When it comes to on-road truck applications, refuse has been a first mover when it comes to electrification. The trucks run limited kilometers on the shift. They return home every night for charging, and they endure plenty of braking which contributes to regenerative braking. During a recent Greentech education session at Truck World, we talked to Scott Beck, vice-president of sales with Battle Motors and asked why he thinks refuse applications are a good fit for electrification.

Scott Beck: I think refuse is a good application for a number of reasons. To begin with, we can do the behind the fence charging, where there’s a base. In addition, it’s not like a one size fits all solution.

Battle Motors has two main chassis types, the LNT for smaller refuse applications and the LET, the larger ones. And we can fit many different types of bodies on them. So especially for the smaller routes, where people don’t have the infrastructure necessarily yet to use the large vehicles with the large battery packs, that may take the that may require the Level 3 charging, they can use Level 2 chargers running a ring fence route where the trucks only doing maybe, you know, 15 to 40 miles, even though it’s capable of 100 to 150.

But we could use 40-50 miles for the smaller trucks, they could fit the specific bodies can be mounted. What we use at Battle Motors, it’s a very clean frame, because our battery packs — the motor goes straight to the driveshafts and then the truck’s the same from there on back.

Other manufacturers use the e-axle, which limits the different bodies that can be mounted. So in general, they can have the same pretty much the same experience where they come out — the bodies of their choice, they have a lot of flexibility.

And they could run ring fence routes. In addition, a lot of the refuse collection is done very early in the morning. And these trucks run a lot quieter. And a lot of the neighbors, you know in the community appreciates that. And I’d say lastly, refuse is a very good application because you know, there’s private refuse collection as well as municipal collection. And a lot of municipalities have a strong emphasis on starting to integrate towards ESG. So I think we have a captive audience some extent.

One thing is for certain about an electric vehicle drives nothing like a traditional diesel here, Scott talks about what the driving experience is like.

Scott Beck: We’ve had very good experiences. I’ve done ride-and-drives, deliveries with hundreds of people and basically, especially on the refuse side, it’s a pretty kind of, you know, rough and tumble crowd.

You know, they’re used to, you know, hearing the engine and the first thing they comment, they have a hard time getting used to it for a few seconds is the noise level, but then they really learn to appreciate it.

In general, the driving experience, they love the torque, there’s basically infinite torque so these trucks move very quickly. And in fact, when I’m doing a ride-and-drive, somebody’s putting the foot in the gas, I’m like, put the foot on the gas, then all of a sudden you like whizzed forward, and they’re a little surprised.

To me, the biggest compliment is the complaints are normally the stupid things like what, where the armrest is, the guy’s elbow came off the end of the armrest. Or I’ve found in many cases people don’t believe Do you have heat?

Do you have air conditioning? Do you have a radio? I’m like it’s a truck. It works the same except it’s quiet and It’s electric. So I think the biggest analogy I say to people or metaphor probably is better word. It’s almost like driving a golf cart.

To some extent. That’s kind of what it feels like. It’s very simple and and the driver experience has always been good. I really cannot recall somebody complaining about it other than random minutia.