Comment by kube-system | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kube-system | Hacker News Reader

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Parking spaces in the US are, by and large, not commonly populated with dryer outlets or RV hookups. This is a common issue that affects EV adoption, particularly when people lease the property where they park their car.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/16/business/electric-cars-ci...

You are entirely correct that the concept of an electrical outlet is not difficult. Commercial real estate is a bit harder, however.

Bear in mind that this contract is for a company to build trucks, and what you describe would be work that is out of scope anyway. The current fleet is way past its replacement date, and needed to be replaced about 10 years ago already. The USPS has funding issues at the moment and it is entirely possible that they cannot afford to do everything at once.

While you claim that it is "1% of the vehicle cost", I think some quick math would indicate that there's no way this is right. 4.8 million dollars to retrofit 40,000 locations for EV charging? That's $120 per station. You won't even be able to pull a work permit for $120.

I still don't understand your point. For your argument to be valid, you'd have to assert that a factory can build new mail trucks faster than you could add charging points.

There will be one factory pumping out cars on a specialised, serial production line. It will be competing with 30 thousand locations operating in parallel.

It’s an issue of distribution.

LLVs are past their expiration date everywhere and likely need replaced all over the country. But, it doesn’t make sense to add charging capability ad hoc for a single parking space in a lot when a new vehicle is sent out - the marginal cost of each space is not linear — you’d retrofit an entire parking lot at one time.

If 10 locations have 10 existing vehicles each, and all of them need to replace one failing LLV, going 100% electric for new vehicles means you need 10 vehicles but a retrofit for 100 parking spaces. It does not make sense to tear up a parking lot every year for one new vehicle over the next 10 years.

You wouldn’t replace mail trucks individually, you would fully transition each location as a unit.

Also, you overestimate the complexity of installing charging points. In many cases the parking will be directly against the post office building. In many cases you would only have to dig a small trench. In some cases you would string up a new overhead wire. When you’re doing 10 at a time, this isn’t complicated or expensive on a per vehicle basis.

$482 million is just the first payment. They're not making the vehicles for $12k each.

And while 1% is too optimistic, you'd presumably install multiple outlets at a time.

1% of the 6 billion total estimate sounds like it's in the ball park.

But that's an expected expenditure over 10 years, and you have to have the ability to charge before you can use the vehicles. That's probably another important factor, because LLVs are past their expiration date now. You're right that it makes sense to upgrade an entire facility's electricals at once. That's almost certainly what will happen over the course of the rollout, but the need for replacing LLVs is likely evenly distributed among locations.

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