Amazon is shifting to electric delivery vehicles in its aim to become carbon-neutral by 2040. FedEx, which has the same goal, plans to buy only electric delivery vehicles by 2030. But when the Postal Service recently announced a major new order for mail delivery vans it’ll obtain over the next decade, it said that only 10% of the new vehicles would be electric—even though the Biden administration wants to move the entire federal fleet to zero-emissions vehicles.
Oshkosh, the defense contractor that won the USPS contract with its dorkily cute design, says that its vehicle could run either on fossil fuels or on electric power and that the gas or diesel version could later be retrofitted to electric. But it appears that the company has never built an electric prototype; the prototype it submitted was not the vehicle shown in renderings but a modified Ford Transit van running on diesel. The USPS contract will pay the company $482 million to finalize the design before paying more for the actual vehicles. In a securities filing last November, Oshkosh admitted that, because demand for electric vehicles is growing, the company “may not have the expertise or resources to successfully address these pressures on a cost-effective basis or at all.” Workhorse, an Ohio-based electric vehicle manufacturer that did test an electric prototype on mail routes in an earlier stage of the multiyear process, lost its bid. (Oshkosh didn’t respond to a request for an interview, and Workhorse said it couldn’t comment.)
Lawmakers now want to see the details of the confidential contract between USPS and Oshkosh.
Here’s a hint… The current POTUS didn’t name the Postmaster General, the previous one did. The PG is going to claim he can’t release any of the details (never mind that it’s a federal purchase not subject to national security classification) because the contract’s being audited. Why is it being audited, assuming that’s even a factual statement? Who knows, but that’ll be the excuse.
Lawmakers now want to see the details of the confidential contract between USPS and Oshkosh.
We know how US defense contractors operate: milk the “development” phase, and milk it, and milk it. That is why so many defense systems are years behind schedule and Billions over budget, often with little or nothing ever deployed. Setting up a postal vehicle program before the design is finalized, and without a clear path to adoption of an electric version leaves lots of room for cost overruns and delays. The Postmater that oversaw the negotiations for the contract probably has a cush job lined up on the Oshkosh board. (I just voted my proxy for Raytheon. They have an ex-general, ex-admiral and an ex-SecDef on the board) If the contract is indeed secret, that is a virtual guarantee that something in it “needed” to be hidden.
But wait! There’s more!
Oshkosh is to build the postal vehicles, not in their union plants in Wisconsin, but in a new non-union plant in South Carolina. We know how this will go. When they are done with the USPS contract, they will start relocating other work to SC from Wisconsin, eventually closing the union plants. Effectively, the Post Office will be subsidizing the company’s relocation and evasion of the union.
I do not trust your source at least on this. I think the bias is found by the source not talking over DeJoy’s version of how many vehicles in the fleet will be electric.
This is an impressive interview linked below.
Beware DeJoy is a fantastic logistics person. Getting rid of him can ruin all the reforms hopeful by putting in one of our own political hacks.
I do not trust your source at least on this. I think the bias is found by the source not talking over DeJoy’s version of how many vehicles in the fleet will be electric.
The bottom line for me is electric mail trucks. California has terrible air pollution that needs to be reduced with electric mail trucks. Maybe DeJoy is making some progress in other areas. But on mail trucks he sucks.
He does not suck at all. Read the interview with DeJoy. He is doing what he can with his budget to introduce electric trucks.
Also your “source” is leaving out with the contractor has subcontracted the drivetrain. Possibly has making the article you posted probably misleading for other reasons.
DeJoy wants to pay over $11 billion in taxpayer dollars for a fleet that doesn’t even get 9 miles per gallon — which would pump 20 million metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. That’s the equivalent of adding 4.3 million passenger cars to America’s roads.
He won’t even consider the more cost-effective, sustainable alternative of an all-electric fleet.
Because that is not how Dejoy laid it out in his interview. He was crystal clear his budget is limiting his actions or he would go all electric in good time.
Keep in mind there is something very separate from the actual plans at the USPS for EV. The threat to some that ballots wont arrive on time is creating massive protests against DeJoy. Do not be used as a peon by the press over that. Be it is timely for some quarters to be looking for peons. Or pawns in the game.
Because that is not how Dejoy laid it out in his interview. He was crystal clear his budget is limiting his actions or he would go all electric in good time.
BTW, I am for these US political games to keep everyone honest. At the end of the day this is just to keep DeJoy honest about mail in ballots. I am for that.
I am not going to be used by the game as a pawn. This board is about objective sound analysis not be used for political squaring off. Not in US politics anyway.
DeJoy gave a very good interview where he laid out how he can afford 10019 EV trucks. He wants to improve on that.
He also said in 2020 regardless of all the worries about absentee ballots and mail in ballots being late they all arrived on time. He guaranteed that in 2020 and he guarantees that in 2022.
There were a lot of election fraud claims. The one against DeJoy never held up at all. So stop propping it up at any cost.