ICE vehicles also benefit from charging points
I’ve come across a few ICE (internal combustion engine) vehicles that could benefit from charging points. Bear with me here.
This ambulance, parked outside a nursing home, was running the engine, with no-one in it, I presume to keep the air con running, on what was a pretty hot day. Perhaps they were keeping the vehicle cool for a patient they were collecting. Fair enough. But, of course this leaks fumes (and noise) into the car park and reception, which isn’t great for health. I noticed that it has a power socket at the rear of the vehicle. I’m wondering if they could plug that into an electrical supply, if there was one at the parking spot (but wasn’t one handy here).
This rental van I’m guessing has refrigeration, parked outside a butchers in Emerald. They made use of the external power socket, creatively plugging in from the shop. No noise or fumes.
I wonder if it would be handy to have more accessible power points for these ICE vehicles?
Or better yet, have electric vans that can keep cool without an engine, and recharge from a power point. One day soon, maybe.
Lots of electronics and while the emergency lights are all LED these days, the current draw is still significant.
This was in the Blue bonnet F series era. I remember that all of the oil heaters were unplugged, in the engine compartment.
Interested to read another post that says ambulances won’t start while plugged into shore power. It took a long while to incorporate this feature, an electrical contractor mate had a nice little earner a while ago repairing charging systems at ambo stations after they were repeatedly wrecked by driving off while plugged into shore power!
Then they retro fitted strobe lights to correct this deficiency.
Plugging them in at an incident location could be done. But it would require the installation of probably tens of thousands of outlets around the country. They'd need to be kept available at all times for the emergency vehicles, yet individual outlets might never ever be used.
Then will come the question of who pays for the outlets? Who pays for the electricity? And in an emergency situation, do you want people looking for plug in points when they could be dealing with that emergency?
I understand what you're arguing and do see the merit of it. I just don't see that as being at all practicable.
The stretcher charges through inverter power as well as its spare battery. The monitor has a battery that just gets changed over when at branch as they have plenty of power to monitor a patient for some time. We can transport a patient 2 1/2 hours on the one battery and still have plenty of power to do more work. Suction has a battery pack or other units just use Venturi with the oxygen. The fridge is simply a 12v car fridge. Lifting cushions have a removable rechargeable battery at this point in time.
The input socket on the side simply only charges the batteries.
As others have said, shifts are unpredictable, huge amounts of electricity used for equipment as is. Imagine being 14 hours into a horrid shift and not being able to get back to branch as you don't have charge to get back.
I've personally done 700kms+ in a shift over 14 hours.
Neither are running in to plug in their vehicle, creating a trip hazard of a cable for a resonably short stop
For the AVIS van, its just keeping the fridge motor running.
We often aren't stationary for significant enough periods that an EV style charge would be beneficial
Medications that need to be refrigerated require power, power kills the battey, not just the starter, but also the Auxiliary batteries. Batteries need to be kept charged, this is done by using a DC to DC charger.
The DC to DC charger can also be plugged into 240v for charging usually at a higher rate of charging than via the engine.
As for the van, they have probably had a coolroom failure or purchased an over supply of product for some specific and the fridge motor in it is designed to run on 240/440v power or ICE
Either way, sounds like you're barking up the wrong tree
Going off the eSprinter (electric version of what we use now) their max range when stock is roughly 264kms. Once you add the extreme weight of an ambulance setup youd be looking at a lot less than that. Not even considering the fridges, lights, and all other equipment that they need to run. Without a combustion engine, they dont have the capability of recharging the auxiliary battery while driving, and that battery would drain quite fast with how much power their equipment draws.
Then if they dont have a fast charger, it takes 8-11 hours to charge the main running battery from 0-100%, yes with a fast charger it would be under an hour, but that is still probably 4+ hours a day it would be unserviceable because its run out of charge. Plus dont forget to factor in the costs to install all of these fast chargers and the power system to supply them.
Ambulances are used by multiple shifts so they would have to double if not triple the number in the fleet to allow for charge times and teams would have to go back to their depo multiple times to swap out rigs.
Plugging in while stopped like this isnt really a safe option most of the time. If they are going to a patient would you be happy to watch an ambo team waste 2-5 minutes unravelling a power cord to plug to rig in before they went inside. If they are stopped between calls, do you want the delay in arrival time because they have had to get out and unplug their van before they can go lights and sirens to the patient. What about when a patient is critical and needs to go to a trauma hospital, but they dont have the range to make it there so they have to take them to a different hospital which isnt equipped to handle that case.
EVs just are not at a state which is viable for use in emergency services, or in many commercial uses honestly. They are an excellent option for your private vehicle, or in cars of people travelling for work. But vans and trucks are a while off being usable in Australia commercially. Our cities are too large and we drive too many ks for them to be viable yet
Now if the ambulance was a desiel electric motor then the generator could keep the battery topped.
Straight ev will never work in Australia.
Oh wow: so the air con can’t run off an external power supply? I wonder why.
Like it will run but won’t be much better than a fan. Certainly won’t combat 40 degree heat.
Adding a battery to go electric would not work.
You can Google “does the manufacturing of single electric car amount to more green house gases than a normal car produced over its lifetime”. All answers will tell you “no, it doesn’t”. It produces slightly more for manufacturing only, but then the EV has near zero ongoing emissions, compared to tank after tank of burnt petrol or diesel, which is breathed in by anyone near the tailpipe.
For example, you can compare different scenarios here:
https://electricvehiclecouncil.com.au/lifecycle-emissions…
If running mainly from solar, it looks like the attached screenshot.
Prompted by some uncertainties in answers, I tried to search for specs and purpose of the external power connection on a Sprinter ambulance. The best I could find so far was a ChatGPT generated answer that summarised different sources. Here's an extract of that:
• Shore power inlet (240 V AC in AU / 110–240 V elsewhere)
→ Used when parked at hospital/station to run equipment & charge batteries
4️⃣ Typical purpose (what it actually does)
In almost all Sprinter ambulances, external power exists to:
• 🔌 Run medical equipment without the engine running
• 🔋 Charge house batteries (AGM or LiFePO₄)
• ❄️ Power HVAC, suction, monitors, fridges
• 🔕 Reduce noise & emissions at hospitals
It is not usually meant to:
• Jump-start the engine
• Directly power the starter battery (unless via a DC-DC path)
There is only one part of your typical uses that’s correct and that’s to charge the main and secondary batteries and that’s simply it. Suction units are either 12v or battery powered. Monitors run off a battery and very rarely do they get plugged in in the truck, we just swap out the battery at branch when it’s required. Fridges are 12v car fridges that do not store medications. HVAC is not externally powered and requires the engine to be running for bothering normal front and roof mounted air conditioning units to operate, that also have no heating capacity so the only heating is via the everyday heater controls in the front. There is a diesel heater fitted to the rear but it is noisy as all get out when running so makes it quite useless when you have a patient as you can’t hear yourself think. Despite people laughing and disagreeing there is no medical equipment on an ambulance that doesn’t have its own internal or replaceable battery.