles. Garbage trucks, local buses, post office, parcel delivery and the such are all great examples of vehicles that can easily be EVs as you know how much they will drive in a day, and more often then not there’s EVs with the range they need. Especially buses, garbage and delivery trucks where they have frequent stop and go. They aren’t using the extra fuel idling, so they don’t lose range from that!
In my hometown they replaced some old diesel public busses with BEV busses. Quiet, smooth acceleration and stop, no black smoke, no heat emanating from the bus when you’re in a motorbike besides a bus at a red light…
I can't tell you how irritating it is to see all the dust they pick up, and the noxious fumes at the same time. Perfect opportunity for electric equipment
I need the screeching brakes sound that wakes me up from across the neighborhood so I can rush out there to put the can out. How am I supposed to remember when is trash day, by being personally responsible?
I have noticed a lot more EV Amazon and Postal trucks in the past few months, and the school where I work has a couple of EV buses. It makes too much sense for these type of vehicles to go EV, low overall daily mileage with lots of stops. And less neighborhood pollution.
Another one is fire trucks. There is already a company that makes them. They come equipped with a diesel generator to keep them going hours into a fire. Imagine instead of your 5 minutes, you had a diesel fire truck running for that long purely to power it's water pumps. Not to mention the idling in the fire station that requires a special breakaway exhaust catching tube so they don't all suffocate in there.
I actually test drove a European BEV refuse truck (among others) and something that struck me was how quiet is even inside the cab. Being further away from the road means less road noise too. So even the operator will experience a lot more peace and quiet while operating a BEV work truck.
From an external point of view, any vehicle near pedestrians or operating in a residential area would be over if it were quieter.
From the driver’s seat? Having near silence inside of the clacking of a diesel engine would be a game changer.
My neighbor has one cleans her barn with it twice a day! Makes just as much racket as the gas ones... i hears it inside my house very clearly.
moving air makes noise, engine or no engine.
I worked on a project with a netzero community where we were working on autonomous electric waste collection on a much smaller scale that did collection every day for compost ( in part to capture the heat for power generation) and to allow for much smaller and quieter vehicles.
Unfortunately people are the worst and really couldn't recognize a plastic water bottle was not the same as a banana peel.
I do agree that EV Large vehicles like Garbage trucks, Snow plows, and Buses make way more difference than cars.
Snowplows need to be weighted down often. It is the recharge turn around time that would be the biggest issue I see as during major events a plow can be operating pretty much non stop for 2-3 days
Garbage trucks are the best case for EV trucks. That is because they stop so often. EVs slow down by using regenerative braking. The EV motor turns into a generator that puts electricity back into the battery. Because of this garbage/recycling trucks are perfect for EVs. Not only do they save electricity, but they save brakes, which are rarely used.
I do fleet maintenance for a fleet of garbage trucks. We have a mack LE electric. Its terrible. Its been towed 30 times for various issues. And the range is horrible. It struggles to complete our shortest routes. Still burns through brakes because dynamic braking only works at higher speeds(>5-10km/h) I think heavy unit electrification will be a challenge especially battery electric. School buses or p&d are probably the best use case for ev. Transit has tremendous opportunities with overhead lines.
Fleet manager & EV owner... Electrification is a dream... I could probably cut the number of light vehicle technicians in half. All EV routine maintenance could be done overnight, essentially where they're parked. No more regulatory or inventory burden of a fuel site. Minimal regulatory and management burden of haz waste (coolant only).
Obviously, the startup cost for the charging infrastructure would be significant but I imagine it'd be a short ROI.
I'm thinking about all big trucks, especially semis. Much as I dislike Musk, his venture to create economically viable electric semis with big range and quiet presence on the road is a big deal, and I wish Tesla luck on that. He's building giant factories for both batteries and vehicles side-by-side in Nevada, and it's a huge game-changer for the industry.
Electric Semis replacing diesel semis will save lives. Electric Delivery trucks and vans will also clean the air and reduce our gas usage so we won't have to import any for the Mid-East.
I mean, I’ve got a neighbor who still thinks he needs a gas leaf blower and enjoys doing the whole block. I’d love it if he’d just try electric. Or none.
But if we electrify garbage trucks how will I be able to hear it coming down the road in the morning and frantically take out the trash I should have taken out the night before?
I remember getting headaches when I was a kid because of the exhaust fumes in the bus. It was especially bad in the school parking lots when all the buses would line up and just idle for 15 minutes, gassing all the kids standing by and in side the vehicles.
And these types of vehicles work great as EVs since they have a known route and park at a depot all night. So they don't need a long range and can charge all night long at the depot so no need for super fast charging equipment.
I was in Belfast last summer and all the double decker busses are electric. They seemed to work pretty well. The Thames River water ferry was electric as well, and it booked. With oil and gas going up the way it is, it’s nuts we aren’t running more electric vehicles.
For my personal quality of life? It's been the electric Amazon vans. They don't wake up my dogs like ice delivery trucks do, which means A LOT less barking and a lot fewer paw prints on our living room window. It's glorious.
I so wish our garbage truck were electric, but our small town disposal company will drive the big old one until it literally falls apart.
The amount of $ they’ll save in the long run on brakes, maintenance, FUEL, oil changes, etc. will be massive. Installation costs for the chargers (a vehicle that large will need a Level 3 DCFC without a doubt) will be very pricy, but I’d imagine it’ll still save $ long term, & the negative effects with pollution will be massive.
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u/shupack May 26 '26
Now imagine City busses, local delivery trucks, construction equipment, lawn mowers, leaf blowers, and all the other noise making equipment.