Comment by noahtallen | Hacker News Reader

Comment by noahtallen | Hacker News Reader

I feel like this is such low hanging fruit. As the public, I think it’s fair to push “publicly owned” services to be at the bleeding edge of new technology, especially when it could have a high impact.

It seems like a USPS route is an awesome fit for EVs: - It can charge overnight at the facility

- it goes pretty slow most of the time, with a lot of stop and go. No need to go super fast, have excellent aerodynamics, or fancy features.

- emissions wise, 8.6mpg is really, really bad.

- cost wise, paying for gas for 8.6mpg trucks is really, really bad.

- No need for an extreme range. Just driving slowly around city/town blocks shouldn’t take that much energy.

- Lower maintenance burden for something that gets used every single day should save money.

- More space in the truck for packages because there’s no engine.

All of these together mean that a USPS EV doesn’t have the big concerns that normal consumers might have:

- No charging at home or at a rental place.

- No charging where they need to go. (USPS truck would have a static route, always in range of its home charger)

- Crazy features high-tech cars might have. (Can be super basic.)

So all in, I don’t get why they wouldn’t do this. I just can’t see a world where an EV is more expensive than a gas truck. Even if it’s a bit more up front, they have to save a ton over time with fuel and maintenance savings.

And it doesn’t even seem like range would be a problem on the vast majority of routes. I’m trying to think of an extreme route length, and it can’t be more than 100mi, right? That seems crazy high, and is also super low as far as EV range goes these days.

So what gives?

It seems the problem is Republican appointed Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who has millions of dollars in investments in competing companies, and is taking more self interested action to tear apart the USPS from the inside.

Congress and Biden recently fixed the prepay pension handcuffs initially intended to hold the USPS down from investment in their infra. DeJoy came out and said they have more funds for EVs now that they don’t have to prepay 75 years of pensions. It’s still good to get rid of him (his beliefs are deeply rooted in private business versus being a steward of a public good), but progress is being made.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-postal-service-plans-rai...

http://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/usps-doubles-ev-truck-order-but-e...

I am normally not a big fan of government as a private business..

However USPS and Amtrek NEED to be run more like a business. The fact they have not been for decades is part of the problem with the services.

If we are talking something like the police, or fire or something like that I would agree that is dangerous to run those services like a business. I however do not put USPS on the same leave as police and fire.

they ship envelopes and packages from one location to another, that is a business and it should be run like one

In what way is it not run like one? Amtrak has a CEO and a board of directors, and is basically run as a business, albeit a subsidized one.

You can take away the subsidies of course -- it would maybe be possible for Amtrak to operate profitably if it removed every route except the northeast corridor. But is that really want we want Amtrak for? To run one rail line?

It just NEEDS to. You have a feeling about it!

> However USPS and Amtrek NEED to be run more like a business. The fact they have not been for decades is part of the problem with the services.

Idk, I think that a USPS run like a business would either just decide not to operate in the less population dense parts of the US or charge them exorbitant rates for service. Even as someone who lives in a dense urban area, I think it's generally a good idea to have guaranteed mail service to anyone in the country even if that means that I'll essentially be subsidizing the cost of delivering mail to rural areas. I have trouble believing that USPS could be profitable, affordable to everyone, and available to everyone, and I'm much more willing to sacrifice the first one than either of the other two.

running it has a business does not preclude requirements placed upon it by government. All businesses have to comply with government regulations, and a regulation that requires USPS to service rural routes would not preclude running the organization as a business.

It could change things like Frequency of delivery, or other cost cutting but I have advocated for that anyway even for non-rural routes. personally i think residences should get mail delivery on Tue and Thur, and businesses on Mon, Wed and Fri with none of weekends. that alone would be a huge cost saving.

Splitting up residence mail days from business mail days doesn't seem to be at all related to whether it's a business or a government agency compared to the example I gave, so I guess I just don't understand at all what you mean by "run like a business".

> However USPS and Amtrek NEED to be run more like a business. The fact they have not been for decades is part of the problem with the services.

Considering Republicans have been trying to kill the USPS for a hundred years with increasingly restrictive policy changes and increasingly impossibly tight budgets (considering the scope of their task with heavy competition), I think you are entirely mistaken about where the problems are. That the USPS operates at all under such absurd restraints and tight budget is nothing short of miraculous. The problem lies elsewhere, namely, with the major political party that would strongly prefer no government services, and no government, really. Other areas of the world call them anarchists; here we call them Republicans.

Did you mean to respond to the parent comment? I was just quoting them; I don't agree at all that they should be run as a business, which I think should be clear from the part of my comment that isn't a quote

Believing that the Republicans are anarchists is just laughable. I would like it if they were, I prefer a much smaller government than what the Republicans desire.

It's possible to be run like a business but still have a mandate through a government regulatory body. Hospitals and utilities are examples private businesses that operate in a regulated environment.

Narrowing down the USPS debate to "operate" vs "not operate" is a false dichotomy. For example, how critical is 6-day delivery schedule to the least populated areas? Would a 5-day schedule work out reasonably well?

> USPS and Amtrak NEED to be run more like a business

What does "more like a business" even mean here? Historically Amtrak and the USPS budgets have been subject to political push-pull, so here I agree, both institutions need stable budgets. Other than that though, Amtrak can never make a profit because its competition, automobiles and highways, are subsidized by the government (very few toll roads exist in the US, it's mostly combination State and Federal funding which builds highways.) The USPS might be able to turn a profit but it would be really difficult given the long (probably unprofitable) routes it's required to carry and its inability to control its own rolling stock and employ certain workers means it would probably be a lost cause.

If you mean an eye to efficiency and a buffer from the changing of governments, that I agree with.

>>are subsidized by the government (very few toll roads exist in the US, it's mostly combination State and Federal funding which builds highways.)

Toll Roads is not the only User Fees applied to fund roads. Other Fees include but are not limited to Gas Taxes, Vehicle Excise Taxes, Registration Fees, License Fee's, Wheel Taxes, etc.

That is with out adding in other revenue's that should also be considered user fees but typically are not like Vehicle Sales Taxes, and Fines for traffic violations.

Americans pay a TON of money directly in fees for access to the road system above and beyond tolls

Further the Interstate system is considered to be a National Defense project, that citizens are allowed to use, kinda of like GPS.

>>The USPS might be able to turn a profit

"Run like a business" do not mean "turn a profit". Not all businesses are for-profit enterprises.

A better turn of phrase may be found in the axiom of "Government Programs are judged by their intentions, Private Enterprise is judged by their results"

"Run like a government" generally means a program is not judged by the results of the program, and any failing of the program is simply a matter of spending ever increasing amounts of money never critically looking at either the program itself or the assumptions of the programs

"Run like a business" means looking at the objectives, setting a goal to achieve the objective, taking action, then evaluating the results of the action. Looking for inefficiencies, bad objectives, false assumptions, etc etc etc.

So if I were running the USPS like a business, I wouldn’t go out of my way to service less populated areas.

I’m sure “rural America” would love that. The same for Amtrak.

Isn’t that where the people voting for republicans to defund it are? Why give them something they don’t want?

It’s the same group of people who voted to “build the wall” and then complained that the government was using eminent domain to take their land to build it.

See may other comments as I have already addressed this, but it does not follow that "running it like a business" precludes serving rural America.

it is moronic to claim other wise. People that continue to make this claim clearly do not understand how to run a business at all, and are operating under this weird anti-capitalism rhetoric...

as for Amtrak, I would be in-favor of a complete shutdown of that service, the USPS has some albeit limited constitutional basis for its existence, Amtrak does not

The people who make the claim know this. They are just serving red meat to their constituents screaming “socialism” - the people who live in states who take in more in government benefits than they pay out.

The single years old partsian study that is the basis for the "takes in more takes than they pay out" is intellectually defieciant on many levels and ignores all kinds of inconvenient truths

Anyone uses that as a justification for anything is just further perpetuating partisan divids not looking for solutions to any public policy problems

So is that you? Just a partisan hack seeing through the my tribe good lens of party politics

So you really think that the “flyover states” and states in the south contribute more than they take in? Can you find a study that says otherwise?

https://wallethub.com/edu/states-most-least-dependent-on-the...

https://www.governing.com/finance/Are-Republican-States-More...

Just like old people on Medicare who are against “government run healthcare”.

Both of these links are the same source... May want to try diversification in you sourcing but I suspect you are in an ideological echo chamber so...

They fail because they treat military spending incorrectly. Military is deploy based on the strategic needs of the nation, it is incorrect then simply include military related spending in a state, with the taxes collected from the state. This will always impact the results in favor or more dense states as military spending is often inverse to population density for obvious reasons.

The other failing is using the child tax credit as the basis for "Individual Dependency", aside from that being absurd on its face the idea then that you want to use people taking their legal tax credit passed by democrats to make a political point it just insanity

Again these "lol Red States need federal money" stories are partisan hack jobs that cherry pick data, and do not actually prove anything nor can they be used to make commentary on political policy, or anything.

People using them, reporting on them, or other wise engaging with them are either showing a lack of basic economic reasoning skills, or are partisan hacks looking for confirmation of their own person bias.

Which are you?

My guess is you just read the head lines, maybe the story but never actually look into the methodology or underlying goals of the people creating these "studies" (and I use that term loosely) because it confirms our personal bias you simply listen and believe

The military is not deployed based on needs. There have been plenty of cases where the military wanted to close a base that they didn’t need or decommission a weapons system and a powerful senator in a Red state wouldn’t allow them to do it because of the job loss in their district.

So the Red States should be okay with

The “Military Times” for what’s it’s worth, is not a left leaning site by any means

https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2016/04/19/...

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/14/base-closings-hot-potato-iss...

And it doesn’t matter as far as the child tax credit. It still means that the federal government is spending more in the state than it gets in. Which state would be better off if it didn’t have to pay federal tax for anything except the military -California or Mississippi?

The same argument as far as tax credits could be used for welfare benefits. They are just taking advantage of money that they are legally entitled to. Would conservatives agree with that argument?

> I’m sure “rural America” would love that. The same for Amtrak.

How much of "rural America" is using Amtrak to get around? Their route map seems to indicate all their stations are in urban areas. It's not like they stop in every one-horse town.

As I understand it the ones really using it to get places are the Northeast Corridor, and the rest is mainly rail fans taking the land equivalent of a cruise ship.

It's a service that charges the same for mailing a letter from rural Alaska to New York as it charges from New Jersey to New York, to facilitate communication and commerce. A situation where a loss on this one service is far outweighed by the benefits it brings to the society and economy. And it's not even running at a loss a fair portion of the time.

> Congress and Biden recently fixed the prepay pension handcuffs initially intended to hold the USPS down from investment in their infra.

I don't really have a horse in this game, but what's the playbook now for the scenario when the pension fund under-performs, and USPS is on the hook to make up the difference?

Backfilled by the general fund decades down the road.

Is that possible? I thought the whole reason they're not plain old federal employees is this setup where USPS is chartered as an independent entity? Do they even have a general fund?

Anything is possible with legislation and a tax base. The general fund I referred to is the US federal general fund.

https://fiscal.treasury.gov/general-fund/

Between regenerative braking and the fact that EVs don't need transmissions (which stop and go traffic is especially hard on), it does seem like a no brainer.

I’d be concerned about the lifetime costs of the vehicle regarding maintenance, repair, and replacement parts. I’d guess that insurance would be much higher too depending on how that’s handled. Would chip shortages cause issues?

What context is informing your comment?

So far, data shows that well-made EVs have lower maintenance and repair costs than legacy vehicles in similar categories. There are definitely some fairly unreliable EVs—early leafs with horrible batteries (early technology), and exploding chevy bolts (GM...you tell me), but that isn't true for the latest or high end vehicles. Also, the USPS is self-insured (and therefore insurance costs are irrelevant), and chip shortages would really only impact the steady delivery of vehicles and (to a lesser extent) service parts.

Insurance costs are based off claim probability. So if say a Tesla is more expensive to insure than a Honda. It likely means self insurance costs of a Tesla would be higher than a Honda.

I wouldn’t assume the ev fleet is cheaper than a gas truck fleet.

Tesla model Y uses roughly 0.3kwh per mile. Pge charges roughly 30 cent per kWh to residential customers. That’s roughly 2.7$/30 miles.

Yet the Tesla model y is a 60k car where-as a Honda CRV is roughly 30k. So we’re talking easily needing to drive 200k miles before break even. And that’s not including any depreciation, ev charger installs, higher insurance, higher car tax, etc.

the Crv has minimal ICE maintenance for its first 6ish years.

I do agree tha usps should use EVs for a large portion of its fleet. But it might pay to slowly ramp up usage to get a true sense to costs involved, and which technologies to use.

I mean, if we’re buying 50k-150k vehicles in the next ten years — most of which will probably last many decades — we need to set ourself up for the future. If 75% of the orders are ICEs, that’s more than 100k new ICEs just for the USPS. That’s a really strong step in the wrong direction, imo.

Looking at fuel, though, let’s consider a 30mi route. (Supposedly the average rural route is 45, unsure about cities.) Assuming it runs 6 days a week, that’s around 9k miles per year. At 8.6mpg, it’s around 1k gallons of gas per year. At the current average around $4, that’s $4000 per year on gas.

The current average electricity price for commercial and for transportation sectors is around $0.12/kWh according to EIA. It’s tricky to figure out what the kWh/mi is because it’s obviously a small truck, it’s going low speeds, and it’s able to use regen braking due to frequent stops. These factors make it hard to come up with a good number, but maybe let’s say 0.4kwh/mi (similar to an EV truck iirc.) At 9k miles, that’s 3600kwh. With the 12 cent energy cost, that’s only $430.

So the cost savings is around $3500/yr/vehicle, and gets even better if my miles per year calculation of 9000 is low. (Which is plausible.) and even better if the efficiency is better due to regen braking and low speeds. (Also plausible.)

Multiplied by 50k vehicles, it’s a cost savings of $175 million on fuel alone per year!

The USPS also stated in its release that many of their vehicles have been around for 30yrs. So I think it’s pretty plausible to say that a high mileage break-even cost is obtainable. And if we’re keeping these vehicles for decades and decades, it’s that much more important to go full EV today so that we aren’t running on inefficient, polluting, legacy tech in 30 years.

The 8.6mpg was with Aircon on. Also a ford transit van gets 24 mpg city. So let’s just call it 14mpg if the thing was designed more economically and didn’t use any aircon.

That brings fuel cost to 2500/year.

Your EV costs also need to include the cost of battery replacement, cost of charger install, and a manufacturer actually capable of delivering this volume of EVs.

After all said and done. I doubt EVs will be drastically cheaper on a TCO basis. Now if we take into consideration cost of pollution removal, then yes EVs are cheaper. It’d also be smart if the government to make the switch to encourage domestic EV manufacturing capabilities

Conversely, the ICE cost also needs to take into account things like oil changes and powertrain maintenance.

I’ll concede that it’s hard to calculate and we can’t be certain. But it does seem like things are factored in favor of EVs in the long run. For example, if battery recycling, chargers, and those other costs associated with EVs continue decreasing, TCO looks even better in 10-15 years. Plus, committing to EVs helps push the industry forward and reduce costs, like you say.

First, that's a high power cost - industrial zoned areas often pay less and in many states even consumers pay about 1/3 of that. Then consider that the cost is variable - gas will likely continue to increase while power could get cheaper and reduce co2 per mile emissions as local power production tech is upgraded.

Second, investing in EV improves EV adoption rate and support networks. Investing in poor mileage ICE at scale will likely inflate fuel prices for everyone else.

When estimating lifetime costs you are simply assuming that prices will stay at current levels when this investment itself could create unfavorable changes to the estimate.

You’re 100% right. I would like to see the reasoning behind this decision

$$ for friends of politicians

They found one really long mail route that couldn't be serviced by an EV, so it's just a matter of crafting the requirements that every vehicle must handle every route, and you get the preordained outcome.

If this is actually true rather than just speculation, I would be interested in reading about the specifics.

As the lawsuit says, they considered two plans: 10 percent EV and 100 percent EV. 100 percent EV rejected because there are unsuitable routes. Never considered 90 percent EV, or made any effort to identify what percentage would be feasible. The 100 percent plan was obviously designed to fail; just a fig leaf that they tried due diligence.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com