USPS Forges Ahead with Gas-Powered Mail Trucks Despite EPA's Desire for EVs | Hacker News Reader

USPS Forges Ahead with Gas-Powered Mail Trucks Despite EPA's Desire for EVs

caranddriver.com

69 pointskeithly119 comments

I would love for these trucks to be EV’s as much as anyone, but I can see where USPS is coming from. Some selected quotes from the article:

The USPS did say that it plans to put 5000 electric delivery trucks into service starting in 2023 and claims that there is room for more EVs to be added to the mix "should additional funding become available."

“While we can understand why some who are not responsible for the financial sustainability of the Postal Service might prefer that the Postal Service acquire more electric vehicles, the law requires the Postal Service to be self-sufficient,” a USPS spokesperson told the Post in a statement.

Armchair take: If the EPA really wants these changes, they should be lobbying higher up the food chain in order to subsidize these EV’s in some way.

EV or not, why is it so fuel inefficient?

Constant stopping and starting. This is where most car energy is expended. Cars are most fuel efficient when they're rolling about 50MPH.

I’ve heard this many times, but I’ve never actually seen it cited.

It's the reason why vehicles have a separate "city" and a "highway" fuel economy rating, since the former takes into account the expected stopping and starting you do in city traffic which you would not on an uncongested highway. It also makes intuitive sense if you understand physics: in a non-hybrid ICE vehicle, you impart energy from the engine into the wheels to accelerate the vehicle and you impart energy from the wheels into the brakes to decelerate, effectively wasting the original energy from the engine as heat. In hybrids and EVs some of that energy can be recovered by using the motor as a generator to recapture it in a useful form.

It's just basic newtonian physics, it takes energy to start and stop moving and a lot less to keep doing what you are doing.

Wouldn't it be more-so that with ICE vehicles you loose 100% of the kinetic energy as heat when stopping. With an EV you convert a portion back to the battery packs with regenerative breaking.

Correct, though many times costs are not just fuel - total ROI includes service cost, availability of replacement parts, insurance costs, etc - a NG car could cost more in fuel and still be cheaper for effectively forever depending on how the books land.

Not trying to be rude, but it's because it's intro Physics (F=m*a, with F coming from fuel, battery, or brakes), with an understanding that the process that generated that force has an efficiency that's less than 100%, mixed with a dash of intro Calculus (integral of force).

Respectfully, intro physics mentions nothing about ICE operating most efficiently at 50 MPH.

Here's a couple of good ones

- https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.4271/2017-01-9379.

- https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.4271/2013-01-1113

You'll want the second just to compare different speeds. Nice pretty graph to follow.

> Cars are most fuel efficient when they're rolling about 50MPH.

They're even more efficient rolling at 40 MPH or 30 MPH or even 20 MPH, as long as it's consistent (not stop-start). Air resistance scales with something like the cube of velocity and begins to be noticeable around 20 MPH.

Every vehicle has a different efficiency curve. I was into hyper milling for awhile and the vehicle I drove had a sweet spot at 62mph.

Efficiency is easy to ball park, but if you want to get precise then every vehicle is going to have it's own moving target. I would argue that no vehicle is especially efficient at 20mph for long durations. Sure you have no air resistance, but you also are spinning a 6 speed transmission when you really only need one. 90% of the car is being wasted. You might as well just drive a self propelled lawn mower.

Even two vehicles of the same make will be different due to differences in operating conditions.

An ICE engine, especially gasoline powered ones, operate with widely varying levels of efficiency. Lets think of a car in 4th gear at 50mph with 15% throttle applied. Now imagine climbing a steep hill. The car can stay in 4th gear and climb the hill with 65% throttle, or downshift to 3rd and climb the hill with 45% throttle. Speed alone doesn't determine fuel efficiency. Intake vacuum (or boost in certain applications) determines fuel efficiency. The trick is to try to go as fast as you can while consuming the least amount of fuel. There is nothing "efficient" about driving a 250hp, 3.0L V6 at 20mph.

They spend lots of time accelerating, braking, and idling.

Because they spend the vast majority of their operating time stopping, idling, and accelerating at low speeds, . They are pretty much a worst case scenario for ICE efficiency.

But then the cars do not need to be electric! A hybrid with a small battery will suite this as well and, given the current price of batteries, will be cheaper.

... because the test driving cycle is based on 8 miles city, 6 miles freeway, and then 11 miles stop/go with 700 stops; and if I remember correctly is based on all accessories (i.e. air conditioning) running for the entire time.

This is not your EPA passenger vehicle test cycle.

This might be the lobbying. If so, just cut them a check for the EV cost delta and installing EV charging stations at USPS facilities where vehicles are parked.

Assuming outrageous costs (~$50k per usps branch) and 6000 USPS facilities, that’s $300M to install EV chargers. Say you do it over five years (slowly working from highest to lowest utilization geographies), that’s only $60M a year.

USPS spends $300M a year on fuel, and vehicle fuel accounts for half of their energy use. Per the GAO, USPS spends $2B a year maintaining their bespoke Grumman LLVs. The costs savings are blindingly obvious.

https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/4/22/2122913...

Yes, this is a bigger policy and legislative failure that let the previous gen trucks get so old and the new contract go through without a mandate and funding for reduced emissions.

That's interesting, since electric vehicles should be cheaper in the long run -- especially if they can arrange lower prices for overnight charging.

Perhaps the up-front costs of an electric vehicle are prohibitive for their constrained financial situation. If so, that is an unfortunate bind, if it causes more financial costs in the long run.

> since electric vehicles should be cheaper in the long run

Do you have a reference for this? I'm curious to see where the costs went. For someone like USPS, who purchases mostly one model, in bulk, with long term maintenance as part of the plan, the math might be a little different.

My numbers may be a bit out of date, but I feel are still somewhat in the ballpark. A battery that gets you 300 miles on a charge (90 kWh?) can be charged 1500 times, and costs $20,000, so that is $13 of wear per charge, plus about $12 worth of electricity (probably more, just basing off battery capacity not counting charge / discharge losses). So that is $25 per 300 miles. A car that gets 30 miles/gallon will cost around $30 per 300 miles. So electric saves you ballpark about 16% in fueling costs.

I'm sure though that the battery packs will come down in price by the time they need replacing, on the other hand the charging costs may be higher due to thermal losses.

The average rural USPS route is 45 miles. Non-rural routes are closer to 20 miles. Low average speed (lots of stop and go) means they would likely beat what we are used to for EV energy usage per mile.

A 30kWh battery could probably handle most use cases even accounting for range loss in cold weather.

Edit: Also the USPS estimates the new gas-powered trucks will get ~8 miles per gallon with the A/C on, and ~14 miles per gallon with it off.

That would make your estimate closer to $16 per 300mi for the EV and $64-$112 per 300mi for the gas truck.

> In actual use by the USPS, which includes extensive stop-and-go driving for residential delivery, average fuel economy is about 10 miles per US gallon (24 L/100 km).[10]

From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grumman_LLV

30MPG is a pipe dream for these vehicles. Going electric would save a lot more than 16%.

The charging infrastructure is the real killer, you need 1:1 charger to vehicle or some kind of smart charger that can plug into X vehicles and charge each up overnight. There's also the power draw requirements that will take, so it may not actually be able to install sufficient charging on existing sites. There's also the maintenance on the chargers, which is admittedly small. Switching to EV means for the same budget you get say 20% less vehicles (assuming same cost), just because you have to spin up the charging.

Its a BS quote, the deck was financially stacked against EV procurement from the start. For example:

1. EV proposals had to account for a 100% EV fleet. The small percentage of rural routes where this was difficult created a long tail of costs. There's no reason why this couldn't have been scaled down to a more reasonable 90% of routes (or whatever the breakdown happens to be).

2. TCO calculations were inadequate. The real benefit of EVs come from operating costs (much lower electricity costs compared to gas, much lower maintenance). Interest rates are so low right now, there would have been some way to capitalize the initial purchases, if the USPS leadership had appetite.

weird, rural route carriers are independent contractors who provide their own vehicles, or at least that is how it used to work.

Could be just longer routes in rural areas that caused the effect in the analysis rather than necessarily actual designated "rural routes."

still works that way even in the north end of the phoenix metro area in the foothills of the mountains, where we live. and this is not like the boonies, just the edge of suburbia abutted with mountains.

I don’t now why USPS what evaluate this on any other yard stick other than cost. It’s really hard to know exactly what their numbers look like but I have a hard time believing that their leadership is backwards etc like the epa rep would want everyone to believe. On the other hand I guess this could be a gambit for federal money. Either way it’d be great to see public thorough analysis.

Yes, there's no way that the EV version should cost $30k more than the ICE version. It's possible to buy a whole EV for that price. It's not like you need a large battery to cover a 45 mile rural route.

Unsure why USPS wouldn't look up to another company that is all based on logistics and delivery. If Pepsico is already buying Tesla Semi trucks af of last Q of '21 [1] then they clearly did the homework and decided electric trucks makes more economical sense than other means. After all, Pepsico as a publicly traded company, is all about squeezing the last cent out of the cost of freight.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/08/pepsico-ceo-says-he-expects-...

I'm all for electrifying most of the USPS fleet but I don't know that a Tesla Semi running regional highway routes is a good reference point.

So weird, considering that mail delivery seems perfectly suited for EVs; the charging can be consolidated where trucks are parked overnight anyway.

Someone is probably pocketing from the deal. Always follow the money.

I mean even if they went with EVs you could still say that. Who isn't financially motivated by obscenely wasteful government contracts?

$11.3 billion / 150 thousand trucks = $73k / truck

People think this kind of logic is an example of thinking, but it's actually thought suppression.

What?

Explain this comment to me. It seems reasonable to come to the conclusion that someone is profiting on the side from this deal. Especially given the current postmaster general. Is there some other trail of thought you think is being neglected from jumping to this conclusion?

It’s a silly comment because any deal would involve someone making a profit.

Yes, any deal would involve someone making a profit but that isn't important. The question "follow the money" implies is, was this decision made because it was the best decision for the circumstances or was it made because someone is getting a kickback? I don't know the answer and I'm not implying anything but I feel saying "any deals involves someone making money" is being obtuse to a certain extent.

isn't that what the contractor with the trucks is doing? otherwise why are they providing vehicles at all?

Would you expand on why you believe this to be true?

I don't think it's wise to focus only on money without considering other factors; however, when looking at decisions like this that don't make sense on the surface, especially when political factors are in play, money is very often going to be a driving factor.

If you have a surface level understanding of a problem and don't understand the proposed solution, then the best path forward is to dig a little deeper and understand the problem better, or just move on with your life and accept that you can't know everything about every field.

Deciding that your surface level understanding of the problem coupled with some general concepts (ie money is often a driving factor), is enough to make a confident pronouncement on the issue is exactly self-inflicted thought suppression.

I was not suggesting one use "follow the money" as a default. I was reacting to the parent comment that dismissed the idea entirely without explaining why.

Part of the problem is that people say “I’m telling you someone’s making a buck, just follow the money”, then they don’t actually follow the money. For many people, it’s enough to just say that catchphrase and not even bother looking into it. The argument wins itself.

Another part of the problem is that when I do see people follow the money, they often come up with something like “the deputy undersecretary of the USPS’s brother used to work for Ford (as a mechanic at a dealership when they were in college)!” And then they treat that fact as if it overrules all the complicated forces that go into this kind of organizational decision-making.

So no, following the money is not a bad idea on paper. But in practice it’s often very sloppy, to the point that it’s frequently annoying when trying to have meaningful debate about policy issues.

> it’s enough to just say that catchphrase and not even bother looking into it. The argument wins itself.

And that is why it's thought suppression.

To clarify my parent comment, I'm not advocating for blindly resorting to "follow the money", and I acknowledged that. But your response is actually substantive and delves into some of the pitfalls of this kind of thinking, which was missing from the GP, and really what I was asking for.

> when looking at decisions like this that don't make sense on the surface

The USPS is ordering a fleet of trucks to operate in all of the United States of America from the Arctic Circle to Hawaii and the Florida Keys. They can’t just order EVs, they have to order the infrastructure to charge them and they need mechanics that can service them, and the trucks have to be able to operate anywhere the USPS deploys them.

Maybe that’s an argument for a mixed fleet, and there’s certainly room for criticism in any large government expenditure and of USPS itself, but it does not on the surface make no sense given that we still depend on USPS to deliver Mail to a service area that per Congressional mandate includes every address in America. Personally I think a mid-generation partial upgrade of the fleet to EVs would give USPS time to work out kinks, charging infrastructure and mechanic concerns without sacrificing the reliability of their service ahead of the generation after this one is probably the way to go.

These are all great points, and certainly highlight some of the challenges in rolling out EVs. But at a time when the climate crisis is as severe as it is today, "it's too hard" can't be an excuse. I'd still argue that this decision doesn't make sense in the context of the global problems we face today, even if they make some sort of tactical sense in the short term.

The rollout doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing thing, and the article acknowledges that some EV's will be purchased.

Humorously enough, the primary reason cited by the USPS for the decision: $$$ (I realize that's not what the GP was implying)

It’s not an excuse: it’s a practical reason to not do a thing given finite resources. Somebody has to design the trucks, somebody has to manufacture them, someone has to service them, and somebody has to build the stuff that will charge them in a place the USPS can guarantee the availability of space for and security for their trucks, which practically means USPS or at least USPS adjacent property.

The climate is changing is not a legitimate reason to over-spend, or worse: over-spend, over-promise and under-deliver. Anything they build today is bound to be safer and pollute less than their current fleet, so why hold up replacing the fleet when what they need from an EV practically doesn’t exist outside of exactly Tesla’s supercharge network?

> Somebody has to design the trucks, somebody has to manufacture them, someone has to service them, and somebody has to build the stuff that will charge them in a place the USPS can guarantee the availability of space for and security for their trucks

Are these the reasons cited by the USPS?

As the article pointed out, a key ask was to focus on specific routes that are more suitable to EVs than others.

Every argument you’ve listed will always be a factor when moving to fundamentally new tech. They’re legitimate challenges, yes. But considerations the private sector is already sorting out.

Again, “it’s too hard” shouldn’t equate to “we aren’t even going to try (or even start piloting EVs to start making progress)”. This was unnecessarily forced to be an all-or-nothing rollout, which clearly doesn’t make sense in every region.

As far as overspending goes, there are some great threads elsewhere on this post that present some very reasonable phased approaches that address that.

> This was unnecessarily forced to be an all-or-nothing rollout, which clearly doesn’t make sense in every region.

I already preemptively addressed this, so you know I agree with you to an extent.

> Are these the reasons cited by the USPS?

You don't need to defer to USPS: a passing familiarity with EVs, the USPS's operations, mandates and the varied temperature extremes and climates they operate within (few countries are both as large as the US and have as varied a climate) will suffice. EVs presently handle extreme temperatures worse than ICE vehicles, and last I checked, most of the States have pretty cold winters and several have deserts. The bulk of their fleet will have to operate in most places all the time.

That said they do use different vehicles where it makes sense for them to, and per the article are also rolling out 5K EV vans. That's enough to start working with figuring out what they would need to eventually electrify the fleet while proceeding with regular business.

The actual reasons cited by USPS are also fairly practical: they have a contract in place, they don't need to stall it to give the President a win considering the age of their existing fleet is a more immediate concern, and the EPA has no say in the matter, but will consider purchasing more EVs if Congress provides additional funding for the purpose.

> Every argument you’ve listed will always be a factor when moving to fundamentally new tech.

USPS and its predecessor organizations has actually been on the bleeding edge for mail transport in the past, but there is value in taking a small "c" conservative approach to rolling out to new vehicle tech for last mile delivery, particularly when most mass market manufacturers still haven't even figured out both the vehicles and the charging infrastructure and you do need both. If the new purchase order could wait another 10 years, I'd be in wholehearted agreement with you. Maybe it even could, but I'm not seeing anyone making that argument.

Just as a last point, presently USPS burns about 110 million gallons of gasoline a year[1], but Americans burned about 123.73 billion in 2020[2]. The Postal Service is not where you want to have your climate fight for vehicle electrification because the juice just isn't worth the squeeze unless you value the politics more than the money. More than likely if the USPS continues to exist they will probably do a mid-generation transition or the next fleet they purchase will be all-electric because by that point it should be the more practical decision, unless something like Hydrogen fuel cells actually catch up to battery-electric vehicles by that point in terms of feasibility and deployed infrastructure.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/23/usps-moves-ahead-with-plan-t...

[2] https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=23&t=10

> People think this kind of logic is an example of thinking, but it's actually thought suppression.

You think the kind of logic you expressed is an example of thinking, but it is literally thought suppression, because you are using it to try to get someone to stop thinking about a certain thing (following the money) and not giving them anything else to think about.

"follow the money" would actually give you the opposite conclusion.

It's not free to switch to electric. Infrastructure costs like building charging stations and maintenance, labor costs like retraining drivers, and a huge number of other costs must be modeled before understanding the true economics.

Merely saying "someone is probably pocketing" demonstrates a shallow analysis of the situation.

My dad was a rural mail carrier. It’s stop go stop go. I don’t think it would be a great EV use case at all.

USPS is pretty smart/efficient with this stuff.

Low speed urban stop-go driving is where EVs excel versus ICE, I think?

It’s pretty extreme. Brake pads every 7-10k miles.

I would think that it would be pretty draining. Perhaps not!

Again, with regenerative braking, something else that EVs are also better at :)

Regen braking is extremely weak and takes a much longer distance than you'd imagine to bring the car to a complete stop. The best use-case for it is slowing from high speeds to moderate speeds, whereby the deceleration is greatest and the recharging is most powerful. For instance, imagine exiting an 80 mph highway onto a 40 mph access road. It's worth noting that the rate of deceleration on regen brakes decreases as the speed approaches zero, rather than the reverse as with non-thermally-overloaded friction brakes. Fundamentally, this occurs for the same reason that stopping a given car from 120 mph takes more than twice the distance compared to stopping the same car from 60 mph - part of the equation of calculating the kinetic energy (what's powering regen brakes) of a moving vehicle involves squaring the speed of the vehicle. With this in mind, braking duty cycle of a typical urban or suburban mail truck (which does a lot more 25-0 than 80-40), is pretty much the worst possible duty cycle for use alongside regen brakes - you are getting almost no energy back and almost no braking force in this specific duty cycle.

Have you driven an EV with “one-pedal-driving”?

I agree that the regen efficiency is reduced at lower speeds, but many EVs are perfectly capable of coming to a stop quickly on regen and only apply the friction brakes right at the end of the stop.

I have, I owned a Tesla Model S P85D for a while. Had to turn off one-pedal-driving. I found it substantially less intuitive than two pedals for any kind of spirited driving, which is what I do every time I get in I car I own. I've had 5 corvettes, 3 GT-R's, and currently driving an 800 hp Mercedes AMG GT S (2 door coupe, not that horrid 4-door atrocity), so I'm admittedly not the target demographic either for one-pedal-driving or EV's more broadly, as they currently stand.

My standards for what qualifies as "strong" braking are probably bordering on alien for most people, too - about 95 feet for 60 mph to 0. That Tesla took almost 120 feet. A new Honda Accord takes about 130 feet.

Did the P85D actually come to a full stop via regen? I thought that was only a feature of newer Tesla models. The newer models are certainly capable of stopping using the motor alone, you can feel the friction brakes engage to hold you at a stop.

Edit: https://www.greencarfuture.com/electric/tesla-one-pedal-driv...

It would not, but it did bring it down to a crawl of maybe 3-5 mph.

Newer models have much stronger regen all the way down to 0mph.

The main issue with relying on regen is reduced regen power when the battery is cold. For a mail truck I think a stronger battery heater while plugged in, or a braking resistor to turn regen power into battery heat, would be helpful.

EVs slow down by generating power and putting it back in the battery. Many EV owners report brakes lasting 100k miles or more due to the reduced usage.

its great for EV, its low speed, they do best in stop and go type traffic.

That's exactly the driving pattern EVs are most efficient at

stop/go/stop/go is perfect for regenerative braking at the very least(not necessarily limited to EVs, but more common with them than ICEs). Also, on the stop portions, there would be zero emissions. I imagine the stop portions are probably a bigger overall part of the day than the go portions, at least based on how my mailman operates.

Stop/go is perfect for EV, although I think rural areas are not a good choice.

Maybe they should do a mix: EV urban, and gas rural.

plus all the starting and stopping, you would think would benefit from regenerative breaking.

The USPS delivers mail in both urban and rural, famously, regardless of the climates of those locations. I still think EVs are a generation short of being able to be deployed in this type of "long life" fleet, and I'm not sure there is enough manufacturing capacity to build the fleet fast enough for the USPS.

Probably a mix would make most sense. In shorter routes electric with capacity to charge during downtimes makes sense. For very long ones gas isn't bad option.

They are adopting a mix, looking to inject 5,000 EVs into their fleet by sometime next year.

Most rural delivery is handled by contractors who use their own vehicles, I believe.

re: manufacturing. They’re only looking at buying 150k trucks. Even Tesla (famously more valued than their output) has a run rate of over a million per year now. So I’m not thinking that’s really an issue.

The cost/time to bring up a production line for just these trucks doesn’t seem like it should be cheaper if their gas either. If anything, sharing a ‘skateboard’ with a delivery van or something would make it even easier.

The average USPS rural route is 45 miles, well within the capability of even the lowest end EVs especially given the low average speeds and constant stop-and-go with regen braking.

Sure there are routes that would be unsuited for EV right now, but it should be closer to 90/10 than 10/90.

USPS already has different vehicles for different routes. It seems like the best solution would be EVs in urban areas and gasoline for long routes (at least until EVs improve). That said, I'm not sure why the postal service needs unique vehicles. Using an existing vehicle platform seems like it would be significantly cheaper and lower risk. That's what postal services in other countries do. The same goes for delivery companies like DHL, FedEx, UPS, and Amazon.

Also I'm surprised by how –there's no other way to put this– stupid this program is. According to page 38 of the environmental impact statement[1], they're planning on using 94kWh battery packs for the EV version of these vans, giving an expected range of 70 miles. This makes no sense. Ford already makes an EV version of its Transit vans with 67kWh batteries and 100+ mile range. Moreover the environmental impact statement notes this on page 43! These vans can carry more cargo than the planned USPS vehicle and they can be bought for $47k retail today. Purchasing the vans would almost certainly be cheaper at such high volumes, saving billions of dollars compared to the Oshkosh contract.

Considering the amount of waste, my guess is that this program is a way to help out a defense contractor (Oshkosh).

1. https://uspsngdveis.com/documents/USPS%20NGDV%20Acquisitions...

Not that weird when you consider that purchasing EVs also means purchasing and deploying the infrastructure to charge them. That’s not a small operation for a service area that includes every single address in the United States of America.

My area's utility has the funding to place them all over the state. This would have been a good opportunity to cooperate and pilot the system here.

Fair, but would you prefer that money be spent assisting USPS with a pilot program which won’t necessarily be useful nationwide or assisting people and businesses who live in your area to switch to electric cars themselves?

Whichever offsets the most fossil fuel usage.

Both because the program is so large it could accomplish this. Truthfully, the feds should fund this.

There would also be a considerable infrastructure charge at every post office and practical considerations of being able to supply adequate materials to actually build all of the mail trucks... on top of that batteries which will degrade, especially faster as some mail vehicles will be used > 100 miles a day.

I think it's still fair at this point to think conversion of an enormous fleet of vehicles might not yet be the pragmatic choice.

It does not have to be an all-or-nothing affair.

The USPS doesn't even provide vehicles to a lot of rural route carriers; they get a stipend and have to purchase their own. They've been replacing LLVs with various sprinter vans and minivans for certain areas and route types.

They recently solicited designs for a new mail truck and that should have included drivetrain flexibility. Major car manufacturers have been doing this for at least half a decade, designing cars that are built to take an ICE, hybrid, or EV drivetrain instead of an EV or hybrid drivetrain being shoe-horned into a body only intended for an ICE drivetrain.

So make that infrastructure publicly accessible during the day and BOOM* you just deployed a publicly funded charging network across most of the country.

*Obviously it's not quite as simple as "boom" but you get the idea.

You can’t drive 8 hrs on a single charge. Particularly in colder climates with less population density. My mail is delivered by someone driving a jeep down a creek lol

From a cost-benefit perspective gas is still king. Otherwise you’ll need 1.5-2x EV trucks for every one gas powered.

https://electrek.co/2016/02/25/mail-man-tesla-model-s/

https://www.tesla.com/en_CA/customer-stories/electric-mail

With an EV, it’s a function of route distance, not route time. Minnesota gets pretty cold! Also, an EV costs half per mile of a combustion vehicle.

Your next rural mail carrier (where the vehicle decision is local) could be driving a Model Y!

>>You can’t drive 8 hrs on a single charge

If you're doing a grand total of a 100 miles in those 8 hours, you sure can - and city delivery vehicles will do even less than that. Yes sure it won't work if you're driving hundreds of miles every day - but even with postal services that's extremely rare, those are last mile delivery trucks not long distance transporters

My mail is delivered by a guy who parks halfway down the block, walks to 20 houses or so, then moves the truck every 20 min or so. I doubt he spends more than a half hour driving every day. Obviously rural routes should not use EVs yet but this is not the majority of mail delivery.

Your average car commutes at somewhere between 22 and 24 mph.

Even if we assume non-stop 8 hours of driving (which it obviously isn't for mail delivery), that's only ~185 miles of range in the absolute worst case scenario.

Well within the range of a modern EV.

Give me a break. If the admin wants the postal service to go EV, pay for it. The very fact that the USPS remains solvent under the conditions they are forced to operate is a damn miracle. Put up or shut up.

> Give me a break. If the admin wants the postal service to go EV, pay for it. The very fact that the USPS remains solvent under the conditions they are forced to operate is a damn miracle. Put up or shut up.

From the article:

> President Biden's social spending package proposal unveiled last year included $6 billion for the USPS to purchase new vehicles, but that proposal is still being debated in Congress.

So it looks like the administration has, in fact, tried to "put up".

Shouldn't they secure that funding before they require this?

> Shouldn't they secure that funding before they require this?

Are you under the impression that the Biden administration has required that the USPS go with EVs? Because that doesn't seem to have happened. If you are referring to some other requirement, maybe you should clarify what you're talking about.

WASHINGTON, Feb 8 (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved a bill on Tuesday to provide the Postal Service (USPS) with about $50 billion in financial relief over a decade and requiring future retirees to enroll in a government health insurance plan.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-house-approves-50-billio...

Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., blocked an initial vote Monday [Feb 14] on the Postal Service bill, saying it needed to be reworked.

https://apnews.com/article/business-postal-service-marsha-bl...

Go ahead and keep blaming this administration for problems created by Bush that Republicans in the Senate refuse to remedy.

With the current state of things with news agencies, we need to assume these are carefully handpicked facts that give a false impression. Those 50 billions likely come with lots of strings attached and USPS can't just use 5 billions per year; the bill was riddled with irrelevant provisions that have nothing to do with mail, and that senator's vote didnt really decide anything. Need to verify all this to make any conclusions.

we need to assume these are carefully handpicked facts that give a false impression

Reuters and AP are some of the most unbiased and professional news sources that cover US politics. If you are going to spread uncertainty and doubt about what I consider to be comprehensive reporting on this bill, I expect you to back it up with actual evidence.

This administration has a majority in both houses and rather than doing anything with it, is tying their hands behind their back in defense of some absurd concept of "norms" which the other side has made abundantly clear they stopped believing in ages ago. Believe what you want but "the big meanie republicans are screwing everything up" stopped carrying any water for a lot of us some time ago.

That is fair. But the Senate majority is slim to none considering how that coal-funded oligarch votes.

And you still can't deny that this admin is trying to help the USPS remain solvent.

It would only take 1-2 republicans to vote for the package to pass it. There are already 48-49 democrats on board.

I really think this is a best-case scenario for a hybrid. You get EV-ish efficiency in the city, a decrease in wear on mechanical parts, especially things like brakes, and no range related issues that come with a BEV - if using hybrid SUV's as a datapoint, modern hybrid systems even get better MPG on the highway then their gas counterparts.

It's clear that if you buy a consumer vehicle, the extra cost a hybrid pays quickly off over the course of ownership, and maintenance isn't nearly as expensive as it was when the came out 20 years ago.

I totally get why hybrid 18-wheelers don't exist - there's very little stopping involved, so the benefits of the regenerative braking, and the off-the-line electric efficiency are null, but USPS trucks have to stop hundreds of times per trip.

Modern day hybrids are fuel efficient, generally more powerful then their gas counterparts, and are bullet-proof enough to be used as taxi cab fleets in NYC. Someone's going to say that you need to haul a bunch of stuff. The F150 Hybrid gets 25mpg vs the 20mpg of the gas. It really doesn't make sense to me.

> no range related issues that come with a BEV

The average USPS route covered by these vehicles per day is 20 miles (and median is probably even lower). Range isn't a concern for the vast majority.

I had for few years Yaris hybrid from Toyota. It turned out maintenance was costly due to a design bug. Yaris had advanced regenerative braking similar to Prius. As the result the brakes did not get hot. In turn under rainy Norwegian weather that lead to accumulation of water that was not evaporated as with normal brakes. That lead to extensive rust within a year. This was not problem as I learned in Prius or for that matter in electrical cars. Those were sufficiently heavier to offset this. But Yaris was light.

I have the strong impression that the current fleet of LLVs are, at this point, each an individual work of patchwork art, still moving only due to the constant attention of dedicated genius grade mechanics. But that would not be possible had they not been built, intentionally, with some of the most common and vanilla parts available.

A new fleet that uses parts nothing else does will be an expensive boondoggle destined for quick sale as surplus.

I can understand not switching 100% all at once, but it seems like they'd want to stick their foot in the water and try it out in some ideal areas.

As someone who lives in an area that is outside the norm (postal vehicles aren't the standard issue), it wouldn't be a good idea here - but they have to be perfect for somewhere...

They are - I read they are doing 10% EV's, with flexibility to increase that if it works well.

It seems to me the ones asking for EV are not the ones paying for it, which seems to be the problem.

Sadly I found no such option to pay for it on any of my ballots recently.

IIRC, this design does allow for switching over to manufacturing an EV powertrain relatively easily. Not sure if this is also true for conversion of already built vehicles but even if not, over time attrition would move most over to EV.

If we switched to EVs, how would I know the mail is near without the sound of a vehicle accelerating as fast as it can and then to braking as hard as it can every fifty feet? /s

Well EVs have to have a noise maker below 15mph so you can't sneak up on old ladies in parking lots.

I propose "We just got a letter, We just got a letter..."

Or if true chaos is your goal, ice cream truck music.

Its shameful that Dejoy is still allowed to ruin the USPS.

The Postal Service will spend up to $11.3 billion on a fleet of 90-percent gasoline-powered trucks and 10-percent electric trucks. That is seriously imbalanced given the lifecycle expectancy of these vehicles. It should be more like 75% PHEV, and 25% gasoline.

God forbid I wouldn't get junkmail littered through my mail slot one day.

They must be paying for these with the funds from not having to install mailboxes. We found out the law changed recently and now communal mail boxes are no longer their responsibility which is crazy.

Seems to be a money thing - anyone know how much gas vs electric costs for postal vehicles?

This https://about.usps.com/newsroom/national-releases/2021/0223-... gives no details.

Note that this is at the order of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who was appointed to the post by Trump in 2020. The same one who slowed down the mail service around the election and is the founder CEO of XPO logistics, which is a huge conflict of interest. The Biden administration directed USPS to go electric, but they are quasi-independent.

Given the failures and complaintslast year, why does he still have that job? From wikipedia it seems like the politics around the board selecting the Postmaster General even being functional seem to have been difficult in the past years, is that the main reason?

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