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Guest column
By: Alfonso García García
Director of Technical Services of
FCC Environment
Energy-efficient
electric
FCC’s fleet of electric vehicles for urban
services comprises 12,000 industrial vehi-
cles dedicated to environmental and urban
activity. Of these vehicles, 1,200 run on na-
tural gas and consume more than 12 million
cubic meters of natural gas each year. The
company has more than 300, proprietary
technology, electric vehicles.
The electric vehicles provide services cau-
sing less environmental impact and noise
pollution is significantly reduced. These ve-
hicles optimise energy consumption, reco-
vering energy from the breaks and replace
to a large extent the use of diesel fuel or
gas with electricity, which can be rechar-
ged at the park, from the electricity net-
work or self-charge during functioning as
a mode of transport. Energy savings and,
consequently, the reduction of emissions is
achieved thanks to two technical advanta-
ges: On one part, greater performance of
electric traction versus mechanical traction
the conventional heat engine (the former is
nearly five times more energy-efficient than
the latter); and, on the other part; the trac-
tion design, developed by FCC recovers
energy during heavy traffic which is stored
in the battery. This is a very important factor
considering that the vehicle is used in the
city and is constantly stopping and starting.
For waste collection work, FCC has op-
ted for an electric-hybrid vehicle since the
energy consumption of a garbage collector-
compactor truck is very high because of the
compacting features and the many stops
and starts that the truck has to make. Be-
cause of these factors, it is not technically
possible today to have a purely electric ve-
hicle for collecting and compacting waste
with the same performance as a vehicle dri-
ven by a kinematic chain with a heat engi-
ne and gearbox (it would require very large
batteries and no sufficient useful load left
would be left).
A reference in the industry
in launching new sustainable
technologies
These electric-hybrid vehicles function
during collection as an electric vehicle,
with a battery adapted to its size, making
the self-charging process possible during
transport (that is, while the vehicle moves
on to downloading). The rest of the day it
functions as a transport vehicle with a gas
or diesel fuel powered heat engine, self-
charging the batteries. The electric vehi-