GOP omnibus bill would sell off USPS's EVs
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/23/politics/trump-senate-democra...
Selling them off really doesn’t make sense, though. I understand that the USPS operates in many areas that aren’t conducive to EVs and that ICE models are needed there, but these electric models would be extremely well-suited for urban areas where drivers are making frequent stops given how poorly ICEs perform in constant-stop-and-go scenarios.
There’s a good chance this ends up as outright thievery.
That said, blatant corruption is just the name of the game at this point in America, so who knows.
The vast majority of amazon's delivery vehicles are random vans, and amazon themselves doesn't own them; they franchise out like fedex ground does.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AmazonDSPDrivers/comments/17l2gue/a...
It's all part of a much larger plan to cripple the USPS so republicans can justify outsourcing mail delivery to the private sector. Take a great investment the USPS made that would decrease health premiums (because it's so much better ergonomically for drivers) and lower operating costs, and throw it into a fire. Now USPS has to continue to maintain the LLVs, even as they continue to fall apart and the drivers suffer.
I live in the SF Bay Area and i've definitely seen small vans and such used for delivery by the major shippers. they don't always use the standard trucks.
Plenty of people driving old usps mail jeeps, you can always find someone who wants to drive something weird.
I suppose the headline could’ve been: “GOP tax bill compels USPS to sell its 93 delivery EVs”. But let’s be honest, that wouldn’t get many clicks nor be on the first page of HN.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/12/11/biden-usp...
It probably would. Knowing the small number of vehicles involved makes the bill seem more capricious and stupid, not less.
(Just to clarify: I’m speaking here from the perspective of a hacker or hustler. No politic or opinion on the actual subject.)
While it doesn't get as hot here as other parts of the country, it's pretty awful what he needs to deal with once temps reach 80+. his truck is like sitting in a metal can. he does what he can to park in shady areas but otherwise he's basically being cooked when he needs to go inside to get mail or drive it from stop to stop.
these vehicles would've been a huge improvement.
I'm ready to believe the absolute worst about their conduct, but experience tells me to always hear both sides of a story before judging.
I mean, there's no way these vehicles are going to sell for even 20% of what USPS bought them for.
> Oshkosh encountered delays and engineering problems during early manufacturing runs, and disagreements — and accusations of corporate dishonesty — among executives plagued the production process, The Washington Post reported in December.
> Oshkosh was supposed to have delivered about 3,000 vehicles by the end of 2024. Instead it had provided roughly 100 and raised its prices as the Postal Service ordered additional EVs.
sounds like cancelling should be agreed upon bipartisanly; partisan divide maybe on whether or not it's worthwhile to restart the procurement process.
Ho-Ho-Ho!
> “The Senate’s version of Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill […] aims to cut unnecessary costs […] and … the environmental initiatives pushed by the Biden Administration.”
Undermining investment in American companies! This agendas of this administration are a cancer.
https://electrek.co/2025/06/22/republicans-cant-stop-wasting...
Case in point: Washpo is owned by Bezos, who owns a huge stake in amazon, who could be a potential buyer for these vehicles.
Does electrek have that kind of conflict of interest?
FTA: "Instead it had provided roughly 100 and raised its prices as the Postal Service ordered additional EVs."
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
(I'm not commenting on this bill, about which I don't know anything.)
On the other hand, that could be a "sunk cost" fallacy, if the future costs of these bespoke EVs is higher than the cost of just using a standard commercial utility vehicle. Not saying that it is, and the article really doesn't explore this other than to quote Rand Paul as saying that the provision “aims to cut unnecessary costs and focus USPS on delivering mail and not achieving the environmental initiatives pushed by the Biden Administration.”
Let’s be honest - Oshkosh Corporation is really strange choice for making EVs. Very strange choice.
Like most contract vehicle builders, they put together parts from major suppliers. Bosch makes the EV motor and most likely supplies the control module and what not too.
GM had entered the procurement process, but left early on. Rivian had no track record when the procurement process began.
No argument that the process is long, and probably has problems, but I don't think it's strange that Oshkosh made it through the process.
I would be curious the reasons that GM dropped out.
I’m asking because I’ve been following the EV space pretty closely. Mainly from a business perspective and I’m genuinely curious how this one flew under my radar.
Please don’t take this as dismissive of your opinion; I’m just trying to learn and would really appreciate any additional info you can share.
Getting a 10 year vehicle contract for the USPS with 2wd, 4wd, ICE and EV options requires a strong government vehicle contracting play.
Oshkosh makes lots of vehicles for the military. And also a fair number of niche commercial trucks. They know how to do the requisition process, and they know how to assemble vehicles.
Grumman had the last 10 year vehicle contract for the USPS; also a big military contract vehicle supplier. Grumman built the LLV on a base of GM parts, and Oshkosh is building the NGDV on a base of Ford parts, but otherwise, pretty similar deal.
That said, the rivian delivery van is in the neighborhood of $85k-$90k [1], so not that far off price wise, and the NGDV has a lot of design elements that make it more precisely matched for how the USPS uses delivery vehicles. The article I linksd does point to a much less expensive Ford E-Transit, but it's still not built around the USPS's needs.
https://www.oshkoshcorp.com/brands-innovations/electric-vehi...
So my point is that the opposition here is not just the usual partisan squabbling. People should not think that waiting for 2/4 years is going to passively solve the problem like the regular changing of the buntings. Rather people need to realize the speed and brazenness these societal arsonists are moving, and demand their congresspeople stand up (versus the stochastic death threats from the social media addled nutsos, bots, etc) and put a stop to this. Congress shouldn't be voting on a big ugly omnibus spending bill written by special interests, rather they should be browbeaten into focusing on impeachment.
Not to mention standing up in Congress, and reminding each other to actually read what they're voting on, like MTG a few weeks ago realizing the effects of a bill she voted for but hadn't read.
> Oshkosh encountered delays and engineering problems during early manufacturing runs, and disagreements — and accusations of corporate dishonesty — among executives plagued the production process, The Washington Post reported in December.
> Oshkosh was supposed to have delivered about 3,000 vehicles by the end of 2024. Instead it had provided roughly 100 and raised its prices as the Postal Service ordered additional EVs
the corporate "looting" as you put it, has already happened. and this part of the omnibus bill stems the bleeding. without any particular judgement on the rest of the omnibus bill, and yes, i believe there is probably looting in the rest of the bill.
you should support this part of the bill, if you believe the things that you claim to, such as not having the nation on open fire sale.
Scrapping them does nothing to right that wrong (that money is gone), while setting up up the government for the next con job - the USPS still needs vehicles. The graft has not "happened" - it is happening, repeatedly. The only reason there are cost cutting measures in this bill is that it can avoid larger congressional processes by being plausibly "revenue neutral". This is one of the reasons why Trump's championed TCJA included tax increases in subsequent years - to be able to call the whole thing revenue neutral. In this context, whenever "savings" are being championed it is really just making a justification for giving it away somewhere else, and such "savings" are likely going to leave the government in a poorer position and having to spend even more later - akin to a high interest loan, but it's not even in terms of simple finances but rather diminished capabilities putting them even further at the mercy of the next set of contractors.
As I've acknowledge twice now, yes there are serious problems with the way the government specs and procures things. The problem here, and why I phrased my comment in terms of a "full stop" to any change rather than merely focusing on this issue, is that naive ideas about how things should be simple are just being used as a cover to enable more brazen looting - this isn't about getting a better vehicle solution for USPS, but rather destroying government assets for cash that can then be pocketed. Talking about progress or reform in the context of anything this administration does is specious. We need to be focusing on not going backwards before we can even think about going forwards.
[0] eg there are no "off the shelf" domestic market vehicles with right hand drive.
I'm in the same boat. Politically / culturally I'm pretty centrist, and historically I've found things to like and dislike about both parties' governance. (G.W. Bush was the first administration I ever hated. But I'm mostly willing to write GW Bush off as a moron, and his fellow Republicans as inept.)
With Trump 2, for the first time I actually loath the entire Republican party, and the voters who support him. I'm having a very difficult time believing anything praiseworthy behind their motives.
It's the first time I truly fear for the immediate future of the country. I'm sure this says as much about me as it does about the Republicans. But if there are many others like me, this can't be a good sign of what's to come.
I agree. It's the first time I've ever had these thoughts and feelings, and it's not obvious how justified my hatred is.
I think people need to start asking in at least some good faith why so many people voted for this. If your answer really is that they're just racist and stupid... then I would encourage you to consider whether your opinion is more informed from social media and news than meeting actual people.
I mean... Yes? But there's a dynamic that's really hard to get past which is --
1. I do not actually think that half the country is racist and stupid, but most of my political interactions are unfortunately not with real people, they are with the media, a necessity if you want to stay informed, and if I want to hear the actual thoughts of the leaders of our country, it's not going to give me good impressions.
2. Many of the actual people in my life who are conservative have become MAGA-pilled, and do talk the same way folks do online. I'm a humanist, I empathize deep down with the nature of humans, and the death of small town / manufacturing America, etc. but I will say that I think that over time the lines between online and offline are blurring. Recently spent time with people I've known along time in meat space who talked about how smart and informed they were for knowing the "truth" about vaccines, how stupid the other side was for being in a ideological bubble. How terrible it was that 2 year olds were going to school and coming back Trans. And just in general the kind of anti-lib discourse that you would find on Twitter.
Sadly I think this idea that the extreme polarization of our country is limited to online discourse is becoming less and less true over time.
I wonder where all of these Trump voters get their opinion informed from. Are Trump voters known for meeting actual people and learning from them?
as far as meeting "actual people"-- yes, there are definitely people who are anti-gay anti-trans anti-women pro-war pro-hate pro-"america" and they are pretty gross, authoritarian, and fascist-leaning, and to me that's not what america is about.
saying that everyone's fear is made up is just coming from a place where white well-off christian people just don't see problems and that's pretty sad
I don't believe I said anything like that, and none of those descriptors apply to me, but thanks for making assumptions about me!
That isn't to say that Democrat voters are perfect, either. There's certainly a significant undercurrent of left-wing media that is built on fear and hatred - one only need to see how well conditioned women are nowadays to believe that every man they see wants to harm/rape them or how men spending time around children are presumed pedophiles - but it's not quite as prevalent and certainly not as targeted at political affiliation.
It's completely fair to point out that Democrats often fail to address issues facing average people, or when they do, it's done poorly. That's sad, and it needs to change. However, where I get confused is how Republican policy almost universally harms the average person, and yet they get a free pass, even to the degree that I've seen a large cohort of people blame the Democrats for failing to save them from a bad Republican policy/action without passing any of the blame to the Republicans that passed it (e.g., tariffs, DOGE cuts, etc.).
It pains me to see the anemic Democrat response to some of the batshit insane stuff the Republicans do (especially now), but I fear it's largely because the Democratic party is just as much owned and operated by moneyed interests. While the Republicans are stabbing us to death, the best we can hope from the Democrats is to put down the knife without providing any bandages.
If you are driven to hate this administration, that is a good thing. They are evil, the rebirth of the exact evil identified in the Nazis: a total lack of empathy. Indeed, they claim empathy -- the most essential human emotion -- is a sin.
When you find burning hatred clouding your judgment, sit in it and know that your anger will protect you from injustice (that is the purpose of the emotion). Remind yourself that hate and anger cannot yield creation, and creation is the light of god that suffuses all things. Destruction is a terrible yet inevitable end that should only be induced to protect the weak and ameliorate suffering, so be just and resolute when you seek it.
It is ok to hate Neonazis, to say the least.
An angry, hateful America is what led to this. How is that preventing injustice exactly?
It's an emotion whose healthy expression is essential to functioning as a human being. I've had a lot of trauma therapy/done a lot of personal work in that domain and healthy angering is one of the hardest things I've had to learn.
Bad things will happen, but when we are connected with ourselves and have empathy for the people around us, anger is a vital indicator that enables effective proactive behavior.
I think an issue with this reasoning is that "protect the weak" and "be just" are things that many people (admittedly not all) from "both sides" _do_ want to do, and that reality is often not so straightforward, involving tradeoffs that cannot be objectively evaluated as "just".
Personally I believe that a lot of disagreements in this realm come down to misunderstanding, in which case it's very sad to have to resort to destruction, when better communication and efforts to work together could create agreement or at least compromise. Admittedly resolving these misunderstandings is really hard, and I think a lot of us don't have the skills or tools to do so in a reasonable amount of time.
Your reticence and observations are astute.
For context, I was raised in a mormon home and have spent most of my life as a scientifically-minded atheist, which makes my recent connection with well-documented spiritual qualia remarkable to me.
It's not half, but it's clear about 30% of the country is belligerently demanding a dictatorship and the blood of people like me.
I don't truly hate anybody, but it would be downright foolish to try and pretend this isn't so.
I know where many of my neighbors stand on issues, and if they could get away with killing people they disagree with for fun, they would. There has been a multi decade conditioning that a certain part of the country is not just people that think differently, but the enemy within that must be purged.
This doesn't strike me as something that's a both sides issue, but I'd rather be informed than right, and perhaps I'll be surprised.
As a part of that, children were separated from adults until they could verify their custody. "Kids in cages" was really just trying to stop asylum abuse while also keeping an eye out for human trafficking of children.
The effect of that slogan, a complete knee jerk reversal by the Biden administration of those policies not unlike what we see here with the EVs, led to the horrible border situation that played a major role in Trump's second victory.
Not sure how to fix this, but it's gotta happen somehow.
did we read the same article?
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/23/politics/trump-senate-democra...