USPS' long-awaited new mail truck makes its debut to rave reviews from carriers
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Source: https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-new-usps-trucks-would-pr...
Not sure if that's still valid (obviously not for the electric versions), but that is actually insane.
Maybe I am overly optimistic but they generally are not carrying a lot of weight, fairy local and lots of stop and starts. Would have been amazing to at least get some hybrids in the mix.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-postal-service-gas-trucks-el...
EDIT: per this comment charging infrastructure was going to be a huge cost. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41544204
the cool thing here seems to be that practicality is actually going to win out, and the postal trucks will end up being EVs on routes where that makes sense, and internal combustion on routes where EVs don't make sense.
A friend's Tesla they once worked out costs about "$1 per gallon of gas" equivalent. Meanwhile gas in Seattle is about $4-$5 per gallon
For less than ~10k miles per year, the higher up front cost of an electric vehicle and the greater depreciation due to eventual battery replacement might make a hybrid gas vehicle still cheaper per mile.
But for high mileage, high frequency of stop and go driving, I imagine all electric is cheapest?
I agree. What is unconscionable is deploying 10s of thousands of vehicles that spend every day of operation accelerating rather quickly then coming to a full stop within a few seconds without using regenerative braking.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41409422
https://petapixel.com/2024/08/30/scientists-discovered-a-way...
The truth is, we have no real data to tell us how electric vehicles will fair over the expected time length with this expected work load.
When you factor in the building of instructor for charging stations, and their maintenance.
The initially preceded benefits may not be there.
I love the idea of having an all electric fleet if it's feasible and better than the alternatives. I also have to assume the original plan to only electrify part of the fleet has functional reasons behind it.
If those reasons are overcome, or if that decision was somehow entirely political, then the pressure is lucky. Otherwise...we'll see?
Ford makes the F-150 in ice, hybrid, phev, and full ev, I think.
If the postal service was run by a normal board and we had a less insane political environment, we’d build charging infrastructure to make to make it work. Alas, we live in this timeline.
1000lbs is a lot of weight. Mail routes include package deliveries as well as mail and package pickups. Some business deliveries have large transactions every day.
> fairy local and lots of stop and starts.
Mail routes are not identical and there are plenty of rural USPS offices which deliver to the property.
> to at least get some hybrids in the mix.
Part of the point is to not have a mix to avoid all the attendant problems that creates.
I'd be really surprised to see these new vehicles in truly rural areas any time soon.
https://about.usps.com/publications/pub181/pub181_v03_revisi....
"The Ford Fusion, Honda Accord, and Mazda6 midsized sedans, for example, all have a combined load capacity of 850 lbs. for passengers and cargo."
Most sedans made today, the average max carry weight of a sedan is 900lb. And even at 900lb you fuel economy and performance is far less than "just fine."
Also cargo weight distribution is far different than people, with the lion share of packages being placed in the rear have of the vehicle and not evenly distributed amongst the front and rear axle.
1000lb of cargo is a lot to ask from any sedan and expect it to do it 8 hours a day, 6 days a week for 20+ years, isn't something I think you would find possible.
Rural carriers operate their own vehicles. The wear and tear was nuts… for example we would change brake pads every 2-3 weeks.
I think USPS wants to operate vehicles for many years. I’d guess they may have determined that the regen braking or batteries for hybrid couldn’t sustain the harsh conditions within the operating cost envelope.
For an application like this one, it's possible to use capacitors instead of batteries for a near-infinite lifespan too. A supercapacitor won't store enough charge for driving any sane distance, but for one stop and acceleration (regen breaking), it's perfectly adequate.
Where I live, the stops are too long for a flywheel to make any sense. The postal worker will usually deliver to a mailbox serving several houses, and will often have packages. Perhaps in the suburbs, where there are individual mailboxes for each house, it could work well.
Still, if we take 8000 lbs, times (10mph)^2, and divide by 2, we get about 35kJ. First supercap which came up in a Google search does 1kJ for <$10. So it's like $350, and will have far less maintenance and better efficiency than a flywheel.
If we do 20mph -- although goodness knows mail trucks here don't go nearly that fast for start-and-stop between mailboxes -- it's $1400. Even 40mpg would be around $5k.
So it's very cheap (and, electronically, very easy), at least for this use case. For highway speeds, it'd be a different story.
Oh, really? Can you share your expertise that trumps that of the people who work with them every day?
My 'cargo' was heavier than that of the postman, but that was in the days before ecommerce, and the post service (UK) handled packages differently, sending them out in different vehicles to what the letters went out in, if over a certain size.
I also had to go to the door, not a mailbox at the side of the road. I was quicker than the postman with his cumbersome van. I was also quieter and more eco-friendly.
I am not suggesting that the post service in America have teenage lads on bicycles delivering letters and parcels, however, there is a lot to be said for having smaller vehicles.
Assuming I had one of these vehicles for free and all the fuel for it for free, would I have wanted one or been able to do my job quicker?
Probably not, even if scaled down to half the size for UK roads. Maybe my opinion would differ mid winter and if I was middle aged. However, I would not have my stashes in bus stops, all 30 ft of newspapers would be in the van. There would be no incentive to optimise.
Weight is your enemy in the delivery game and these vehicles are huge, yet typically American sized. If carrying a parcel to a door then that is going to be less than ten kilos in most cases, but if we assume 10kg, does that really need a vehicle with stuff weighing 300x upwards?
What they really needed was a range extending EV. These are not Prius style hybrids but they have a generator that runs at optimal RPM to charge the main battery. The original BMW EV, the i3 had this and it was a tech that wasn't really needed since those cars were overpriced and only ever did city journeys where the range extender was not needed.
The range extender can be chucked out as charging infrastructure improves and the battery can be updated to a new one that has more oomph for the same weight/size.
The previous delivery vehicle[1] has no air conditioning. Which is a really big deal with how hot it gets in a lot of the US.
And if your vehicle is smaller and most other vehicles are larger and there's an accident then you're more likely to die. [2]
You may well be right that in an optimal scenario that smaller is better for delivery but the US has a wide variety of non-optimal scenarios.
I don't think the NGDV is perfect but I'm happy that USPS employees will be safer and happier.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grumman_LLV
[2] https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/latest-driver-death-rates-h...
Not to say it isn't worth exploring, but I do know it is a common issue when discussed.
There's a reason many people owning diesel trucks in states that don't do emissions testing pay a lot of money to delete the systems after purchase.
My new state [Tennessee] just ended government construction inspections.
Pay - to - play, folks.
I lived in a tourist-driven coastal town for a few years, builders there regularly paid off our corrupt mayor to avoid the rules.
When the government is dodging its own rules its "rules for the, not for me."
I stopped being an electrical sub-contractor after a local mansion builder told me to "stop worrying about the other trades[†], I have insurance for a reason."
†: floor-heat guy wanted to run his 35A through my 16A circuit, "don't make this harder than it needs to be."
Instead of building more efficient small cars it becomes impossible to make them meet the efficiency requirements without making the car cost so much extra through fines. So instead you just get more "trucks" and SUVs. No more sedans! Those are the vehicles killing the planet!
The goal of promoting these small SUVs instead of sedans is actually because they’re quite fuel efficient: being in the same category as much larger trucks, they pull up the average fuel economy and take the pressure off manufacturers to make their highly-profitable bigger SUVs more efficient.
8000 lbs is not totally crazy for a delivery vehicle. It probably weighs at least 2000-3000 lbs empty (with batteries).
Imagine a small business that tries to mail ten pound boxes. If they can fit ten by ten per layer in the van, once the pile of boxes is five layers tall, you’re basically at the van’s specs.
I don’t know what the right fix is, but completely abolishing CAFE and replacing it with a carbon tax might be a good start.
That would be boats. Cars or trucks or even semis don't even rank.
You might be referring to sulphur emissions, which are much higher for ships because they are basically unregulated, while car fuel has virtually zero sulphur.
Boats pollute massively and it’s a shame considering that water is a much more efficient medium of transportation thanks to buoyancy.
It’s a good thing people don’t use container ships to commute every day, then…
Seriously, comparing the effect of one car to that of one ship is not even remotely useful. Cars would be much better if they were used by more than one person on average. At which point we could even scale them up and operate them among fixed, predictable routes at fixes, predictable times.
Anyway, no, they really are not making your point. Comparing the emissions of the global shipping fleet to that of all the cars used to commute every day tells a lot about where efficiency can be found. Sure, some shipping is frivolous, but then a single person (or even two people) commuting in a light truck is beyond stupid on every level.
I think that was probably a good thing in the long run, but there's some evidence that the sulfur particulate matter was "hiding" some of the warming we "should" have been seeing based on our CO2 emissions, because global warming has spiked a bit as sulfur has decreased.
The main concern with big ocean vessels is that they burn fuel "dirtier", as opposed to cars which--in most countries--are already subject to emissions standards and mandatory catalytic-converters etc. because people got tired of smog and acid-rain.
On a pure CO2 basis, ships may actually be the lesser-evil in terms of payload/distance, lack of alternatives, etc.
Or another way: heating and cooling, farming, etc. are all essential (if not necessarily optimal). Commuting in your own private car is not; one only has to spend 15 minutes on the average American highway to observe that the overwhelming majority of car traffic is one person driving a car that can fit 5 or more.
I also don't think the idea that we should strive to limit our lives to that which is absolutely necessary to only survive or generate economic activity is valid. To me, my drive to the beach with my dog is more essential, valid, and valuable than your commute to work.
But regardless of whether true or not, environmental destruction caused by CO2 emissions does not care if the emissions were "necessary" or not, by any definition of necessary. So it simply isn't personal light trucks that are what's destroying the world.
Keep increasing fossil fuel taxes until the target amount of carbon emissions is achieved. The consumption that goes away is what was “destroying the world”.
>To me, my drive to the beach with my dog is more essential, valid, and valuable than your commute to work.
And this is why efforts to curb emissions and other pollution is hopeless.
Emissions and pollution are a function of energy consumption. Energy = force times distance. Force = mass * acceleration * distance. So you either reduce the mass that is moving (including you, your dog, and your 5+ passenger vehicle) and/or reduce the distance you move, or don’t worry about pollution.
You haven't arrived here by any reasoning, you're just working back from the outcome you want. I.e., you want to define "unnecessary emissions" or "least expensive to cut emissions" as what is destroying the world. But if carbon pollution is destroying the world, then any carbon pollution causes basically the same damage to the world as any other. That's the climate and environmental science. When you bring economics into it you're bringing in arbitrary wants, desires, what people inherited at birth, etc., that has nothing to do with the impact to the world of additional carbon in the atmosphere.
Here's a concrete counter-example. If you raise carbon price, virtuous billionaires and politicians will continue to fly their private jets to climate conferences while more people starve from increased food costs. That doesn't mean the meagre eating habits of those now deceased poor people was what was destroying the world rather than the exorbitant consumption by the ruling class that could have been a zoom meeting. In fact both were equally contributing (ton for ton) because the climate doesn't care where the CO2 came from, if it was ethical or economical or necessary or fair or anything else. Either the carbon is emitted into the atmosphere, or it isn't.
> And this is why efforts to curb emissions and other pollution is hopeless.
I think it's only hopeless so long as those pushing it are massive hypocrites. Nobody likes a hypocrite. Nobody likes injustice.
You going to the beach with your dog in a big pickup truck, along with a couple hundred million other people, is the same level of non essential as people flying in private jets (of which there are very, very few).
People in the developed nation’s middle/upper middle class like to think they not consuming multiple standard deviations above the mean, because they don’t fly on private jets, but they do.
> But if carbon pollution is destroying the world, then any carbon pollution causes basically the same damage to the world as any other. That's the climate and environmental science. When you bring economics into it you're bringing in arbitrary wants, desires, what people inherited at birth, etc., that has nothing to do with the impact to the world of additional carbon in the atmosphere.
Yes, obviously any fossil fuel tax that meaningfully reduces consumption has to create a floor for quality of life, such as a minimum level of nutrition, shelter, healthcare, education, etc. The amount of wealth redistribution necessary to get there very well might make it so many people cannot (regularly) drive to the beach in a pickup truck with their dog.
The fact that increasing gas taxes in the US is a political nonstarter should indicate how much we (the broad voting populace) value our standards or dreams of consumption, which are multiple standard deviations above the mean.
Again, whatever level of nonessential you claim it might be and however you measure that, is irrelevant to what is destroying the environment.
Did you not take anything from the previous comment I made? The fact that your idea of "non-essential" means that poor people starve to death while rich people fly around in private jets to parties and vacations. Do you acknowledge that was wrong, or at least proved that the economic measurement of "essential" that you invented is totally arbitrary? I don't see how you can just keep going on without acknowledging this and addressing it.
You offset the carbon tax with a universal tax credit or refund or UBI or whatever you want to call it. Give people all of the money back that was generated from the carbon tax. Poor people don't fly on private jets or buy yachts so they'll come out ahead. Or at least, less behind than those who do spend money on those things.
"Essential" doesn't mean anything to the physics of climate change, it just means something like "what people choose to do".
Edit: looks like it was an early prototype from Oshkosh with very little in common with the final product:
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a19445176/this-ford-transi...
and
https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/ford/2021/02/23/oshko... mentions not using the Transit design.
Is the NGDV heavier because it's "better" (=more capable) or is its size and weight really to do with avoiding the EPA threshold - or even that it's derived from a full-size US truck?
I found a PDF fact sheet for the vehicle [1], it looks like the gross vehicle weight rating (vehicle + payload) is 2,800kg. That is still 1,000kg less than the USPS vehicle, but I wouldn't be suprised if that comes down to a combination of capacity, safety requirements, and maybe top speed needs in the US compared to the average European city.
[1] https://group.dhl.com/content/dam/deutschepostdhl/en/media-c...
for StreetScooter Work Curb/Unladen Weight: 1,275 kg (2,811 lbs) Max Laden Weight (Gross Vehicle Weight Rating): 2,130 kg (4,696 lbs)
NGDV with an ICE (according to the OP) Curb/Unladen Weight: 2,523 kg (5,560 lbs)
> I found a PDF fact sheet for the vehicle
That datasheet appears to be for the Work L which is a different model: "Shown in September 2016 at the IAA Commercial Vehicles trade fair, the Work L prototype is a longer and slightly higher vehicle with almost double the cargo volume"[0]
> I wouldn't be suprised if that comes down to a combination of capacity, safety requirements, and maybe top speed needs in the US compared to the average European city
I'm not able to judge capacity or safety requirements, but the Work's maximum speed is 120 km/h (75mph).
It is worth reading the full article, it covers the environmental aspects and tradeoffs very well.
There are red flags, though. From another article:
> While the specific numbers vary based on a vehicle’s exact dimensions—information the USPS considers trade secrets—Sperling estimates a light duty truck approximately the size of a USPS delivery truck would need to achieve something in the neighborhood of 30 mpg to pass federal regulations
Seems like someone forgot or gamed FOIA.
Woa, is driving without airbags even legal nowadays or do they drive different ones in Germany? I always thought the USPS trucks looked... utilitarian old I guess, so like they shipped them over to keep the historical branding, but I don't know if that's actually the case
Another interesting bit of the article:
> the costs of installing thousands of charging stations and upgrading electrical service, made [electric delivery vehicles] unaffordable at a time [...]. That led to a deal in which the [US] government provided $3 billion
> [they're buying] 106,000 vehicles through 2028. That included 60,000 next-gen vehicles, 45,000 of them electric models, along with 21,000 other electric vehicles
I'm sure new vehicles require them in the US. But there's very wide latitude on safety feature requirements for older vehicles in the US.
Notably, the death toll on 9/11 was made worse because the state used its authority to override the local building code which would have required more staircases and further spacing of them.
Or any locality trying to enforce payment of parking tickets from higher entities or even their own off duty officers.
(I like the discussion about this example: https://www.flightglobal.com/airbus-challenges-737-grandfath... )
Can't build new houses with it, but grandfathered in until you have to make changes.
The primary danger was plate glass windows shredding the occupants, or the gearbox bushing failing (Fords early transmission designs were interesting.) =3
I don't think USPS drives any trucks in Germany
This is why it has bonkers pension requirements and constantly hemorrhages money.
Anyway, it does not operate overseas.
> This is why it has bonkers pension requirements and constantly hemorrhages money.
This is not true. The Postal Service Reform Act of 2022 repealed the disastrous 2006 bill that requires the USPS to pay for their retirement funds out of revenue.
The Biden administration has really done a remarkable (well, competent, but that's remarkable for government these days) job with many of America's institutions, including the Post Office, and it's unfortunate that people don't know these things.
You can guess how I’ll vote, but it’s important that people pay attention to the actual actions taken by the parties, and then also remember to vote.
The main problem with pensions is that they often get funded with promises instead of dollars. Then whoever made the promise walks away and leaves the problem for others to fix.
So "pre-funding" pensions is nonsense because the pensions will be paid out of a) the USPS current revenues, or b) US Treasury.
Just like Social Security, which effectively "invests" in US Treasuries and redeems those bonds as required to pay current recipients.
If a German owns a 1961 BMW Isetta, is it required that it have airbags before it is driven on the roadway?
German here - as long as your vehicle matches the code requirements back when it was built, it is road legal. You're perfectly fine to ride a pre-WW2 car with only a single side mirror, no rear mirror, no airbags or any other kind of safety feature and no emission controls worth the name.
I still would not recommend it to tour such a piece of history on public roads though.
In Europe, parallel and reverse bay-parking is much more common. At least in the UK, both are testable manoeuvres so everyone at least learns, even if they don't bother later. I've even worked in places where you had to back into spaces, for evacuation reasons. Last time I bought a car in the not too distance past, even ultrasonic sensors cost extra and when hiring vans, only the newest models have backup cams.
Are minivans really comparable to SUVs and pickup trucks in this problem? They never give off the "angry wall of death" vibe to me, like the other two...
> At intersections, the odds that a crash that killed a crossing pedestrian involved a left turn by the vehicle versus no turn were about twice as high for SUVs, nearly 3 times as high for vans and minivans and nearly 4 times as high for pickups as they were for cars. The odds that a crash that killed a crossing pedestrian involved a right turn by the vehicle were also 89 percent higher for pickups and 63 percent higher for SUVs than for cars. Such turning crashes accounted for more than 900 of around 5,800 fatal pedestrian crashes at or near U.S. intersections during 2014-18.
In reality pickup trucks are kind of a joke. For instance the 2023 Toyota Tacoma, often cited as being “good” cause it’s smaller, has worse gas mileage than an f-150 and has a max payload of 900lbs. You know what else has a max payload of 900lbs? A sedan.
Ford actually got rid of the heavy duty package from the f-150 (which increased the max payload to around 3,000lbs from about 1500) because they said people weren’t buying it…
You can’t fill the bed of an F-150 with sand, with plywood, with cement bags, with lots of building materials. You can easily overload it.
https://deadlinedetroit.com/articles/29959/detroit_s_joe_lou...
... remember wanting it to make it feel very locomotive… my first week in Detroit I was driving through downtown and seeing the fist of Joe Louis, and remember thinking that’s what this truck should look like – a massive fist moving through the air.”
... we spent a lot of time making sure that when you stand in front of this thing it looks like it’s going to come get you. It’s got that pissed-off feel, but not in a boyish way, still looking mature. It just had to have that imposing look,” explained the GM designer.This is demonstrably untrue, FWIW. I have in front of me two bundles of gloves, recently purchased at Home Depot, one marked M and one marked L.
> * You can’t fill the bed of an F-150 with sand, with plywood, with cement bags, with lots of building materials*
You appear to be suggesting that truck bed sizes should be volumetrically limited by the densest and tightest-packing material available for general sale.
That's probably sand or gravel. Maybe rebar. Doesn't make sense though.
USPS trucks are regularly driving through highly residential areas including fairly quiet ones where little kids may possibly be running around close to the street or even on them.
It won’t win any beauty contests but I like that they put function over form here.
Edit: corrected my phrasing about function over form. Thanks!
Surely you meant "function over form" here? I'll assume you did, and yes I can agree that delivering mail doesn't require anything pretty. Apparently the cartoonish height came from USPS requiring that anyone as short as 5'2" can see over the hood and someone as tall as 6'8" can stand in the vehicle. Still doesn't look that great or practical (for narrow or rural routes) to me, but I guess we'll see.
Sure beats those huge trucks that are slaughtering Americans in the thousands.
I wouldn't say it's bad, but it's definitely a bizarre choice for a US government design.
I was skeptical of Louis Dejoy's appointment to the USPS but maybe it will turn out OK.
But I’m glad this is happening. I remember all the discussions around it but have never seen one in person so I had no idea what the status was.
To know they’re out there is great. I can’t wait until they get to my area. And I’d like to hear an update after carriers have really lived with them for a year and really know the flaws and benefits inside and out.
I’ll miss the old Grumman LLVs though. They are the post office to me, being there basically all my life. Such an unmistakeable symbol. But it’s time has come.
Same. I was 6 years old when they started rolling out, and don't really remember the previous vehicles. While I actually like (or at least don't mind) the look of the new trucks, they give me that feeling when I'm traveling in a different country, and the normal/standard service vehicles look different and "weird".
Living in a rural area, the mail car was a right-hand-drive station wagon with their spare tire on the roof (to make more room for mail inside). My entire childhood, that is what I saw delivering mail. Now? Now it's an Outback with the spare on the roof...
From time to time I'll see another kind of vehicle, often a white van. But living in suburbs they've been the majority by far for me.
I see his capitulation around EVs and in other areas not as a change of heart, or as a realization of what's actually the right thing, but as resignation (the lawsuits must have been exhausting) and self-preservation. While POTUS can't fire the postmaster general, the board of governors can, and if/when Democrats have a majority on the board, he could be voted out of a job if he's not playing ball. I very much expect that the next time a Republican is in the White House, if he's still in the position, he'll act much like he did when appointed, since he can assume he's relatively safe if board of governors seats open up.
Ultimately, though, it does seem that the USPS is moving in (IMO) the right direction for now, and DeJoy does deserve some credit for that, even if this isn't what he envisioned originally.
When we provide public services the goal needs to be that we provide them to everyone within a reasonable cost-basis. Too many gov't programs are the subject of budget cuts because people cry out "Waste!" when in reality the amount you save by addressing that waste undercuts the impact of the program.
There are so many basic programs where we cut people off because of "WASTE!", and we'd be better served trying to offer broad services at a base-level, and addressing individual needs more targeted. Feels like a Mountain vs. Valley approach. Gov't programs should be Mountains that we build up with a wide-base to cover the wide needs and that we can address smaller needs with more targeted approaches. Rather than the valley approach of wide need, and we cut support based on where we think we see waste.
Do we care about electrification or not? Because it really seems like we don't. A huge opportunity wasted by an EV hater, is what it sounds like to me.
And to people suggesting it would be difficult: of course it would! You know what else is difficult? Designing a never-before-seen ICE truck. It's all difficult!
And there's no way he'd get away with doing nothing. So something had to happen.
I'd still expect he tried to slow-walk it somehow and the no-EV thing seemed very politically motivated.
I think short trips at low speeds are also terrible for AC, dunno how they did the projections.
https://shop.advanceautoparts.com/r/advice/car-maintenance/c...
Tons of websites say this but in my own testing during my commute the difference is almost unnoticeable, let alone a full 25%.
A mail truck is going to be driving pretty slowly and stopping a lot, both of which will make an extra constant load like AC have a bigger effect.
I have a 2 ton car with a 1.5L turbocharged engine, and even with air conditioning and city driving it NEVER jumps over 7L/100.
I always find the gas mileages of american cars just mind boggling compared to those sold in Europe
https://www.linns.com/news/postal-updates/taxpayer-funds-com...
For my perspective, supporting USPS in this way is among the very best uses of my taxpayer dollars.
By law, there’s usually 6-10’ space requirement for parking near a mailbox on a street. And cars rarely follow those rules, parking pretty close to mailboxes.
So I’d expect the front end to be as short as possible so driver can more easily maneuver to reach mail boxes.
Usually? I've lived in 3 states and none of them had this requirement. The closest is California which merely requires that a parked car not "obstruct the normal movement" of a mail carrier.
Some postal routes are in cold climates with harsh winters where EVs would be impractical.
the USPS was trying to find one vehicle that could serve all their routes.
Glad the poor postal carriers are finally getting it. Having some in sweltering heat, even if you’re always in and out, is better than just a little fan.
Even if that makes it wasteful, and makes the vehicles more expensive to operate, our postal workers deserve some comfort while they're driving around all day, 5-6 days a week.
I do run A/C on highway trips, partly because I suspect that the noise with windows open can cause hearing damage.
All I could think of was “they repainted an Amazon van“.
I know Rivian makes them all. But seeing so many Amazon vans has changed who “owns“ the design in my mind.
Since it costs extra, Amazon will only adopt if if they're forced, either by regulation or significant social pressure.
I don't think Tesla or Rivian are used to working with government contracts. I'm not sure how much someone like Ford does either outside of mild customization. But defense contractors spend all their time working with the government, building to their specifications, handling the requirements and compliance/etc.
They're simply very very well equipped to work on such a contract.
They'd also be very used to making something for decades because that's what the government wants. Does Ford have a vehicle they make that's nearly unchanged for 30 years? I'd assume even the transit vans have changed a lot in that timeframe.
It was all in the open. It’s not like they were just picked in secret without anyone else getting any consideration.
Any evidence of this, or are is this just verbal diarrhea?
>Also guaranteed that almost any American car manufacturer (Rivian, Tesla, Ford, etc.) would have done a far better job for far less.
Let's do the actual math.
Amazon's Custom Rivian Van costs $90k/vehicle.
The USPS has invested $9.6B to commission 106,480 new USPS vans.
That comes out to... $90k/vehicle.
>Oshkosh Defense? Seriously?! What a joke.
Yeah, the company that makes the majority of our military vehicles is unprepared for the task at making mail trucks. You're a joke...
In any case, even if the process was terribly corrupt, I'm not sure why that would have you so bothered. Last sentence from the USPS press release on Oshkosh winning: "The Postal Service receives no tax dollars for operating expenses and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations." https://about.usps.com/newsroom/national-releases/2021/0223-...
Both results are on the first page of a google search for 'usps truck bids'.
The Postal Service has a legally enforced monopoly that it abuses to deliver literal metric tons of spam into our mailboxes every single day.
[1] https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/transportation/everything-y...
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/Trucks/comments/ppo5tu/what_model_a...
If you really want to disagree please find a source that says a service uses off the shelf vehicles.
[1] https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1103326_germans-to-buil...
The French post office, a pioneer in EVs (they've used them on and off since the early 20th century) and until recently the biggest postal user of EVs, uses off the shelf vehicles like the Renault Kangoo: https://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2019/04/08/la-poste-...
They also use electric bikes for urban areas.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/76716069@N03/galleries/7215765...
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/DesignPorn/comments/iskdah/royal_ma...
[0] https://www.press.canoo.com/press-release/canoo-reaches-agre...
[1] https://media.ford.com/content/fordmedia/fna/us/en/news/2024...
'UPS Orders 10,000 Electric Vans from EV Maker You Probably Haven't Heard of' at https://www.autoweek.com/news/green-cars/a30716811/ups-order...
> "Together, our teams [at Arrival] have been working hard to create bespoke electric vehicles, based on our flexible skateboard platforms that meet the end-to-end needs of UPS from driving, loading/unloading and back-office operations,"
I think I have seen a youtuber who was buying some of the prototype UPS trucks on an auction: https://youtu.be/63R3mt61g_Y
In addition, when the starter goes out it sells for about $1000. Part only.
All of this amounts to dramatically reducing the service life of the engine. Replacing an engine costs a lot of CO2. Some will opt to just junk the beast because a new engine is $10k. I could go on and on. Avoid stop+start tech. It's meant to make ICE so unreliable that you run to an EV to get rid of all that shit mess.
The stop-idle can factor into your mpg so it's an easy way to boost it (which there are requirements about).
(It's annoying because it interjects a slight delay when I make a left-hand turn.)
Here you go: https://www.idlestopper.com/
Sad that this is what it's come to, but here we are.
I was considering purchasing a Honda recently, and this was one of the things I investigated. Like you, I consider the hesitation imposed by this mechanism to be annoying, and in addition, dangerous.
Too bad. It seems a great vehicle otherwise. Like it a lot more than my previous 4Runner.
Bingo. This is exactly where it scares me, particularly when I'm already in an intersection.
> I've pretty much just made it a reflex to hit the turn-off button when I turn on the car. At least it's easy once a reflex.
My daily driver is old enough not to have auto stop/start. My problem is my wife's vehicle has it. She instinctively turns it off as soon as she's in the vehicle. Because I only drive her vehicle sporadically, I don't have the muscle memory to do that, so it inevitably catches me by surprise.
I also appreciate that it reduces cancer in city residents. Diesel consumption in city driving seems to be some 30% lower and I expect emissions to be around the same factor.
If we are talking about the US, AFAICT, it is legal to do this in all 50 states. However, neutral coasting on a downgrade is illegal in several states. I was taught to put the car in neutral whenever a longer wait is anticipated to reduce stress on the clutch (I don't know if it actually reduces stress or not).
> You’ll fail your driving test if you do that
This is possibly true; at least where I am there are about a dozen perfectly legal things that can potentially cause you to fail your driving test.
I had points deducted on my test for not pressing the button on the automatic gearshift selector when changing from Reverse to Drive.
My 2018 RS3 doesn’t have it, where as even the 2018 S3 does, 2024 still doesn’t have it: https://www.audizine.com/forum/showthread.php/991842-RS3-Sto...
Aliexpress has rescued more than a handful of my devices from the dumpster. Far more helpful than the junk mail garbage that Canada Post helpfully dumps into my home (I'm in one of the few areas where they still deliver to the house, a complete joke of a system compared to USPS)
> Environmentalists were outraged when DeJoy announced that 90% of the next-gen vehicles in the first order would be gas-powered.
I was gonna say they environmentalists were wrong for this, if the new trucks get significantly better mpg performance that's still a big win.
But apparently with the AC running the new trucks still only get 9mpg.[1][2]
[1] https://earthjustice.org/press/2022/message-delivered-usps-c.... [2] https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/02/the-epa-and-white-house...
What?
Modern car AC compressors use about 1 HP (.7kW) of power, with a duty cycle highly dependent on temperature but if you break the seal periodically, like by opening the window to put mail in a box, it will be running 100% of the time even on an 80 degree day. For a hatchback at 70mph that's up to 10% of your energy usage. It's much harder to quantify for stop and go traffic because you have a bimodal situation of either zero HP generation or like 50 HP to accelerate in slow city traffic, but all ICE vehicles use more energy (have less economy) in city driving than highway driving, so on average it's using a higher percentage of your energy consumption in city driving.
So turning on the AC on a hot day will reduce your economy car's mileage from 33 to 30, your truck's mileage from 12 to 10.8, and your Prius from 48 to 44 and worse for city driving. The numbers they claim in the above studies suggest they are using a higher capacity compressor to deal with the air volume constantly being opened to the outside.
You ignored a word: significant
Such a wasted opportunity
Sure you can make it a full hybrid but then you’re like 80% of the way there to a battery vehicle anyway.
Also note that while the new one isn’t that much better it is providing air-conditioning. And the whole truck looks bigger so I suspect it weighs more. So the engine is doing more work than in the LLV.
This sounds like a good thing? Currently the most expensive component of electric vehicles are their batteries, so hybrids seem optimal. Hybrids excel at the exact use cases mail trucks have, so it seems a bit baffling they didn't go with that form of electrification.
Toyota has proven maintenance and reliability aren't an issue with hybrid tech.
These are government fleet vehicles being used for lots of miles every day. They're going to use these for 20+ years. If the up front cost is a little higher but it has a big payoff, it's totally worth it.
The calculus is different from an individual's car. I still don't think it's worth it there now that electric has gotten so much cheaper, but that's a personal decision.
> Hybrids excel at the exact use cases mail trucks have
Compared to gas, yes. But the thing is electric cards excel even more.
> Toyota has proven maintenance and reliability aren't an issue with hybrid tech.
They proved it works reliably. But it's still far more complicated than an EV drivetrain with WAY WAY more high tolerance parts that wear. It's never going to be cheaper in maintenance.
2: Hybrid buses are already a thing, and they're subject to even more usage and wear, and work very reliably.
3: Cheaper maintenance as an absolute number isn't the goal, but a reduction in total cost of ownership. Remember there's a bunch of gas that's not being used or paid for. The lower the starting MPG, the higher the benefits electrification brings.
But then you don't need to build dozens of charging ports at post offices that may or may not have the electrical infrastructure to charge a fleet of mail trucks every night
Upfront cost doesn't matter nearly as much as lifetime cost. And the difference is not going to be small.
> In December 2022, USPS announced that 75% of its initial order of 60,000 NGDVs would be BEVs. By 2026, all new NGDVs ordered will be delivered as BEVs.
So the should be very few of these ICE variants around presumably primarily in areas where the charging capacity is impractical to install. I don’t know how 8.6 mpg fares against similar trucks to know whether better ICE alternatives were possible and hybrid would likely add significant weight, cost and maintenance for likely little comparative value.
Educate me: why would charging capacity be impractical anywhere? They would build and use their own chargers.
Are there places that have weak grid power?
I'm not informed on the matter but those would be my best guesses.
I'm not convinced the chargers would be a problem, considering home chargers cost a couple thousand to install. As for infrastructure: can the building run a clothes dryer? Then it can probably charge an EV.
For repairs I'm sure the current LLVs have their own challenges. There's a good chance you can't find LLV parts in rural areas either. (Maybe they just swap them out and do repairs at the home base?) So EVs are not much different in that regard.
Home chargers, unless your neighborhood and/or home has special infrastructure to deliver more power, are limited to 120V. You have to remember that these are huge trucks with huge batteries and it’s not immediately obvious they can deal with trickle charging. And you’re not charging just 1 vehicle at a time but basically charging your entire fleet and you need this to be reliable 24/7. The logistics and costs of that are entirely different from a home charger.
> As for infrastructure: can the building run a clothes dryer? Then it can probably charge an EV.
again - your mental model is wrong. As you scale up your challenges are different and charging a fleet of vehicles. It’s not a laundry service so it may not have been provisioned for that many clothes dryers running at once and need substantial renovations. And you may want chargers that pull a heck of a lot more than a dryer because you need this to charge more quickly. Think about a fast charging station - it’s energy requirements are not at all the same and that’s why often at places you only see one or two (partially cost / demand for them but also being able to supply that energy is a real thing). Think of it this way - normal outlet is at 1.4 KW which is slow for a car and who knows how long for a truck battery. Faster chargers range from 3.7 kWh to 350kw and multiple that by the number of vehicles you need to charge simultaneously. It’s not necessarily the straightforward problem you think it is
> For repairs I'm sure the current LLVs have their own challenges. There's a good chance you can't find LLV parts in rural areas either.
The supply chain and knowledge base for ICE vehicles is far more established in rural areas. And usually you’re trying not to ship vehicles around for repairs but repair them locally instead. In theory BEV requires less maintenance and lasts longer so things could balance out but who knows since BEV trucks are pretty rare and this is the first of its kind design from a company not necessarily known for their BEV expertise.
"14.7 miles per gallon (mpg) (without air conditioning) 8.6 mpg (with air conditioning)"
The same document estimates off the shelf commercial right hand drive vehicles averaging 6.3 mpg if used fleet-wide.
From a 2019 IEA report: "Estimates from the literature reveal that around 6% of the annual global energy consumed by cars is used for MAC(mobile air conditioning), varying by country between about 3% and 20% depending on climate, driving patterns and traffic congestion. It can peak at over 40% in warm climates and congested traffic. This equates to around 1.2 Mboe/d consumed by MAC units in cars alone, with other road vehicles adding another 0.6 Mboe/d. For electric vehicles, MAC can reduce driving range by up to 50% on hot and humid days."
Both of those are absolutely embarrassing, did they use a 1950s Soviet tank engine? According to a quick Google search, a Ford Transit (bigger sized but not optimised for post delivery van) gets 33-46 mpg depending on the engine.
Yeah, a post vehicle will start/stop much more, but that's where start/stop tech, and maybe even hybrid come in.
As they should be. Most of my family are mail carriers and as a kid I rode with them a few times for the day. Electric Vehicles would have been perfect for this work, but DeJoy probably was lobbied (in Europe that is called bribed) and bowed to the fossil fuel industry.
This is from someone who believes EVs are only really viable for local errand running (right now).
It likely would have been extremely bad for him personally politically to do what ended up happening on his own, as opposed to after pressure from congress and lawsuits.
Instead, these will burn gas and emit pollutants in neighborhoods while running in stop-and-go mode, the least efficient and most polluting way to drive.
The article says they’re going “mostly” electric. I suspect a reverse of what DeJoy with 90% electric would be good. But since he’s still in charge it wouldn’t surprise me if the number was more like 52%.
If you mean range, the old LLVs don't get much beyond 100 miles of range as it is. For comparison, Amazon's Rivians trucks have a 200 mile range.
Although I suspect since the transition will take a long time, the "retired" vehicles will be kept for spare parts where the old vehicles are still being used, and many will still be kept just in case.
My son had looked into this and it looks like you can't.
Some of it is due to the LLV being manufactured with exemptions from certain US car standards. Some of it is due to a obligation (with Grumman IIRC) that the LLV be destroyed after retirement.
We settled for a 31k mi 1992 Buick with the same Iron Duke engine.
Why do you think that? These are terrible general purpose vehicles that have hundreds of thousands of miles on them already and have atrocious fuel efficiency even at what they are good at doing; start-stop driving.
Continuing to use these for another 50k miles is probably worse for the environment than buying a brand new hybrid or electric vehicle.
Note: USPS is exempt from state regulations because it is a U.S. federal government agency. That is also why they don't have state license plates; they don't need them.
I do wonder if bumpers that low will have mismatch problems with higher modern cars (aka SUVs and trucks), whose bumpers may go right over the mail trucks' bumpers and cause major damage.
Just a guess. I'd love to see a video giving a deep overview of these the way you see car reviews on YouTube.
“Environmentalists were outraged when DeJoy announced that 90% of the next-gen vehicles in the first order would be gas-powered. Lawsuits were filed demanding that the Postal Service further electrify its fleet of more than 200,000 vehicles to reduce tailpipe emissions.”
“He found a way to further boost the number of electric vehicles when he met with President Joe Biden’s top environmental adviser, John Podesta. That led to a deal in which the government provided $3 billion to the Postal Service, with part of it earmarked for electric charging stations.”
Also, 2021 was a long time ago. It was easy in 2021 to say "We're transitioning to EVs by 2030!" but it was not easy to actually buy $6B in working EV vans... they were all hypothetical. That changed, and so the USPS purchases did accordingly.
I'm not really understanding the excuse-making. They already own EV alternatives in the form of the existing fleet. If they have insufficient funds, replace fewer trucks. Don't add more ICE to the roads.
The LLVs currently in use are tiny and have a 150-mile range. That's Nissan Leaf numbers. We're not asking for Rivians here. Figure it out.
The LLVs have also been in service for 35 years. Whatever replaces them is going to be there for a long time. The fact that so many of these are ICE is a disgrace.
ICE should be reserved strictly for routes that demand it.
Remember, us normal folks were not enraged, it was the environmentalists. (sarcasm)
I don't know how he hasn't been removed after this.