Monkey see, monkey do—that’s what the United States Postal Service is going regarding its delivery fleet.
They’re going to blow some $11 billion on electric vehicles after a push from the Biden administration.
It won’t be immediate, but the goal is to have 66,000 cars delivering mail by 2026. [emphasis, links added]
Also, in that same timeframe, USPS hopes all purchases of future vehicles will carry zero emissions (via WaPo) [bold added]:
The U.S. Postal Service will buy 66,000 vehicles to build one of the largest electric fleets in the nation, Biden administration officials announced Tuesday, turning to one of the most recognizable vehicles on American roads — boxy white mail trucks — to fight climate change.
Postal officials’ plans call for buying 60,000 “Next Generation Delivery Vehicles” from defense contractor Oshkosh, of which 45,000 will be electric, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy told The Washington Post. The agency will also purchase 46,000 models from mainstream automakers, of which 21,000 will be electric.
The Postal Service will spend $9.6 billion on the vehicles and associated infrastructure, officials said, including $3 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act, President Biden and congressional Democrats’ landmark climate, health-care and tax law.
By 2026, the agency expects to purchase zero-emissions delivery trucks almost exclusively, DeJoy said. It’s a major achievement for a White House climate agenda that leans heavily on reducing greenhouse gases from vehicles.
“It’s wonderful that the Postal Service will be at the forefront of the switch to clean electric vehicles, with postal workers as their ambassadors,” said John Podesta, White House senior adviser for clean energy innovation. “It will get people thinking, ‘If the postal worker delivering our Christmas presents … is driving an EV, I can drive one, too.’”
The USPS should post profits before blowing billions on a fleet that will probably cause more problems than it solves.
Second, it’s not green since it uses fossil fuel to charge its batteries. Do liberals think an energy wizard resides within the power stations for these cars?
There are logistical issues as well, especially post offices in rural areas. Reports of electric vehicles are conking out as the power station infrastructure remains underdeveloped.
That’s all an aside; the USPS should have to post consecutive years of profit before this Democrat-led boondoggle project gets the green light.
Blowing $11 billion on electric cars isn’t going to help bring this struggling agency to solvency.
Read more at Townhall
Carrier Pigeons would by far better
The government will be wasting more than the up front purchase cost. It is unlikely that a mail truck will be able to go for its entire route without a recharge. The mail carrier is not going to go off of the clock for the 30 minutes it takes to charge. That means either over time or more mail carriers and the trucks to go with them. With many miles every day, the batteries for these trucks will wear out sooner than for an EV used by the typical family. The cost of replacing such batteries is horrendous.
Remember the Pony Express? A steady supply of fresh horses kept the mail moving. To get a fleet of EV’s to do the same job as conventional vehicles, they’re going to have create more but shorter routes. Instead, switch to hybrid vehicles and change nothing else.
I work for a federal agency in Wyoming. Mercifully, I’ll be retiring next month but I digress…
Word is, my agency over the next 2-3 years will be replacing the current pickup truck fleet with EV’s. Sounds good on paper, except yesterday morning it was 18 degrees BELOW ZERO (dry air temperature) and never reached above zero. Couple that with it is NOT uncommon for field operatves to put 200- 300 muiles on a vehicle in ONE DAY. I wonder if our “fearless leaders” would be enthusiastic about going out on a tour on a day like yesterday in an EV? If they are, they are more FOOLISH than I had imagined.
Punch Line: One size DOES NOT fit all, regardless of what your “Think Tank” has conjured up in DC. You can apply that same principle to any number of other component areas these bureaucrats are attempting to regulate.