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.