DSNY to Stay with Diesel-Powered Snow Trucks after Electric Trucks “Conk Out,” Commissioner Tisch said

By Yehudit Garmaise

After NYC’s Department of Sanitation (DSNY) planned to replace all its 6,000 trucks used to collect garbage and clear the streets of snow with electric vehicles, DSNY Commissioner Jessica Tisch announced that test runs revealed that the electric vehicles “conked out after four hours.”

DSNY has already ordered seven electric trucks that cost more than $523,000, and are custom-made for both curbside trash collection and snow removal via removable plows, Gothamist reported.

But after the electric snowplows’ practice trials were cut short after unexpectedly running out of power, DSNY officials said that the new electric trucks can only be used for trash collection, but not for plowing snow.

“We found that [the electric trucks] could not plow the snow effectively,” Sanitation Commissioner Jessica Tisch told the City Council last month. “We need the trucks to go 12 hours.”

Besides lacking in staying power, the new electric trucks also require the DSNY, which now only has access to 13 chargers, to build enough DC fast chargers, similar to Tesla superchargers, to charge up its fleet quickly.

For now, when snow starts to blanket the city’s streets, DSNY will continue to put its diesel-powered trucks to work to clear the equivalent of 19,000 miles of street lanes.

Some electric models that the DSNY will be adding to its snow removal fleet are new mechanical broom sweepers that the department ordered to clean the streets during Alternate Side Parking. 

While the new electric garbage collection trucks look similar to their diesel predecessors, New Yorkers might enjoy that the electric trucks do their work in silence.

“The [electric garbage] trucks are so quiet, we add white noise so that people around the truck are aware of its presence,” said DSNY spokesperson Vincent Gragnani, who hopes to eventually have the technology to fully electrify DSNY’s fleet of trucks.