How about 100%?
Upgrading the U.S. Postal Service’s truck fleet has been a long and controversial process, and we’re not done yet. As a quick recap, the USPS started looking for replacements for 150,000 or so Grumman Long Life Vehicles (LLVs) in around 2015. For a while, it looked like the new fleet might be made up of mostly electric vehicles, but when the contract for the new mail trucks was awarded to Oshkosh Defense in the spring of 2021, the USPS said only 10 percent of the new mail trucks might be electric. One of the contenders for an electric truck, Workhorse, sued the USPS last summer over the deal.
Now the government is asking the USPS to pause on the $11.3 billion contract and reconsider the gas-powered truck purchases in the face of climate damage.
The Biden administration and the EPA told the USPS, which operates independent of the executive branch, that the new Oshkosh trucks are just 0.4 mile per gallon more efficient compared to the outgoing LLVs—8.6 mpg versus 8.2 mpg for the older vehicles. It also said that the Environmental Impact Statements (EIS) the USPS conducted as it decided where to award the contract were not conducted correctly.
The EPA sent a letter to the USPS yesterday that said that the whole reason to buy new mail trucks was to make them cleaner, better, and safer…and that “the final EIS remains seriously deficient.”
“Deficient” is probably an accurate characterization of the technical understanding of the USPS officials making the original decisions for another ICE vehicle that only improved mileage 0.4 mpg. EV is the way to go, folks. Hybrid or full-boat EV.
“How the USPS Justified Buying 9 Times More Gas Cars Than It Needs : The postal service says 5 percent of delivery routes are too long for electric vehicles, so it has no choice but to replace 90 percent of its fleet with gas cars. Seriously.” https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkpqav/how-the-usps-justified-buying-nine-times-more-gas-cars-than-it-needs
“…The USPS’ decision to buy mostly gas cars [delivery vehicles] is the exact opposite of what postal services around the world are doing. La Poste in France has a fleet of 40,000 electric vehicles, or about 28 percent of the fleet, including pedal-assist e-bikes. 1,200 of the Belgian Post’s 18,000 vehicles will be electric by the end of the year. Italy’s post office ordered 1,744 EVs. Likewise, Japan ordered 1,200. The list goes on. It is also the opposite of what private delivery carriers in the U.S. like Amazon, FedEx, and UPS are doing.”
The New USPS Trucks Would Probably Be Illegal If They Weighed One Pound Less : Manufacturer Oshkosh Defense is exploiting a long-standing loophole that incentivizes bigger, heavier vehicles that can pollute more. https://www.vice.com/en/article/4awqqw/the-new-usps-trucks-would-probably-be-illegal-if-they-weighed-one-pound-less
According to its environmental review of the procurement, the new gas delivery trucks have a curb weight of 5,560 pounds and a payload of 2,941 pounds, for a combined vehicle weight of 8,501 pounds. That is almost double the weight of the current USPS delivery vehicle, the LLV.
However the USPS and Oshkosh Defense, the manufacturer, came to calculate the payload at 2,941 instead of 2940, it was an incredibly important pound.
7AM MST, tomorrow morning, 11th
“Ford Motor Co. this week began shipping its new all-electric E-Transit cargo van from its Kansas City Assembly Plant in Missouri to customers across the U.S., the Dearborn automaker said Tuesday.
Shipments of the electric version of the popular van kicked off as Ford said it had netted more than 10,000 orders from 300 customers of varying sizes, including 1,100 orders from retail giant Walmart Inc. Already, the automaker said Tuesday, it’s working to increase production of E-Transit to meet demand as it aims to boost annual electric vehicle production capacity to 600,000 by the end of next year.” https://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/ford/2022/02/08/ford-begins-deliveries-all-electric-e-transit-cargo-van/6693985001/
Who Killed the Electric Mail Truck?
Mail trucks, which mostly drive short and predictable routes, are perfect candidates for leading the electrification revolution. But the USPS, as an institution, is not. https://www.vice.com/en/article/88geqk/who-killed-the-electric-mail-truck
2AM MST, tomorrow morning, 8th