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mayneack

A majority of them are full electric.

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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.

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?

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.

> 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.

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

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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