Then the vehicle has a hight floor making it back friendly for the delivery person which is something unwanted in your average delivery truck. It limits the height of the goods you can transport but the Post does not deliver packages that huge.
This is a special vehicle for a certain purpose and no commerial manufacturer had interest in developing something like this.
Which leaves 8K to do the customization and would not require the capital investment, on top of that they would have a much higher resale value when no longer needed.
Maintenance costs on electric vehicles are a lot less, and obviously they don't use fuel, so that costs less too.
[1] http://voices.washingtonpost.com/federal-eye/2010/06/broken_...
If specs do not require for a 800km autonomy, max speed of 170km/h and no leather seats, no auto-pilot, no high-end stereo system, and so on, then yes ("money" or lack of IT is a big "hurdle".. no?)