A perfect fit for electric vehicle driving is when frequent stops are required in relatively dense residential and commercial neighborhoods. EVs run quietly and have no emissions. Their battery life is prolonged via frequent (regenerative) braking. And if the total driving distance to be covered is quite small, the need for charging is minimized.
These criteria apply to many transit buses and delivery vans, but they also pertain to the majority of mail delivery routes in America. The average United States Postal Service (USPS) truck is driven less than 25 miles a day.
Even knowing that government procurement can move at a snail’s pace, I was surprised to learn the age of the existing USPS fleet. The classic mail truck we know is a model called the Grumman LLV that was deployed in the late '80s and early '90s and is still in operation. As the agency admitted last month:
“Many of our 190,000 delivery vehicles on the road are more than 30 years old and lack basic safety features which are standard in most vehicles today.”
Apart from the military, no government agency has more vehicles than USPS. The mail trucks have no airbags, are prone to overheating, and only get a real-world fuel economy of 8.2 mpg. Big, heavy vehicles, sure, but that figure almost makes the Dubya-era Hummer H2 seem like a Prius!
Good news: the USPS is well aware of the need to replace the dinosaurs in their stable. Earlier this year the agency’s head, Trump administration holdover Louis DeJoy, released a plan to spend over $11 billion to refresh the fleet.
Bad news: the plan was a “record scratch” moment. In defiance of the Biden White House and the EPA, which previously provided pointed feedback, DeJoy’s plan confirmed a new fleet that will be 90% gas-powered, with new trucks getting only 8.6 mpg. (Note that in this decade even the Hummer has gone electric!)
See, last year USPS awarded the new fleet contract to defense manufacturer Oshkosh Corporation over an all-electric bid by Workhorse Group. However, the agency said at the time, “With the right level of support, the majority of the Postal Service’s fleet can be electric by the end of the decade,” indicating that government funding would be the difference-maker.
The Postal Service’s argument is based on internal modeling which has been widely panned. (Phrases like “does not match independent cost estimates” and “looking at the wrong things or… totally misinformed” pepper the criticism.) Even so, the Biden administration still allocated $6 billion in its “Build Back Better” bill specifically for the USPS to purchase EVs. Unfortunately—and you can choose your villain here—that legislation died on the vine.
However, this week there were some glimmers of hope. First, a bipartisan bill reforming the agency’s finances was signed by Pres. Biden that will “save the USPS nearly $50 billion over the next decade”. Then, Rep. Carolyn Maloney held a congressional hearing in which she shared the finding by the non-partisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) of “faulty assumptions” of EV costs by USPS. She also revived the specter of “additional funding to ensure an all-electric Postal fleet”.
So the fight ain’t over! An augmented USPS budget may yet set the table for an EV win, or lawsuits may block this version of the fleet upgrade plan. In any case, the stakes are clear: a failure to steer away from the current course will “lock in millions of metric tons of carbon emissions for years to come”.
Good to see my favorite writer back at it. Worth pointing out that many road safety advocates appreciated the low front of the new “uncool” design, which allows easier sighting of small people or objects directly in front of the vehicle. Compare to the suburban which can have ten kids sitting in front of it in a row and the driver can’t see them.