Brickbat: I Scream, You Scream

New York City Council member Lincoln Restler has introduced a bill that would ban ice cream trucks from using fossil fuel generators to power their freezers and food equipment. Restler said moving to solar-powered generators and other alternative forms of energy will reduce air pollution and noise. Restler said he would eventually like to expand the ban on fossil-fuel generators to all food trucks.

Comments

[Adans smith]

Sounds more like his trying to ban ice cream trucks on the sly. Or, he's just a freaking idiot.

[Davedave]

Or, it's just a thing that exists - electric ice cream vans have been around for 5 years or so - and that should be favoured in big cities where air pollution is a problem. But no, you go with the nutty conspiracy theory.

[Sometimes a Great Notion]

So the profits of running an ice cream truck, allow for the purchase of a brand new truck every 3 years?

[Davedave]

Whut? If you can't afford to do business without killing people, don't do business.

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[B G]

How's a truck with enough space for maybe 400W of solar panels on the roof supposed to power a 1.2kW freezer off of that? Even assuming they can get a 100% efficient inverter, they'd need 2 more follow trucks to just be keeping the product cold. What are the chances the engines on those two trucks burn less fuel (and emit less CO2) than a single generator?

Are any of the existing electric "ice cream vans" actually legal to purchase, import, or operate in the US? Everything I'm seeing on a google search either has 3 wheels and probably nothing like the kind of rollover/side impact protection that the US DoT requires for anything to be "road worthy" in this country, or is a concept vehicle that Nissan put together in 2022 and doesn't mention any potential date for future production.

In the northeastern US, doesn't a "plug in electric" vehicle really pretty much still run on either coal or natgas that's heating the boilers at the local power plant?

[gaoxiaen]

Many people don't realize that a electric power for electric vehicles comes from somewhere else, minus transmission losses, and often just move the emissions to another location. I've actually met quite a few of them.

[Carey Allison]

Troll alert!

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[mad.casual]

Not even a troll really. Trolls are at least clever, technically correct, or minimally relevant, however unwelcome. This is more like a sidewalk turd. The sort of thing that, if we really were cleansing ourselves of the dregs of society in order to achieve ideological *or* environmental purity in earnest, would, one way or the other, be the first to go.

[Dillinger]

favoured so classy

[GroundTruth]

Data please? Which cities, what portion of the trucks, what is their cost vs. gasoline powered trucks?

[Unicorn Abattoir]

Why not both?

[John F. Carr]

If I am elected, I will ban all food in New York City.

[Vernon Depner]

Build the wall.

[Vernon Depner]

You will own nothing, and you will be happy.

[Jerryskids]

So you're going to need a couple thousand square feet of solar panels or half a dozen windmills to power the freezers in your truck now and multiples of that to power the stoves and ovens as well in the future? How big does this guy think food trucks are supposed to be?

[Davedave]

LOL. Jerrysakiddyfiddler isn't very good at basic arithmetic. Guess that fits with not understanding which side of the age of consent his victims were.

[rbike]

Umm, how big do the solar panels need to be then if you are better at arithmetic? You mock, but you don't seem to understand physics. He is correct in the magnitude of panels to keep that truck and freezer powered. You prove yourself to be a fool.

[Unicorn Abattoir]

The solar constant is 1,370 watts/meter...at the equator at high noon. It declines as you move away from the equator. A good solar panel will get you 20% of that.

So if you have 5 square meters of solar panel on top of the truck, you'll get...1.3kW. At the equator. At high noon.

[Longtobefree]

. . . on a sunny day.
Does it ever rain in NY?

[Nazi-Chipping Warlock]

Or get cloudy? And NYC is near the equator, right?

Davedave is just another doomsday cultist NPC. Feel free to ignore it. It's only repeating what it's been programmed to say.

[Unicorn Abattoir]

BTW here's the ice cream van he's talking about.

Not exactly a Mr. Softee truck. And it's precharged, not solar.

[Ride 'Em]

And it will be great in California where they can use the battery to supplement the grid. Probably in New York also.

[MatthewSlyfield]

That is less than half the size of a typical ice cream truck in the US. The freezer is tiny compared to a typical ice cream truck. This is NOT a commercially viable option.

[Agammamon]

Yeah, they can charge it all night on solar . . . wait, what?

[Davedave]

There are multiple commercially available electric ice cream trucks. No idea why you nuts are saying stuff about solar power, batteries exist.

[Unicorn Abattoir]

Because my response was to rbike, not you.

[markm23]

It will drive 124 miles between charges - unless you turn on the freezer.

[Unicorn Abattoir]

Never. And it's sunny all the time, even at night. And there's no crime and apartments are cheap.

[jimc5499]

That's a square meter. So figure 40 inches by 40 inches.

[jimc5499]

You'll need to double that area to keep a constant due to changes in availability of sunlight. This New York City, in many areas buildings are going to be blocking your access to light. Add in a battery pack and regulator. Store the extra power when you have it and feed it back in when you don't. So 50 sq./meters, think billboard.
So I wonder what would happen if I submitted plans for a nuclear powered ice cream truck? NASA has some neat little Cesium generators.

[Minadin]

Well, the good news is that Ice Cream Trucks generally operate during the summer months, when the maximum direct sunlight happens at closer to 22 degrees north latitude. NYC is at about 40.8N, so still not ideal, but not quite as bad.

[Jerry B.]

"So if you have 5 square meters of solar panel on top of the truck, you’ll get…1.3kW. At the equator. At high noon."

If your solar panels are 100% efficient. The world record now is around 47%, and that's in a lab using artificial light. The best efficiency using sunlight is around 39%.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar-cell_efficiency

Then again, much of New York is skyscrapers, which allow very little sunlight to get to street level, and, as noted, it's not sunny every day.

[Unicorn Abattoir]

If your solar panels are 100% efficient.

From my comment: A good solar panel will get you 20% of that.

[Davedave]

"So if you have 5 square meters of solar panel on top of the truck, you’ll get…1.3kW"

A freezer needs a couple of hundred watts to run, tops. It's easily do-able off a battery, or off the actual space on top of a typical ice cream truck - 10+ sq m - in typical non-direct-sunlight conditions.

[B G]

So, if we assume the trucks only operate in the clear sunlight on the Coney Island boardwalk (all of NYC is north of that) at lattitude 40.5 degrees (at summer solstice, actually about 17-18 degrees north of the tropic line that'd be pointed at the sun)?

Then if they're inside the city, they're in the shadow of the skyscrapers for most of the day, and in the 6 "warm" months of the year they'll be between 20-40 degrees off-axis for sunlight; demand for impulse ice cream purchases in the months where they're up to 63 degrees off-axis is probably too low to be worth the operators time (unless they're really making money selling drugs on the sly).

[Davedave]

No, he isn't correct. And it's irrelevant. Batteries exist for a reason. Battery powered ice cream sales are a thing. Insulation, too.

[B G]

"Battery powered" is just fossil-fuel power reduced by transmission losses, transformer losses, and rectifier losses compounded by the inefficiency of the charger they're using at night.

[mad.casual]

Guess that fits with not understanding which side of the age of consent his victims were.

You need to turn the lamp on your projector down. You're going to attract insects like SPBP2.

Unless...

[Carey Allison]

Big enough for 10% for the BIG GUY to be attractive.

[Mickey Rat]

The DC ideological law enforcement system scolded by federal court:

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/d-c-enforced-defacement-law-against-pro-lifers-while-letting-blm-protesters-walk-court-rules/

““In the summer of 2020, thousands of protesters flooded the streets of the District to proclaim ‘Black Lives Matter,’” the court wrote in its decision. “Over several weeks, the protesters covered streets, sidewalks, and storefronts with paint and chalk. The markings were ubiquitous and in open violation of the District’s defacement ordinance, yet none of the protesters were arrested.”

“During the same summer, District police officers arrested two pro-life advocates in a smaller protest for chalking ‘Black Pre-Born Lives Matter’ on a public sidewalk. The organizers of the smaller protest, the Frederick Douglass Foundation and Students for Life of America (collectively ‘the Foundation’), sued,” the opinion said.

The lawsuit, filed in November 2020 by religious liberty legal advocacy non-profit Alliance Defending Freedom, alleged that D.C. police discriminated against the pro-life groups by prohibiting them from chalking messages on the sidewalk. BLM protesters were permitted to chalk their own messages without punishment during the summer riots following the murder of George Floyd, the lawsuit argued.”

[Nazi-Chipping Warlock]

"The officers in question have been sent for a three week 'sensitivity training' in Tahiti."

[BrianL.]

It's a magical place.

[Fist of Etiquette]

President Biden hardest hit.

[Gozer the Gozarian]

Never underestimate the limitless stupidity of politicians.

[Longtobefree]

If only the citizens could vote for council members - - - - - -

(Local news of the "they voted for it, they got it" kind)

[TJJ2000]

You know what's great about these kinds of Injustice politicians. They have absolutely no F'En clue about whence they make demands with gov-guns. Which I guess is kind of fitting sense they also have no F'En clue of the job they've been given (to ensure liberty and justice for all).

[Its_Not_Inevitable]

That's all changed. The job now is to take people's stuff and tell them what to do.

[Dillinger]

Christ, what an asshole.

[GroundTruth]

It's all fine to talk about solar power and electricity, but at some point the laws of thermodynamics, chemistry and even economics (whether they are known and acknowledged or not) come in to play.

[Vernon Depner]

The laws of physics are white supremacy.