Who says electric vehicles have to be glamorous, hip, fast, sporty, and trendy? Electric garbage trucks are pretty cool too.

By Bill Hayward

BYD electric garbage truck.
Photo: BYD.

Although Elon Musk might not be lying awake at night worried that they will steal the electric thunder from a sleek and sexy sports car like the forthcoming Tesla Roadster, the idea of electric garbage trucks evokes its own special kind of excitement.

As we’ve written about in our previous coverage of milk trucks in Norway that reduce diesel consumption by using electric motors for their pumps, some of the more utilitarian forms of electric vehicles may hold the best promise for making a difference in environmental impact.

Garbage trucks, with all of the stop-and-go and idling inherent in their usage model, are a great example. And since 2014 when 20 electric vehicles joined the refuse fleet for the City of Chicago, a handful of municipalities across the U.S. have been jumping on the electro-waste-hauler bandwagon.

In one recent development, Chinese vehicle manufacturer BYD Auto Co., Ltd. (the company’s initials stand for Build Your Dreams) announced this week the delivery of one of their BYD 8YR Class 8 Automated Side Loader trash trucks to serve customers in the city of Carson, California, of  refuse management company Waste Resources.     

BYD says that the vehicle is the first all-electric refuse truck in residential collection operation in Southern California. The heavy duty truck features BYD’s propriety electric propulsion system designed specifically for refuse collection.

The trash truck boasts a propriety electric propulsion system designed specifically for refuse collection and a body built by Amrep, a Wasteequip company.

Waste Resources has three more electric garbage trucks on order, according to BYD.

In a disarmingly un-Tesla-like move, BYD did not provide statistics on the garbage truck’s 0-60 or 0-100 performance.

Even though they might not be exciting as the Volkswagen I.D. R, it’s good to know that your neighborhood garbage truck could become at least a little less stinky by subtracting diesel fuel from the equation, leaving only the stench of the refuse itself to worry about. And, who knows—motoring enthusiasts are unpredictable. Maybe the electric garbage truck will become the next Dajiban.

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