USPS ups electric truck order to 40%

Investment Analysis Clubs Macro Economic Trends and Risks
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Critics say the Postal Service should be buying far more electric vehicles, but the new plan is a big jump over the previous order of just 10% EVs.

https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/clean-fleets/usps-ups-e…

The saga unfolding around the fate of America’s mail trucks began last year, when the Postal Service announced plans to order up to 165,000 new delivery vehicles — with around 90 percent of those expected to burn gas in internal combustion engines.

The independent federal agency also signed a 10-year contract with Wisconsin-based manufacturer Oshkosh Defense. At first, the plan was to buy just 5,000 battery-powered trucks in the initial purchase order. In March, however, the Postal Service raised the number to 10,000 electric trucks, plus another 40,000 gas-guzzlers, in the $2.98 billion deal.

The plan announced on Wednesday differs from the Postal Service’s original vision.

Of the 50,000 Oshkosh trucks already on order, now at least 25,000 will be electric. The agency said it will also order 34,500 ?“commercial off-the-shelf” vehicles. In total, the Postal Service will purchase 84,500 new mail trucks, of which at least 40 percent will run on batteries.

Jaak

P.S. - The options for battery-powered vans and trucks continue to expand, while the costs of buying, operating and charging vehicles are steadily declining. Private parcel carrier UPS recently placed an order for 10,000 electric delivery vans made by British startup Arrival. Earlier this month, Walmart signed an agreement to buy 4,500 electric delivery vehicles from California-based startup Canoo.

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In some sense, one would think the USPS and UPS and FedEx would be ideal candidates for electric vehicles. They operate in “local radius” fleet mode, are active roughly 10 hours a day and have routes that can be predicted to the foot in the case of the USPS or are already optimized by sophisticated routing algorithms to be very consistent day after day.

However, there would appear to be other potential barriers to switching over to electric. When all o those vehicles come back to the post office or depot at the end of the route, ALL OF THOSE VEHICLES need recharging from the same small concentrated point on the electric grid over roughly the exact same window of time. There could be DOZENS of them, imposing that electricity demand on one isolated circuit on the grid. And if that circuit on the grid goes dead in the night due to a thunderstorm or car accident taking a nearby pole out, you have dozens of trucks dead at 8:00am, unable to deliver.

Delivery companies, electric companies and vehicle manufacturers will all need to accommodate these scenarios in their designs and operations plans. Will fleet operators going electric need to invest in MASSIVE upgrades of their electric service from their utility? (Definitely…) Does this force electric companies to reprioritize service restoration to locations serving known “fleet” users? Have vehicle manufacturers thought of including software that detects proximity of other same-fleet vehicles to limit how many attempt to charge at the same time?

One other factor I would love to see analyzed is the net energy loss of electric vehicles due to inefficiencies at low temperatures. When I put 16 gallons of gas/diesel in my car and let it sit overnight, I wake up and still have exactly 16 gallons of gas/diesel in the tank that still produces the same predictable amount of energy the next morning, even if it is -5 F. Yes, gas and diesel are not good forever – they WILL go bad sitting in a tank – but for most usage scenarios, the energy doesn’t have a decay factor associated with it possibly measured in hours. It would be fascinating to have someone analyze the current drain from trickle charging a pure electric vehicle over a week during extreme winter cold to see how much “seep” there is. Probably not a huge concern for something driven every day but it would be important for casual drivers.

WTH

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However, there would appear to be other potential barriers to switching over to electric. When all o those vehicles come back to the post office or depot at the end of the route, ALL OF THOSE VEHICLES need recharging from the same small concentrated point on the electric grid over roughly the exact same window of time. There could be DOZENS of them, imposing that electricity demand on one isolated circuit on the grid. And if that circuit on the grid goes dead in the night due to a thunderstorm or car accident taking a nearby pole out, you have dozens of trucks dead at 8:00am, unable to deliver.

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LOL!

These trucks can wait until 10 pm to get charged up for the next day. The demand is low at after 10 pm and before 8am. The cost of electricity is much lower also. The charging load is insignificant compared to the daily normal load that kicks in a 8am every weekday when people get up, turn on lights, cook, wash, turn on computers at work/home.

Why do you think they are on isolated circuits? There are major power lines around all warehouses, shopping centers, factories, and business parks. You are worried about trivial matters.

The grid suffers the must during high heat conditions when AC units are making a huge and unusual demand on the grid between 10am and 8pm. Charging trucks between 10pm and 8am is minimal compared to millions of AC units demanding electricity.

Jaak

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It would be fascinating to have someone analyze the current drain from trickle charging a pure electric vehicle over a week during extreme winter cold to see how much “seep” there is. Probably not a huge concern for something driven every day but it would be important for casual drivers.

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Not a huge concern for trucks. Their batteries can be kept warm overnight. Just like gas/diesel trucks keep their engines warmed at night.

Jaak

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However, there would appear to be other potential barriers to switching over to electric. When all o those vehicles come back to the post office or depot at the end of the route, ALL OF THOSE VEHICLES need recharging from the same small concentrated point on the electric grid over roughly the exact same window of time. There could be DOZENS of them, imposing that electricity demand on one isolated circuit on the grid. And if that circuit on the grid goes dead in the night due to a thunderstorm or car accident taking a nearby pole out, you have dozens of trucks dead at 8:00am, unable to deliver.

Delivery companies, electric companies and vehicle manufacturers will all need to accommodate these scenarios in their designs and operations plans. Will fleet operators going electric need to invest in MASSIVE upgrades of their electric service from their utility? (Definitely…) Does this force electric companies to reprioritize service restoration to locations serving known “fleet” users? Have vehicle manufacturers thought of including software that detects proximity of other same-fleet vehicles to limit how many attempt to charge at the same time?

One thing that gets lost in these discussions is the non-fuel costs of ICE fueling. If you a big fleet and want to do onsite fueling, a fueling station can cost mid-six figures and of course there can be waiting time which costs money too.

A much more common option is to use gas cards and have drivers fill up at conventional gas stations. But taking the vehicle to a gas station adds labor costs.

Another option is night fueling where a fuel truck fills parked vehicles. That saves driver labor costs, but you have to pay for the night fuel service.

I suspect the primary reason Amazon is pushing so hard for electric delivery vehicles is they think they will save money. The vehicle driver will spend no time fueling.

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When all o those vehicles come back to the post office or depot at the end of the route, ALL OF THOSE VEHICLES need recharging from the same small concentrated point on the electric grid over roughly the exact same window of time.

Assuming 12 hours out on the road and 12 hours back in the depot that gives 12 hours to charge the vehicles.

How long does it take to charge an EV?

For many electric cars, you can add up to 100 miles of range in ~35 minutes with a 50kW rapid charger.

https://pod-point.com/guides/driver/how-long-to-charge-an-el…

At 40 minutes each, the 12 hours lets you charge the cars in 18 shifts. That’s 5.6% of the fleet at a time, not the WHOLE fleet like you posit.

Blackouts? Ever heard of Diesel emergency generators? Maybe a big Tesla GigaPack for emergencies.

The Captain

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However, there would appear to be other potential barriers to switching over to electric. When all o those vehicles come back to the post office or depot at the end of the route, ALL OF THOSE VEHICLES need recharging from the same small concentrated point on the electric grid over roughly the exact same window of time.

What if some of the vehicles had shorter routes and only needed to be charge every 2 days?

Anyway, a few hundred dollar L2 charger provides 6 kw, typically. But the car controls the charge rate and could set any lower charge rate (i.e. the car computes that it needs 4 hours to charge…or 10 hours and can programmatically reduce the load or schedule a future start time to be ready at a given time. Given that there will be a dozen or two (or more) vehicles at each office, how much power is really needed?
Googling around, it can be as short as 10-15 miles (cities) and 100-150 miles (rural).

Assume an office with 20 vehicles that go 15 miles per day. That is only a total of 300 miles which would be about 75 kwh. One 6 kw charger could do that in ~12 hours. (Of course you wouldn’t do that, you’d have multiple chargers).
For 150 miles per day per vehicle it would be 10x that. 10 chargers for 12 hours. (or 20 chargers for 6 hours)
For comparison, my work parking garage has 48 chargers and it isn’t a problem.
Each office could also have 1 or 2 faster chargers (more expensive) in case they needed them.

Funny how Tesla is able to operate a location with 56 fast (250kw) chargers (theoretical peak of 14,000 KW, probably capped at 8 or 10 MW in aggregate) and the thought of 10 or 20 6kw chargers (total 60 - 120 kw) seems like a problem

Mike

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400 EV companies in China. British competition and others in the EU. More competition coming online in the US for EV manufacture.

Look I am not claiming I know the top for Tesla. Might be in already though.

What I will say as the markets go lower EV manufactures are non stop ramping up to compete.

Time to head for the exits with Tesla. After this market finds a bottom Tesla’s recovery might never be to the same highs earlier this year. Odds are everyone in the EV world is trying to take a bite of Tesla’s lunch.

I get Tesla has the lead. It is not significant enough to protect the company as EV becomes the main vehicle mode. The future growth opportunities for so many other companies will be there for a handful of them to take major market share. Tesla’s market cap compared to Ford’s is a ridiculously silly vantage point.

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Amazon owns 18% of Rivian. The worries about supplies of semi conductors and parts etc can disappear very quickly.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/21/business/rivian-amazon-de…

snippet

Amazon has said it doesn’t expect all 100,000 trucks to be delivered until the end of the decade. In a November securities filing, Rivian said it planned to deliver the 100,000 trucks “by 2025.” Mr. Scaringe declined to say if that was still the plan, saying only that he hoped to deliver the vans sooner than Amazon was expecting them.

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However, there would appear to be other potential barriers to switching over to electric. When all o those vehicles come back to the post office or depot at the end of the route, ALL OF THOSE VEHICLES need recharging from the same small concentrated point on the electric grid over roughly the exact same window of time. There could be DOZENS of them, imposing that electricity demand on one isolated circuit on the grid. And if that circuit on the grid goes dead in the night due to a thunderstorm or car accident taking a nearby pole out, you have dozens of trucks dead at 8:00am, unable to deliver.

Also, THE SKY IS FALLING!

Ahem. Post office satellite stations tend to be located where there are lots of other businesses - or residences so as to be closer to their intended delivery areas. We have a giant depot downtown, but the mail is split there and sent to the various suburban areas for final sorting.

I would think it obvious that overnight the grid which powers those businesses/residences is largely unused at 2AM (lights out, A/C minimal, retailer closed, factory machines idle), allowing it to carry much more traffic than it otherwise might during a hot afternoon in August. In other words: load balance. In the event that there us a power failure, well 1) gas pumps don’t work without electricity either, but 2) installing a reliable, sizable backup generator is a trifle when you are talking about converting 30-50 vehicles and charging stations for them. Might there have to be some upgrade for the lines coming into the specific charging field? Sure. But then businesses do that sort of thing all the time.

One other factor I would love to see analyzed is the net energy loss of electric vehicles due to inefficiencies at low temperatures. When I put 16 gallons of gas/diesel in my car and let it sit overnight, I wake up and still have exactly 16 gallons of gas/diesel in the tank that still produces the same predictable amount of energy the next morning, even if it is -5 F.

It’s unarguable that electric vehicles won’t perform at maximum capacity on the coldest days in cold climes. Then again if you’re buying a million or so vehicles, one would think the procuring agent might be smart enough to take that into account and have some “overbuilt” for those areas. Or perhaps not, but if I had to roll the dice I’d bet someone in the chain of command has pointed that out.

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It’s unarguable that electric vehicles won’t perform at maximum capacity on the coldest days in cold climes. Then again if you’re buying a million or so vehicles, one would think the procuring agent might be smart enough to take that into account and have some “overbuilt” for those areas. Or perhaps not, but if I had to roll the dice I’d bet someone in the chain of command has pointed that out.

Most EVs these days have a battery thermal management system. On cold days prior to the scheduled departure time the EV will draw grid power to heat the battery. Once under way if the temperature is low enough the EV will use battery power to heat the battery.

That said, I don’t think lack of range for this application is an issue at all. At least not in the majority of cases. Extrapolating a bit here…My zip code is about nine square miles, and there are–I dunno–a dozen or so mail trucks I see parked at the post office. The means the typical vehicle just doesn’t drive very far. Obviously, that wouldn’t be true in rural areas, but the majority of people live in urban areas…

…oh shoot. I’ll quit hand waving and just use Google. Turns out 96% of mail trucks are driven less than 40 miles per day and only 2% are driven more than 50 miles a day. That means you don’t need much range, and that means you don’t need much charging either. In most cases, you wouldn’t even need an L2 charger. You could do that trickle charging overnight.

https://www.greatbusinessschools.org/usps-long-life-vehicle/…

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96% of mail trucks are driven less than 40 miles per day

I confess ignorance when it comes to electric vehicles. Does it matter that they run all day, if they don’t go very far?

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I confess ignorance when it comes to electric vehicles. Does it matter that they run all day, if they don’t go very far?

That depends on use of heating and air conditioning. Lights and radio also have a small impact - but on most days there’ll be little if any time they need the lights, and many of those short-route carriers spend a lot of time out of their vehicles so the vehicle’s radio wouldn’t be that interesting.

Mail carriers are very much start-and-stop, though, so just in driving terms this 40-mile day is probably more comparable to about 50 miles on a limited-access highway. Still, 50 miles worth of recharging isn’t much.

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I confess ignorance when it comes to electric vehicles. Does it matter that they run all day, if they don’t go very far?

An idling ICE car wastes gas. Electric motors don’t idle, they stop. The other loads like lights, AC, etc. are probably similar. Regenerative breaking charges the batteries, lots of start-stop in city deliveries. Regenerative breaking saves on break pads.

The Captain

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Lights and radio also have a small impact - but on most days there’ll be little if any time they need the lights, and many of those short-route carriers spend a lot of time out of their vehicles so the vehicle’s radio wouldn’t be that interesting.

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Lights are LEDs so that is hardly any draw at all on the batteries. There are no radios in mail trucks.

Jaak

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I confess ignorance when it comes to electric vehicles. Does it matter that they run all day, if they don’t go very far?

Stop-and-go is the EV’s superpower. The vast majority of energy is used moving the vehicle forward. EVs recover energy when braking, and use virtually none at idle. ICEs waste energy when braking and at idle. EVs actually have more range in the city than on the highway.

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“Lights and radio also have a small impact - but on most days there’ll be little if any time they need the lights, and many of those short-route carriers spend a lot of time out of their vehicles so the vehicle’s radio wouldn’t be that interesting.”

Yeah, tell me about the days when it snows all day or rains all day and the wipers and lights are on the entire day. Obviously, when it snows, it’s also cold so the heater will be working full time too.

These are larger vehicles than your standard Tesla Model 3 and probably carry 1000 lbs of mail at a time - including packages, magazines, junk mail flyers, etc.

t

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