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Comment by infecto | Hacker News Reader

In my opinion these are a huge miss.

Maybe I am overly optimistic but they generally are not carrying a lot of weight, fairy local and lots of stop and starts. Would have been amazing to at least get some hybrids in the mix.

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I don’t know the details… but my dad was a rural mail carrier for awhile, and the roughness of the driving they do is difficult to understand.

Rural carriers operate their own vehicles. The wear and tear was nuts… for example we would change brake pads every 2-3 weeks.

I think USPS wants to operate vehicles for many years. I’d guess they may have determined that the regen braking or batteries for hybrid couldn’t sustain the harsh conditions within the operating cost envelope.

FWIW: Regen breaking has a lot less wear than normal breaking. Normal breaking needs to convert the energy into heat through friction, which wears things down. Storing that energy means nothing has to be worn down.

For an application like this one, it's possible to use capacitors instead of batteries for a near-infinite lifespan too. A supercapacitor won't store enough charge for driving any sane distance, but for one stop and acceleration (regen breaking), it's perfectly adequate.

Buses sometimes have flywheels for that purpose, too. Although that also has weight and space, so may not be worthwhile for a vehicle where both are needed for its primary purpose.

Interesting.

Where I live, the stops are too long for a flywheel to make any sense. The postal worker will usually deliver to a mailbox serving several houses, and will often have packages. Perhaps in the suburbs, where there are individual mailboxes for each house, it could work well.

Still, if we take 8000 lbs, times (10mph)^2, and divide by 2, we get about 35kJ. First supercap which came up in a Google search does 1kJ for <$10. So it's like $350, and will have far less maintenance and better efficiency than a flywheel.

If we do 20mph -- although goodness knows mail trucks here don't go nearly that fast for start-and-stop between mailboxes -- it's $1400. Even 40mpg would be around $5k.

So it's very cheap (and, electronically, very easy), at least for this use case. For highway speeds, it'd be a different story.

2-3 weeks to change brake pads seems incredibly excessive and to be honest I don't believe it. I delivered Pizzas for more than 5 years, and my brake pads would still last 20,000+ miles.

> generally are not carrying a lot of weight

1000lbs is a lot of weight. Mail routes include package deliveries as well as mail and package pickups. Some business deliveries have large transactions every day.

> fairy local and lots of stop and starts.

Mail routes are not identical and there are plenty of rural USPS offices which deliver to the property.

> to at least get some hybrids in the mix.

Part of the point is to not have a mix to avoid all the attendant problems that creates.

1000lbs is not a lot of weight. It's the weight of 5 average american men, which I would expect every sedan to handle just fine.

A small sedan can hold 5 adults in a pinch, but if you always drove your average sedan with 1,000lbs inside, and stopped every house, it would wear out extremely quickly and would drive/perform awful. Moreover, most small cars aren't actually rated to hold the weight of 5 adults, despite having 5 seats.

Not every Sedan: https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2013/09/the-heavy-r...

"The Ford Fusion, Honda Accord, and Mazda6 midsized sedans, for example, all have a combined load capacity of 850 lbs. for passengers and cargo."

that article is 10 years old, carry weights have increased, but only by about 50 pounds or so.

I just picked up 900 lbs of tile and the place would refuse to put anymore in my Subaru Forester. It's a pretty substantial load with big safety ramifications if not stored well.

I don't think your expectations are correct.

Most sedans made today, the average max carry weight of a sedan is 900lb. And even at 900lb you fuel economy and performance is far less than "just fine."

Also cargo weight distribution is far different than people, with the lion share of packages being placed in the rear have of the vehicle and not evenly distributed amongst the front and rear axle.

1000lb of cargo is a lot to ask from any sedan and expect it to do it 8 hours a day, 6 days a week for 20+ years, isn't something I think you would find possible.

I live in a very rural area. We don't even have the 1980s era of mail trucks here, out delivery drivers have passenger SUVs and vans retrofitted for right hand drive.

I'd be really surprised to see these new vehicles in truly rural areas any time soon.

That's because the mail trucks are not considered suitable for longer and higher speed routes. I would expect them to roll out to rural areas quickly so the USPS can get rid of the mishmash fleet.

Rural carriers buy and maintain their own vehicles typically.

https://about.usps.com/publications/pub181/pub181_v03_revisi....

those may be contact carriers

I have an uncle who was an employee rural carrier for thirty years. He always owned and maintained his own vehicle.

But there is going to be a mix? Also 1000 lbs is not a lot of weight to account for here. Ignoring rural routes which are a different beast, these routes are local on mostly slower roads. That kind of weight needs to be accounted for but it’s negligible.

As a kid I had a six hour paper round and a bicycle. I had my newspapers dropped off for me at four stops and nobody ever stole from them before I could get there - imagine that. In total, the mass of papers was about five times my own height, clearly a bit much to carry in one go.

My 'cargo' was heavier than that of the postman, but that was in the days before ecommerce, and the post service (UK) handled packages differently, sending them out in different vehicles to what the letters went out in, if over a certain size.

I also had to go to the door, not a mailbox at the side of the road. I was quicker than the postman with his cumbersome van. I was also quieter and more eco-friendly.

I am not suggesting that the post service in America have teenage lads on bicycles delivering letters and parcels, however, there is a lot to be said for having smaller vehicles.

Assuming I had one of these vehicles for free and all the fuel for it for free, would I have wanted one or been able to do my job quicker?

Probably not, even if scaled down to half the size for UK roads. Maybe my opinion would differ mid winter and if I was middle aged. However, I would not have my stashes in bus stops, all 30 ft of newspapers would be in the van. There would be no incentive to optimise.

Weight is your enemy in the delivery game and these vehicles are huge, yet typically American sized. If carrying a parcel to a door then that is going to be less than ten kilos in most cases, but if we assume 10kg, does that really need a vehicle with stuff weighing 300x upwards?

What they really needed was a range extending EV. These are not Prius style hybrids but they have a generator that runs at optimal RPM to charge the main battery. The original BMW EV, the i3 had this and it was a tech that wasn't really needed since those cars were overpriced and only ever did city journeys where the range extender was not needed.

The range extender can be chucked out as charging infrastructure improves and the battery can be updated to a new one that has more oomph for the same weight/size.

Just remember that road conditions and climate can be vastly different in the US compared to the UK.

The previous delivery vehicle[1] has no air conditioning. Which is a really big deal with how hot it gets in a lot of the US.

And if your vehicle is smaller and most other vehicles are larger and there's an accident then you're more likely to die. [2]

You may well be right that in an optimal scenario that smaller is better for delivery but the US has a wide variety of non-optimal scenarios.

I don't think the NGDV is perfect but I'm happy that USPS employees will be safer and happier.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grumman_LLV

[2] https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/latest-driver-death-rates-h...

A majority of them are full electric.

Which was not the original plan. Luckily enough pressure was applied to improve the plan.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-postal-service-gas-trucks-el...

I don’t get it. Wouldn’t electric vehicles save them money in the long run? A lot of money?

EDIT: per this comment charging infrastructure was going to be a huge cost. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41544204

as usual with any large-scale procurement decision, it is a whole lot of politics. the anti-EV people were pushing against it, the defense contractors that run the government had more experience in gas powered vehicles, and the environmentalists were pushing for impractical targets like 100% EV, which just gave ammunition to the people who didn't want EVs.

the cool thing here seems to be that practicality is actually going to win out, and the postal trucks will end up being EVs on routes where that makes sense, and internal combustion on routes where EVs don't make sense.

Its probably too soon to know if that pressure succeeding was lucky or a mistake.

I love the idea of having an all electric fleet if it's feasible and better than the alternatives. I also have to assume the original plan to only electrify part of the fleet has functional reasons behind it.

If those reasons are overcome, or if that decision was somehow entirely political, then the pressure is lucky. Otherwise...we'll see?

Press, followed by $3 billion extra budget from tax coffers.

With the ever increasing cost (both financially and climate) of gasoline, it seems it would pay off in the long-term

A friend's Tesla they once worked out costs about "$1 per gallon of gas" equivalent. Meanwhile gas in Seattle is about $4-$5 per gallon

Depends on driving habits and price of electricity and gas. In Washington state, electricity is cheaper compared to most of the US, and gas is among the most expensive compared to most of the US.

For less than ~10k miles per year, the higher up front cost of an electric vehicle and the greater depreciation due to eventual battery replacement might make a hybrid gas vehicle still cheaper per mile.

But for high mileage, high frequency of stop and go driving, I imagine all electric is cheapest?

Electric is likely cheapest considering duty cycle and fuel usage, and the battery should not need to be replaced for hundreds of thousands of miles, at which point we will have better batteries that last even longer and are cheaper.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41409422

https://petapixel.com/2024/08/30/scientists-discovered-a-way...

https://www.cell.com/joule/abstract/S2542-4351(24)00353-2

> might make a hybrid gas vehicle still cheaper per mile

I agree. What is unconscionable is deploying 10s of thousands of vehicles that spend every day of operation accelerating rather quickly then coming to a full stop within a few seconds without using regenerative braking.

the battery depreciation is per mile, so I don't think the mileage per year will factor into it heavily.

The published ratings of battery depreciation are per-mile, because there’s not really any other way to straightforwardly measure it, but the chemistry of battery degradation is very complex, and factors like number of high-current heating cycles and depth of discharge definitely matter.

no one is dumping their EV any sooner than an eqivalent ICE due to battery replacement.

the problem is we aren't comparing person vehicles, you have to consider these vehicles are estimated to need a 20+ year life span which mean replacing the batteries at least once, most likely twice. electric vehicle metrics are also not based on carrying a heavy load, at start and stop distances, moving at too low a speed to really benefit from reclamation.

The truth is, we have no real data to tell us how electric vehicles will fair over the expected time length with this expected work load.

When you factor in the building of instructor for charging stations, and their maintenance.

The initially preceded benefits may not be there.

Not yet though. I would be curious how easy it is to have both an ice and ev next gen vehicle. It’s a waste imo to have both platforms.

Remember USPS provides universal service. How do you sustain an electric fleet everywhere in the US in 2024?

If the postal service was run by a normal board and we had a less insane political environment, we’d build charging infrastructure to make to make it work. Alas, we live in this timeline.

It shouldn't be too big of a deal to have an ice and an ev share a truck style vehicle, because there's going to be structural support for batteries and probably room for them too; possibly requiring a higher load floor, but depends on design, I guess. Sounds like the target EV range is 70 mi, so the battery pack won't be super large.

Ford makes the F-150 in ice, hybrid, phev, and full ev, I think.

I don't think there's a phev F-150.

Hybrids are great until it comes to long term maintenance where you are not having to manage and work on two different systems. Having personal who can work on both electrical and gas has been one of the issues with the hybrid adoption in fleet vehicles with other groups.

Not to say it isn't worth exploring, but I do know it is a common issue when discussed.

I don't get it. The article says most of the fleet will be electric.

There was a huge fight over what proportion of these trucks would be electric. Wikipedia says 75% of the initial order of 60,000 trucks will be electric, and after 2026 they will all be electric.

> In my opinion these are a huge miss.

Oh, really? Can you share your expertise that trumps that of the people who work with them every day?

Roger, I was going to write a response to you but realized it probably would go over your head. Why don't you tell me what you disagree with Roger?

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