![]() will be powered by battery-electric systems. Within 10 years, he says, half of all garbage trucks in the U.S. And Wright predicts rapid adoption of the technology after that. Wrightspeed, which has 25 employees and is privately owned, has a contract to retrofit 17 garbage trucks in the San Francisco area with its electric motors. (That won’t help, however, with the clamor of cans and bottles being hurled into the metal compactor compartment.) There’s one nice side benefit for the people whose garbage is being picked up: Electric motors are much quieter than the big diesel engines that power most garbage trucks now, which should dull the roar when the garbage collectors come by. Since electric powertrains have maximum advantage over traditional ones at low speeds that require a lot of torque, garbage trucks that crawl from stop to stop are an ideal platform for electrification. The next target for Wrightspeed is garbage trucks, which typically can make 1,000 hard stops per day, consume upwards of 14,000 gallons of fuel per year and weigh 10 to 15 times as much as a Tesla Model S sedan. Garbage trucks: ideal for electrification The technology can pay for itself in as little as four years, which can produce large savings for big fleet operators that hold onto trucks for a decade or more. “It costs more for bigger vehicles, but you save vastly more on fuel, so the scaling works in your favor,” Wright says. ![]() Tesla, for all its popularity, still isn’t profitable. Even so, the market share of electrics today is just 0.2%, and most forecasters expect that to rise slowly, if at all. The federal government has been trying to spur development of EVs through a $7,500 tax credit for anybody who buys one. While virtually all big automakers offer some form of electric vehicle today, they’re priced far higher than cars with ordinary gasoline-powered engines. “The only cars it makes sense for are taxis and police cars.” “They’re going to be a niche for a very long time,” he tells me in the video above. Even though investors and auto critics love Tesla, Wright argues that for ordinary drivers, electric vehicles still don’t make economic sense, because the savings on fuel don’t recoup the high upfront costs. Ian Wright, one of five co-founders of Tesla ( TSLA) back in 2003, now runs a Silicon Valley startup called Wrightspeed that builds electric powertrains for vehicles weighing 60,000 pounds or so. But at least one automotive visionary believes the humble garbage truck represents the future of electric-vehicle technology-while battery-powered passenger cars don’t. You’re not likely to hear auto critics wax rhapsodic about the acceleration or handling characteristics of a 10-wheeled, 30-ton refuse collection vehicle.
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