Electric Fire Truck?

The YouTube video of it was pretty neat. Adjustable air suspension and all wheel steering is cool. Seeing as 14 fire departments show up to a minor fender bender here, I wouldn’t worry about it running out of electricity or hampering operations.
All those extras are nice until you put them out into the cold salty world. Many departments figure a 10 yr life cycle for front line apparatus, ours were upwards of 20 yrs before they were placed in reserve status. Thats a lot of electronics to keep going. Some of our trucks had electronic failures around 8-10 yrs where no replacements were available. If it was a part that was prone to failure the service stock got used up early in the life cycle.
All this during some administrations that cut maintenance and repair every time money gets thin.
 
The vast majority of fires can be put out with the water carried on the engine assuming the response is timely.
That has not been my experience as a volunteer. I know volunteer departments frequently end up on scene late, but we regularly review data from incidents. Extinguishing a fire with solely water on a pumper is unusual for us at brush or structure fires. I'm also surprised that a new truck would have a pump that tops out at 1500 gpm, we moved to 2000 gpm pumps back in the late 90s.
 
2 hour battery time? Totally useless for a busy department. There are several engine companies that run near non stop in the city I work for.
 
Just like many passenger car trips are way under 10 miles (thus fitting with being replaced with an electric vehicle for 97% of its trips), this electric fire truck may be all that's needed some large percentage of the time.

I'd love to see the data used which helped calculate this truck's usefulness / appropriateness.


I'd just love to see "the advantage" over diesel powered rigs.
 
I'd stick with the tried and true, diesel fire trucks. Being an early adopter of a electric fire truck can cost innocent lives. Especially in areas like NYC, Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx, etc, where they'll be pushed to the limits. Odds are it won't be the life/lives of the people who came up with the idea either.
 
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If you've ever spent all night standing at the pump panel of a old Mack pumper that's spewing out number 2 diesel soot at enough decibels to rattle your helmet,you'd appreciate some of these innovations.
Wasn’t a leading cause of death for fire fighters not so much the fire itself but cancer from breathing in diesel exhaust and byproducts of combustion in smoke?

I was looking at a brochure for a fire truck - decon showers are now an option to try to keep stuff from entering the cab.
 
That has not been my experience as a volunteer. I know volunteer departments frequently end up on scene late, but we regularly review data from incidents. Extinguishing a fire with solely water on a pumper is unusual for us at brush or structure fires. I'm also surprised that a new truck would have a pump that tops out at 1500 gpm, we moved to 2000 gpm pumps back in the late 90s.
I recall it being something close to 90% but I dont have the exact figures to back that up. all but one of our engines had 500 gallon tanks and the odd one out had 750 because it was assigned to an area without hydrants. I put out a lot of fires with the can.
The majority of our engines had 1500 gallon pumps with the exception of the aerial. We still had 2 trucks that had 2 stage pumps when I retired. That was always fun trying to train recruits in pumpology and then saying "Oh by the way" heres two other trucks that operate differently and theres some calculating involved :cool:
 
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