On Thursday, Daimler announced that it would bring its line of short-haul electric trucks to the US. The United Parcel Service (UPS) will buy the first three trucks, and Daimler is also offering eight trucks to New York City-based non-profits, including the Wildlife Conservation Society, the New York Botanical Garden, Habitat for Humanity New York City, and Big Reuse Brooklyn.
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The Fuso eCanter trucks will have a range of 62 miles (or about 100km) and will be sold in Japan and Europe as well. Daimler said it's only planning on producing 500 trucks in the next year, but it intends to start mass-producing the trucks in 2019. It's unclear how much these trucks cost.The trucks have a load capacity of three and a half tons, Daimler said, with a powertrain that draws on "six high-voltage lithium-ion battery packs with 420 V and 13.8 kWh each."
New York City and the Bronx in particular have asthma rates several times the national average. Many blame the high levels of trucking in the city. Shifting delivery fleets to EVs could help.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Saturday September 16 2017, @03:10PM (7 children)
I assume 62 miles is the max they'll get out of them. In cold weather it will be much less. Can they really deliver 3.5 tons of Amazon Goodness (tm) in 30-40 miles?
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 16 2017, @04:34PM
Yes. Even using your numbers, 30-40 miles of travel from a local depot inside a city is a lot of ground covered and a lot of potential mass delivered. Is it worthwhile to use such narrow-purpose vehicles? It may well be, particularly if they can directly replace the work done by existing ICE trucks in high-density population centers, and do so at comparable or less "fuel" and maintenance cost. EVs may currently be more earth-unfriendly than efficient ICE vehicles, but reducing vehicular exhaust in high-density city centers is likely a good idea if financially feasible.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 16 2017, @04:36PM (2 children)
In dense areas like NYC? Yes. Rural folks, or even folks from less-dense cities like Houston, don't understand just how dense Brooklyn and Manhattan are. There are many buildings with 400+ apartment units in them, with each of those units having an average of 2 to 3 people living in them. You can have 900 people in a single building without much effort. Some of these apartment clusters have 8 or 9 buildings in them. So you can have around 10,000 people living in an area that's the size of 3 football fields. These developments can contain 3 or 4 times as many people as many rural counties have. And these people have needs for goods.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday September 16 2017, @06:52PM
Yep. New York City can go fuck themselves.
San Francisco, L.A., and Boston too.
(Score: 3, Informative) by NotSanguine on Sunday September 17 2017, @04:24AM
And NYC has a population density of ~26,000 people/mile2 and an area of ~305 miles2
Of the 8.5 million people who live in NYC, ~1.6 million live in the ~23 miles2 that comprises Manhattan, and ~2.6 million live in the ~70 miles2 called Brooklyn.
So yeah, electric trucks with a range of 30-40 miles would be great for a place like NYC.
In fact, once freight rail tunnels are built between Port Newark [wikipedia.org] and NYC, IC trucks should be banned from NYC altogether and replaced with electrics.
But I won't hold my breath waiting for something like this [nj.com] to happen, although given all the soot, CO, SO2 and other nasty stuff emanating from all those IC trucks, perhaps I should.
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(Score: 1, Flamebait) by frojack on Saturday September 16 2017, @06:03PM (2 children)
In a perfectly flat city, no hills, no stop and go traffic, 62 miles might work for some specialized tasks.
It might be perfect for garbage collection on the Botanical Garden grounds, but that's about it.
Every UPS delivery truck does more miles than that before lunch.
This thing is destined to become a white elephant, and a joke.
The claimed savings will never materialize because the range means you will have to have an equal sized ICE-powered truck on standby all the time for out of range destinations, or when the electric truck is down for recharging.
Using Tesla's numbers [tesla.com] the best you could expect using typical electrical sources is recovering 11 to 15 miles of range per hour. So without a commercial charge source at both ends, 30 miles is your safe range.
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(Score: 2, Insightful) by aristarchus on Saturday September 16 2017, @07:40PM
Why so negative, froj? Do you have a citation for the mileage claim? Did a UPS truck run over your neighbor's yappy dog? I'm just not seeing the motivation.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 17 2017, @03:06AM
From Ars comments: https://www.afdc.energy.gov/data/10309 [energy.gov] delivery 13000 per year, assume 260 days, 50 miles per day average, meaning somewhere there are trucks that need that or less. There are other comments talking about where UPS has a NY depot and how much it covers: small zone because it's very packed. Then you have the one claiming "I work at UPS" and also saying for his city it would be OK for the trucks there, not for rural. So unless Manhattan is rural now...
You know, maybe UPS checked their own data before ordering three.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by driverless on Saturday September 16 2017, @05:05PM (6 children)
Anyone who's serious about this has been using things like Paxsters [paxster.no] for years now. There are thousands of these in operation, not just three.
(Score: 1) by Tara Li on Saturday September 16 2017, @05:55PM
Not sure that's enough cargo capacity for the kind of usage UPS is looking for. I get shipments to my trophy shop that would need 2-3 of those vehicles from time to time. Any auto parts store is going to need a small train of them.
Now, the USPS could probably make good use of them for their regular letter route carriers, except in rural areas such as mine where they don't have nearly enough range. There's parts of the parish (county) that I live in that the vehicle could not make it to and back home, and that's without making other deliveries on the way.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday September 16 2017, @06:10PM (4 children)
Paxters have no more range than this vehicle - 100km with the largest size battery available.
Explain how you intend to get 3.5 tons of payload in a Paxster? Did you even click the link to see the size of the truck Daimler is proposing and compare it to the golf cart you suggest?
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(Score: 2) by driverless on Sunday September 17 2017, @04:55PM (3 children)
Daimler have a 3.5 ton truck, so that's what they've proposed. Want to deliver mail? 3.5 ton truck. Takeaway food? 3.5 ton truck. A pizza? 3.5 ton truck. Two postcards and a letter? 3.5 ton truck. A telegram? 3.5 ton truck.
Paxster's and similar were designed for actual mail runs. They looked at the problem and created the solution that best deals with it. Daimler's approach was to build a 3.5 ton hammer and then look for nails they could smash with it. That's why I described it as a marketing exercise for Daimler, not a solution for mail carriers.
(Score: 2) by AndyTheAbsurd on Sunday September 17 2017, @05:21PM (1 child)
You're confusing UPS (United Parcel Service) with USPS (United States Postal Service). These trucks are going to UPS, which mostly delivers things that come in boxes, and needs vehicles with more space than Paxters have available. You don't use UPS for letter delivery unless you need the letter delivered overnight.
If you want to look at USPS, which actually does most of the letter delivery in the US, then you'd be correct that Paxters would be a better solution.
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(Score: 2) by driverless on Sunday September 17 2017, @05:29PM
Paxsters are used here to deliver parcels, in fact that's why they were introduced, because sending a truck out for things larger than large letters that a standard mail carrier would handle was uneconomical. However our mail delivery infrastructure is probably a bit different to the US, relatively short runs covered by a fairly dense delivery network, so you rarely need to resort to a large truck.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 17 2017, @05:50PM
But UPS isn't a mail carrier -- they're a parcel carrier. They actually use vans with 3.5 tons or more capacity.
Sure, when your only tool is a hammer, all your problems look like nails. But that doesn't mean a few of your problems aren't actually nails.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 16 2017, @05:31PM (8 children)
My leaf has a bigger battery pack!
Surely these are prototypes?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 16 2017, @05:58PM
You forgot the "each" bits? Really?
6 * 13 = 78kWh
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Saturday September 16 2017, @05:58PM (5 children)
Prototypes for failure, I think. We had an article about electric trucks hauling much more weight, with a range of about 100 miles. It's an fnord submission - https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=17/09/01/1137223 [soylentnews.org]
Note that 100 miles or less isn't even a "short haul" - it's just local deliveries. "Short haul" would be what we used to call "regional" driving - ~300 to 500 miles. Long haul starts at 500 miles.
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by tfried on Saturday September 16 2017, @06:57PM (2 children)
Well, maybe so, but local deliveries - and in particular in high-density areas - are something where EVs can really shine: Lots and lots and lots of stop and go, but no particular need for a high mileage. If delivery stops are a quarter mile apart on average, and we assume two minutes per stop, minimum, 62 miles is easily a working day's worth of range.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday September 17 2017, @02:11AM (1 child)
You're assuming a bit more than you realize. Let's take New York City as an example. You do realize that food, clothing, etc, isn't actually warehoused in Manhattan and the other boroughs? Kings and Queens, maybe, to some extent, but most certainly NOT Manhattan. Everything is on the other side of the river, in Secaucus, North Bergen, some as far away as Elizabeth. So, your delivery vehicle has to get INTO the city, first, THEN make it's deliveries, and finally, get back OUT OF the city.
Sure, there are niches where a truck with a range of less than 100 miles will be useful. But, those are niches. And, a small miscalculation, or a degradation of the battery(ies) will result in being stranded.
“Take me to the Brig. I want to see the “real Marines”. – Major General Chesty Puller, USMC
(Score: 2) by AndyTheAbsurd on Sunday September 17 2017, @05:48PM
NYC is exactly the niche where a truck with less than 100 miles will be useful. Far north in North Bergen to the southern tip of Manhattan is only 11.4 miles. That means a 62 mile range is plenty to get from a depot in North Bergen to anywhere in Manhattan, and back, and make another run before needing to recharge. Also consider that electric vehicles use less energy when stopped (pretty close to none if there's no radio, no A/C, and it's daylight so you don't need headlights) and require less maintenance, both of which mean savings for the operator.
These are definitely "last (few) mile(s)" delivery type vehicles - and NYC is exactly the environment that they are designed for.
(And I'm not even going to get started on you calling it "Kings" instead of the borough name that everyone would recognize...and it's not even the borough where you'd put a warehouse if you had to put on inside the borders or NYC!)
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 16 2017, @07:14PM (1 child)
Why all the hating on EVs and NY?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 17 2017, @08:24AM
Are you kidding? Green energy and coastal cities? That's right-wing kryptonite.
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Sunday September 17 2017, @04:06PM
(CBA to RTFA)
If each of those modules are individually swappable (or can be left out) I see this as a very good thing to arrive.
That would allow you to always keep a fresh spare, one in conditioning/monitoring and allow you to replace the worst pack. If they have smart enough cobtrollers this also could allow for incremental/rolling upgrades as needed.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by crafoo on Saturday September 16 2017, @09:48PM (1 child)
I suppose I would be just as quick to blame the high asthma rate on the typical activities of child growing up in New York City. They aren't exactly playing out in fields and streams every day after school.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Sunday September 17 2017, @11:04AM
So true! It could be the environment. Nobody really knows. Department of Environmental, I mean, the DEP is killing us environmentally, it’s just killing our businesses. But can't figure out the true meaning of asthma??? If something happens blame the trucks! 🇺🇸