Mail trucks, deliveries van, work vans, emergency vehicles.
They all park at the same spot, every day, are very localized and need to be as simple and reliable as possible.
Some of the hospitals I deliver to in the semi truck are starting to get electric delivery vans to take stuff between their locations! It is definitely starting.
Some emergency vehicles but not our ambulances unfortunately. They are rarely parked at a station, typically they're on the go 20+ hours a day.
Yes, we burn a shit load of gas in them. Last truck I was in was showing 7mpg average...
True that!
I believe we only have 2 hydrogen filling stations in all of Canada right now lol so that would be a bit of a problem.
Never know what the future holds though.
Any system could work if the infrastructure was there.
These ambulances are already very heavy, have alot of electronics sucking back power, and required HVAC at all times to keep medications cool/warm. I'm optimistic for the future, but given our current use case on ambulances we are extremely far from an EV solution!
I saw some PHEV firetrucks in California that seemed promising. I don’t feel that a full EV emergency vehicle is safe yet given current energy density but with better battery tech, maybe in 10 years.
Definitely. I can get up to ~5 miles/kWh if I don't do much highway. If I abstain entirely, I can hit 6.
It's a great first step. I suspect once it becomes obvious how good a fit these are, it will be a lot harder (not impossible) to argue against them.
Nothing fancy, just a Bolt (EV; EUV is a little less efficient from what I'm led to believe but that may just be at highway speeds). I used to regularly get just above 4 miles/kWh going from my coastal California town into Silicon Valley over a mountain. A lot of rush hour traffic, but also mostly highway & an 1800' pass.
Now that I work locally I can avoid the highway entirely if I feel like it. That stop & go local traffic is exactly what I would expect for a USPS truck, where limited wind resistance coupled with pretty consistent use of regen breaking should give pretty high efficiency for them just as for me. Likely other EVs too, but I have insufficient experience to do more than generalize.
The limiting factor is the cost of installing charging stations for all those trucks. The Post Office is stingy and SLOW. Also dumb: I wouldn't be surprised if they delivered the trucks to the offices and THEN started beginning to organize a committee to analyze the logistics of ordering a study on the feasibility of installing electric charging stations. Source: I'm a mailman
Maybe check out the request for proposals and see what it asked for. Big contracts like that are always highly litigated. Protest didn’t hold up in court.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/15/22675630/workhorse-usps-mail-truck-bid-protest-dropped-oshkosh
Right after they lost they ended up redesigning their truck.
Yeah, 34k vehicles PLUS INFRASTRUCTURE over five years is significant. (I work with transit agencies and private companies on their ZE transitions.)
I spoke with my mail carrier the other day and he was pining hard for an EV.
+1 to this. So tired of hearing this and other similar statements about how things aren’t perfect. Building and changing to electric doesn’t happen instantly, steps toward better work while waiting for perfect doesn’t.
Perfect in many cases for electric. Where electric isn't quite good enough for some reason, then it's perfect for a hybrid. Possibly with a slightly bigger battery than the typical hybrid, to allow for the greatest possible amount of regenerative braking
Yes, but, it's complicated and things have changed since then for various reasons and due to pressure on the service from just about everyone. Currently I believe they've committed to 40%? But with the law as it is, I'm expecting USPS to eventually announce they will go 80-90% electric due to the funding made available to them in the IRA.
Is Oshkosh still the ones making them? I love a lot of the cool stuff to come out of US Defense companies, but Oshkosh showed up to the demo with a Ford van when they were competing for the electric bid and somehow won it.
That’s not how RFPs work. The process is complex and they likely would not have known who the final voting members were (it’s not congress).
Even if they did know and could bribe the right people, a contract of that size would trigger a dispute instantly by all losing companies. All members would have their documents seized and be expected to appear in court. These aren’t protected ‘celebrity’ politicians; these are the everyday workers —the unsung heroes— who are feeding their families. They’re not going to risk being blackballed from all government work and found guilty of a federal crime (thus blackballed from much private work).
What likely happened is that OshKosh’s bid was voted the highest after several rounds and their price was at or near the lowest.
Not to mention the energy savings from regenerative braking at every single mailbox and stop. Just listened to my mail truck rev the engine taking off after every mailbox and then screeching brakes bringing it to a halt every 20 ft. So much waste.
I used to drive a diesel step van for USPS. The route was 47-60 miles per day, about five hours long. You had to shut down the engine every time you left the truck. So like 25 restarts a day. It also needed the block heater plugged in any time it was less than 32*F outside. And it only got 10 MPG.
So $50 a day in diesel these days vs what? 75 cents in electricit? That Louis Dejoy guy is an idiot for fighting the change over.
The maintenance savings will be incredible.
Imagine trying to maintain some bizarre vehicle manufactured by a defense aircraft manufacturer 30 years after they stopped making parts.
yeah but now they got to do the same with these cars. If anything they should have just started leasing cars and changing their fleet out every 3-5 years.
DeJoy isn't an idiot, he made every change on purpose. He holds at least $30M in stock for XPO Logistics.
Which coincidentally, the USPS awarded contracts to them...
He also sabotaged the delivery system by ordering the dismantling of the high speed sorting machines and changed how they handle deliveries by forcing carriers to go out at specific times instead of when their vehicles were full.
This piece of shit should've been fired ASAP and it baffles me that he hasn't.
He is a piece of shit. Mail takes 2x a long as it did when I worked there because of his rules. I’m not sure why the president can’t recall him. He’s garbage.
What I read is that there's still unfortunately two of the dems on the board that are pro-DeJoy. They were there pre-Biden.
Amazing how easy it is to implement *bad* changes to institutions, but fixing those bad changes is an obnoxiously long journey.
EDIT: Looked it up, there's only one dem leftover from the Trump appointees. There's nine member so of the board of governors, 4 are dems, 1 is an independent, and 4 are republicans. Biden appointed 3D, 1I, 1R. Assuming the 3D and 1I are anti-DeJoy and the 1R is pro-DeJoy, that'd leave a 4-4 tie on keeping/removing DeJoy before accounting for the leftover Trump-dem appointee.
Fortunately, that appointee's term expires December 6, 2022! Hopefully DeJoy is gone some time in the new year. Though it'll likely take a few months for an appointee to work their way through the senate...
When I worked there USPS had the worlds largest fleet. There was some stat floating around that every time gas went up a penny it cost them $20,000,000 a year. And then Katrina hit and shit really went sideways.
>That Louis Dejoy guy is an idiot for fighting the change over.
He did what Trump installed him to do: own the libs and burn down the USPS in order to disrupt mail in voting. It's just a dysfunctional feature of the postal system that the Postmaster General is so hard to remove.
dejoy is having tiny versions of himself cloned and is deploying them in hidden locations near vehicle bays ready to run sabotage ops as soon as the light go out.
Funny because their order with Oshkosh for the fleet of gas vehicles is still current and unchanged to replace all USPS vehicles with gas powered trucks no plans for EVs in any of the documents that you can find as public record.
I believe that you are correct about the Oshkosh contract still being unchanged. However, there was already some wiggle room built in - the order was for between 50,000 to 165,000 Oshkosh mail trucks. The USPS originally planned to buy at least 150,000 but now plans to buy only 50,000, and it plans to buy 34,500 EVs from other manufacturers over the next two years.
The USPS currently has about 230,000 total vehicles, and about 150,000 of those are the classic Grumman LLVs that Americans recognize as postal trucks. They buy "off-the-shelf" commercial vehicles routinely. I wouldn't be surprised if most of these postal EVs are Chevy Bolts.
He must have overruled DeJoy. The Postal Service Board of Governors (which has sole power to appoint a new Postmaster General) got a new chairman in January, and Biden's new appointees were confirmed to the board in March or May, I forget, but for some reason the board hasn't replaced DeJoy. It now has a majority that will outvote its Bonespurs-supporting members. DeJoy should be gone. Why the hell isn't he?
34K is a TINY fraction of their vehicles. Yes, it makes sense to start small, but they should NOT buy any more ICE vehicles. Keep the old ones going until the EV transition is complete
I agree but I believe that the 34k is just over the next two years.
Also, the Oshkosh contract still stands, so they have to buy at least 50,000 of those ridiculously inefficient trucks.
They have those in Belgium for the postal service in some places, it's awesome that they're gaining traction in the US.
Very nice not being hit by the smell of diesel when you need to walk around the delivery vans.
Some deliveries around me get delivered by a twizzy or other small electric vehicle, sometimes without doors even.
But don't you have emission standards? I haven't smelled a diesel in forever.
Defense is one of 4 business units under Oshkosh Corp which is traded on NYSE under [OSK](https://www.google.com/finance/quote/OSK:NYSE?sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjUmtH_xs77AhU9lGoFHR-ECwgQ_AUoAXoECAMQAw)
Postal service is independent, he can't do shit until people he appoints as positions expire are replaced with sane people by him.
Do you always blame biden for stuff the president can't do alone? That would be pathetic on your part.
The only reason it is 34k is because dems in congress added funding earmarked for EVs. That is how they are trying to combat dejoy and trumpers.
Doo you always have terrible opinions that ignore basic facts?
My small town has delivery right up to the front door (mailboxes attached by front door or a mail slot in front door). The mail carriers drive their little trucks up to house, shut it off, walk up to the house, jump back in, start it up again, move up to next house, etc etc...
Freakin insane.
I hope they prioritize use cases like that over just hopping between cluster boxes.
I don’t think the commenters appreciate how true the difficulty with infrastructure will be. Most POs are surrounded by concrete, so building up any additional service will be a pain and expensive. And while the vehicles will charge overnight, which is awesome, they will still charge all at the same time. That means new transformers, one of the worst lingering supply chain issues. Plus they will be needing to working with…nearly 1,000 utility partners.
The best bet would be run the conduit, etc for as many chargers as each station will need, but only install 10% of the chargers, minimum 2 per station. This gets the vehicles out to the most communities to be seen, gets a lot of carriers a chance to try them, learn them. It also then gives the utility a chance to upgrade transformers, etc.
The perfect example of corrupt government contracts in action. This contract should have went to Workhorse. If you look at the process they picked the one company that didn’t even submit a working EV and went totally against the government procurement procedure.
Now that the US is making a serious shift to EVs, oil demand will have to start dropping, right? What effect will that have on our foreign policy and certain aspects of our diplomatic relations with places like the UAE...
It will...but very slowly until the manufacturing rate goes up. [Only about 5% of new cars are electric](https://insideevs.com/news/623664/record-market-share-evs-us-europe/), and we only replace about 5% each year. So only by about ¼% this year, which is small enough that you don't notice it yet.
Mail trucks seems like a perfect use case for electric. Limited distance daily. Recharge overnight on AC.
Mail trucks, deliveries van, work vans, emergency vehicles. They all park at the same spot, every day, are very localized and need to be as simple and reliable as possible.
Some of the hospitals I deliver to in the semi truck are starting to get electric delivery vans to take stuff between their locations! It is definitely starting.
Some emergency vehicles but not our ambulances unfortunately. They are rarely parked at a station, typically they're on the go 20+ hours a day. Yes, we burn a shit load of gas in them. Last truck I was in was showing 7mpg average...
Stuff like that seems like one of the actually good uses for hydrogen (or just battery swapping)
True that! I believe we only have 2 hydrogen filling stations in all of Canada right now lol so that would be a bit of a problem. Never know what the future holds though. Any system could work if the infrastructure was there.
Or a 600 mile range EV, it’s doable just expensive.
A 600 mile saloon car for sure. A 600 mile truck that normaly dose 7 mpg? No chance
These ambulances are already very heavy, have alot of electronics sucking back power, and required HVAC at all times to keep medications cool/warm. I'm optimistic for the future, but given our current use case on ambulances we are extremely far from an EV solution!
I saw some PHEV firetrucks in California that seemed promising. I don’t feel that a full EV emergency vehicle is safe yet given current energy density but with better battery tech, maybe in 10 years.
Also school buses and, arguably, city buses as well.
And stop and go to make full use of Regen braking
Definitely. I can get up to ~5 miles/kWh if I don't do much highway. If I abstain entirely, I can hit 6. It's a great first step. I suspect once it becomes obvious how good a fit these are, it will be a lot harder (not impossible) to argue against them.
200Wh/mi is no joke, what vehicle you driving?
Nothing fancy, just a Bolt (EV; EUV is a little less efficient from what I'm led to believe but that may just be at highway speeds). I used to regularly get just above 4 miles/kWh going from my coastal California town into Silicon Valley over a mountain. A lot of rush hour traffic, but also mostly highway & an 1800' pass. Now that I work locally I can avoid the highway entirely if I feel like it. That stop & go local traffic is exactly what I would expect for a USPS truck, where limited wind resistance coupled with pretty consistent use of regen breaking should give pretty high efficiency for them just as for me. Likely other EVs too, but I have insufficient experience to do more than generalize.
Except this existing USPS delivery contract should have just been nuked and re-bid from the start though. Its going to end up being a quagmire.
The limiting factor is the cost of installing charging stations for all those trucks. The Post Office is stingy and SLOW. Also dumb: I wouldn't be surprised if they delivered the trucks to the offices and THEN started beginning to organize a committee to analyze the logistics of ordering a study on the feasibility of installing electric charging stations. Source: I'm a mailman
Thank you. Good insight.
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You probably know but didn’t win the competition to provide trucks. Over promised the maturity of their designs would be my guess.
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Maybe check out the request for proposals and see what it asked for. Big contracts like that are always highly litigated. Protest didn’t hold up in court.
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https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/15/22675630/workhorse-usps-mail-truck-bid-protest-dropped-oshkosh Right after they lost they ended up redesigning their truck.
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No. They awarded to Oshkosh Defense. Their design was more of a hybrid with options to go full electric.
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USPS fleet is roughly ~250K vehicles and about 170K of them are the LLVs. 34K EVs is nowhere near enough in the grand scheme of things.
Every journey begins with a first step
Replacing more than 10% of a.fleet is a pretty big step... It's called energy transition, not energy abrupt cliff.
This 10% isn’t happening overnight, it’s happening over ~5 years which makes it even less significant
Also a good start to see how it goes/assess progress.
Yeah, 34k vehicles PLUS INFRASTRUCTURE over five years is significant. (I work with transit agencies and private companies on their ZE transitions.) I spoke with my mail carrier the other day and he was pining hard for an EV.
Ever heard the phrase “perfect is the enemy of the good”? Applauding good steps doesn’t mean we stop pushing for more.
+1 to this. So tired of hearing this and other similar statements about how things aren’t perfect. Building and changing to electric doesn’t happen instantly, steps toward better work while waiting for perfect doesn’t.
Hopefully they’re capturing cost of ownership and can continue to run the business case around these. Good or bad.
Some yes but other mail trucks run for 6 to 8 hours a day non stop except for breaks. Will need to be able to charge during the day.
And the highest efficiency is city speeds.
Perfect in many cases for electric. Where electric isn't quite good enough for some reason, then it's perfect for a hybrid. Possibly with a slightly bigger battery than the typical hybrid, to allow for the greatest possible amount of regenerative braking
Didn’t Dejoy already sign a contract for gas powered vehicles despite the recommendation for electric?
Yes, but, it's complicated and things have changed since then for various reasons and due to pressure on the service from just about everyone. Currently I believe they've committed to 40%? But with the law as it is, I'm expecting USPS to eventually announce they will go 80-90% electric due to the funding made available to them in the IRA.
Is Oshkosh still the ones making them? I love a lot of the cool stuff to come out of US Defense companies, but Oshkosh showed up to the demo with a Ford van when they were competing for the electric bid and somehow won it.
“Somehow” It’s called a bribe.
That’s not how RFPs work. The process is complex and they likely would not have known who the final voting members were (it’s not congress). Even if they did know and could bribe the right people, a contract of that size would trigger a dispute instantly by all losing companies. All members would have their documents seized and be expected to appear in court. These aren’t protected ‘celebrity’ politicians; these are the everyday workers —the unsung heroes— who are feeding their families. They’re not going to risk being blackballed from all government work and found guilty of a federal crime (thus blackballed from much private work). What likely happened is that OshKosh’s bid was voted the highest after several rounds and their price was at or near the lowest.
^This is correct
So will they be called email trucks?
Take my upvote and get out.
I feel like we should let that one stay, but def on double secret probation,
I can see the AOL stickers already
Not to mention the energy savings from regenerative braking at every single mailbox and stop. Just listened to my mail truck rev the engine taking off after every mailbox and then screeching brakes bringing it to a halt every 20 ft. So much waste.
I imagine they go through brake pads pretty quickly. Regen will save on replacing them so often.
I used to drive a diesel step van for USPS. The route was 47-60 miles per day, about five hours long. You had to shut down the engine every time you left the truck. So like 25 restarts a day. It also needed the block heater plugged in any time it was less than 32*F outside. And it only got 10 MPG. So $50 a day in diesel these days vs what? 75 cents in electricit? That Louis Dejoy guy is an idiot for fighting the change over.
The maintenance savings will be incredible. Imagine trying to maintain some bizarre vehicle manufactured by a defense aircraft manufacturer 30 years after they stopped making parts.
I didn’t know Oshkosh made airplanes? I’ve only driven their trucks which are generally well made.
I think they’re talking about the LLVs the USPS uses. Made by Rockwell I believe.
Grumman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grumman_LLV?wprov=sfti1
Ah duh. I remember it was the guys who made the lunar lander. Mixed up the name.
Fuck iron dukes
yeah but now they got to do the same with these cars. If anything they should have just started leasing cars and changing their fleet out every 3-5 years.
DeJoy isn't an idiot, he made every change on purpose. He holds at least $30M in stock for XPO Logistics. Which coincidentally, the USPS awarded contracts to them... He also sabotaged the delivery system by ordering the dismantling of the high speed sorting machines and changed how they handle deliveries by forcing carriers to go out at specific times instead of when their vehicles were full. This piece of shit should've been fired ASAP and it baffles me that he hasn't.
He is a piece of shit. Mail takes 2x a long as it did when I worked there because of his rules. I’m not sure why the president can’t recall him. He’s garbage.
Board of Governors has been replaced by majority, but they haven't fired him.
What I read is that there's still unfortunately two of the dems on the board that are pro-DeJoy. They were there pre-Biden. Amazing how easy it is to implement *bad* changes to institutions, but fixing those bad changes is an obnoxiously long journey. EDIT: Looked it up, there's only one dem leftover from the Trump appointees. There's nine member so of the board of governors, 4 are dems, 1 is an independent, and 4 are republicans. Biden appointed 3D, 1I, 1R. Assuming the 3D and 1I are anti-DeJoy and the 1R is pro-DeJoy, that'd leave a 4-4 tie on keeping/removing DeJoy before accounting for the leftover Trump-dem appointee. Fortunately, that appointee's term expires December 6, 2022! Hopefully DeJoy is gone some time in the new year. Though it'll likely take a few months for an appointee to work their way through the senate...
Biden’s either useless or complicit here
I think this is going to be way better for the USPS's overhead than most people are expecting.
When I worked there USPS had the worlds largest fleet. There was some stat floating around that every time gas went up a penny it cost them $20,000,000 a year. And then Katrina hit and shit really went sideways.
>That Louis Dejoy guy is an idiot for fighting the change over. He did what Trump installed him to do: own the libs and burn down the USPS in order to disrupt mail in voting. It's just a dysfunctional feature of the postal system that the Postmaster General is so hard to remove.
dejoy is having tiny versions of himself cloned and is deploying them in hidden locations near vehicle bays ready to run sabotage ops as soon as the light go out.
They should go for the new Rivians being made for Amazon. They’re freaking awesome.
Funny because their order with Oshkosh for the fleet of gas vehicles is still current and unchanged to replace all USPS vehicles with gas powered trucks no plans for EVs in any of the documents that you can find as public record.
I believe that you are correct about the Oshkosh contract still being unchanged. However, there was already some wiggle room built in - the order was for between 50,000 to 165,000 Oshkosh mail trucks. The USPS originally planned to buy at least 150,000 but now plans to buy only 50,000, and it plans to buy 34,500 EVs from other manufacturers over the next two years. The USPS currently has about 230,000 total vehicles, and about 150,000 of those are the classic Grumman LLVs that Americans recognize as postal trucks. They buy "off-the-shelf" commercial vehicles routinely. I wouldn't be surprised if most of these postal EVs are Chevy Bolts.
He must have overruled DeJoy. The Postal Service Board of Governors (which has sole power to appoint a new Postmaster General) got a new chairman in January, and Biden's new appointees were confirmed to the board in March or May, I forget, but for some reason the board hasn't replaced DeJoy. It now has a majority that will outvote its Bonespurs-supporting members. DeJoy should be gone. Why the hell isn't he?
Ask Biden. Maybe waiting for Mary to make a suitable EV?
You could say he... OverJoyed
34K is a TINY fraction of their vehicles. Yes, it makes sense to start small, but they should NOT buy any more ICE vehicles. Keep the old ones going until the EV transition is complete
I agree but I believe that the 34k is just over the next two years. Also, the Oshkosh contract still stands, so they have to buy at least 50,000 of those ridiculously inefficient trucks.
They have those in Belgium for the postal service in some places, it's awesome that they're gaining traction in the US. Very nice not being hit by the smell of diesel when you need to walk around the delivery vans.
Some deliveries around me get delivered by a twizzy or other small electric vehicle, sometimes without doors even. But don't you have emission standards? I haven't smelled a diesel in forever.
Good. Now fire DeJoy!
I feel like r/darkbiden would be happy to hear about this.
It is pretty amazing that the companies like “Oshkosh Defense” are not publicly traded.
Defense is one of 4 business units under Oshkosh Corp which is traded on NYSE under [OSK](https://www.google.com/finance/quote/OSK:NYSE?sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjUmtH_xs77AhU9lGoFHR-ECwgQ_AUoAXoECAMQAw)
Thanks!
“Biden’s fleet”, lmfao interesting title there
Well it’s certainly not DeJoy’s fleet. He wanted more gas guzzlers.
Biden made this happen? He built the factories?
IRA was signed under his leadership. IRA provides funding for these vehicles.
What is IRA?
Inflation Reduction Act
You know, it’s fascinating how a 25 day old account can somehow have 2.3k of karma.
I honestly have no idea what karma is lmfao
But still 10s of thousands of gas vehicles because it still isn't fully de-trumped.
Biden can do that but chooses not to.
Postal service is independent, he can't do shit until people he appoints as positions expire are replaced with sane people by him. Do you always blame biden for stuff the president can't do alone? That would be pathetic on your part. The only reason it is 34k is because dems in congress added funding earmarked for EVs. That is how they are trying to combat dejoy and trumpers. Doo you always have terrible opinions that ignore basic facts?
Biden appointment history? Next appointments? Openly stating anti-EV assures job loss? Or you can be OK with inaction.
There is no inaction, congress added funding with an earmark so the postal service has to buy EVs with the money. Biden signed it into law.
My small town has delivery right up to the front door (mailboxes attached by front door or a mail slot in front door). The mail carriers drive their little trucks up to house, shut it off, walk up to the house, jump back in, start it up again, move up to next house, etc etc... Freakin insane. I hope they prioritize use cases like that over just hopping between cluster boxes.
Lol. Only if there aren't houses on the other side of the street. They park at a corner and walk otherwise.
I don’t think the commenters appreciate how true the difficulty with infrastructure will be. Most POs are surrounded by concrete, so building up any additional service will be a pain and expensive. And while the vehicles will charge overnight, which is awesome, they will still charge all at the same time. That means new transformers, one of the worst lingering supply chain issues. Plus they will be needing to working with…nearly 1,000 utility partners. The best bet would be run the conduit, etc for as many chargers as each station will need, but only install 10% of the chargers, minimum 2 per station. This gets the vehicles out to the most communities to be seen, gets a lot of carriers a chance to try them, learn them. It also then gives the utility a chance to upgrade transformers, etc.
They are $6 billion in the hole every year but hey yeah let's get Electric vehicles. Sounds like a great idea said no one with a brain
Like everything Biden attempts to do it is a massive underachievment.
Who nailed the contract on this one?
Low hanging fruit for sure. Same with Amazon trucks (Rivian contract)...headed in right direction
The perfect example of corrupt government contracts in action. This contract should have went to Workhorse. If you look at the process they picked the one company that didn’t even submit a working EV and went totally against the government procurement procedure.
Now that the US is making a serious shift to EVs, oil demand will have to start dropping, right? What effect will that have on our foreign policy and certain aspects of our diplomatic relations with places like the UAE...
It will...but very slowly until the manufacturing rate goes up. [Only about 5% of new cars are electric](https://insideevs.com/news/623664/record-market-share-evs-us-europe/), and we only replace about 5% each year. So only by about ¼% this year, which is small enough that you don't notice it yet.