FFS, or you know we could stop delivering billions of tons of spam? There is zero reason the Post Office needs this. The environment impact of the mail is immense...
The impact of cutting down trees using diesel, processing the paper using fresh water, hauling the paper using diesel, printing, hauling the end product using diesel, throwing it away, then hauling the trash the landfill using diesel...
If USPS was a private company it would stop delivering where UPS and FedEx don’t deliver too. All three would obviously raise prices too. Yay for private capitalist businesses.
You aren't wrong, but the solution should be to just cover the expenses of the USPS upfront with tax money instead of allowing them to take in funding by contributing to the destruction of our planet and stuffing all our mailboxes with literal trash.
The USPS is an amazing service that absolutely deserves to be funded, but as long as we're paying for it, let's choose a method that would mean finally putting an end to all the crap in our mailboxes and eliminating all the waste in energy and resources spent carrying it all from the post office to the mailbox to the landfill.
As much as I support USPS to upgrade their fleet, I dont think its a smart financial idea for USPS to fund Oshkosh for the development of their EVs. Partnering with already EV focused companies would be a better long term investment, because they would be funded by other companies looking for EV delivery vehicles. This would drive down cost per unit and long term support. Companies like Rivian with successful Amazon EDVs, or Canoo with their modular design (MPDV).
Military contracting companies like Oshkosh would charge USPS so much money for long-term support, and creating an expensive co-dependence with USPS. USPS wont be able to escape because they would need them to maintain 66,000 bespoke EVs.
I’m curious whether Rivian has an exclusivity deal with Amazon or if they’re totally maxed out capacity wise just producing the EDV.
Watching the YouTube videos about the EDV I was thinking of that dogshit diesel Oshkosh thing the USPS ordered and shaking my head.
The EDV is very Amazon tailored but if the USPS could front some cash to get another factory built and have Rivian produce a truck based on the EDV there I feel like that would be better than getting some electric motors bolted to an armored car like Oshkosh would provide.
from the videos and articles I was able to find about the amazon EDV, amazon's investment stipulation was for Amazon to get first dibs on having their EDV manufactured and delivered first. Fortunately, it was not an exclusive platform for Amazon, anyone else can order it
Strategically, it might be smart to avoid for the time being a company that is so new. Will they be around in a meaningful way in 5 years when you need the fleet serviced?
The risk is high when investing into a younger company. I think younger companies, like Rivian, tend to collectively attract more talent and more modern ideas. Risky sure, but Rivian seems to gotten amazon's deep pocket investment, which is encourages more trust it would succeed.
Oshkosh has experience with making workhorse trucks (i,e their firetrucks), but their EV initiative is banking on the USPS contract, its like a new startup; As risky as partnering with anyother EV company with just a concept car.
Rivians, for example, already have the talent, manufacturing processes, and financial backing to get USPS trucks much quicker
Not to mention the point of public procuration is to bolster nascent industries. USPS must’ve identified something Oshkosh was willing to provide something special.
90% of a car is not EV relates. Many of the working bits of cars and trucks are already made by subcontractors, the axles, the transmissions, the seats, etc. This should be no different. Really companies like Oshkosh, Ford, etc. are integrators. Ford doesn't need to be an expert in breaks, engines, etc. They can just buy it, like dodge buys Cummins engines. Oshkosh could just build the body and frame, not in a ev drive train from a supplier of those.
Great step in the right direction. USPS routes are local, low speed once near its destination, involve lots of stops, and are relatively short in terms of total length. Vehicles can recharge overnight. Sounds like the ideal definition of business suitable for EVs.
Yep, I've seen gasoline mail trucks in use - start engine, drive 100 ft (30m), turn off engine, deliver mail, start engine, repeat, repeat. What a waste.
I'm always happy to see mail carriers who walk between homes.
>The USPS is primarily looking to get its fleet from defense contractor Oshkosh, which will provide 60,000 vehicles, with 45,000 of them being electric. But the mail agency will also look to other automakers for another 46,000 vans, with 21,000 of those being EVs.
>Podesta told The Washington Post he believes it will pressure other shipping and delivery companies “to up their game, too.” Some companies like FedEx have already reserved 2,500 electric delivery vans from GM-backed BrightDrop, and Amazon ordered 100,000 Rivian EVs to be on the road by 2030.
Is a military contractor really the best solution we have for cars? As much as I love the headline, this feels like a handout to defense contractors
The previous vehicle, the Grumman LLV, was also produced by a defense contractor. It's part and parcel (no pun intended) of delivering an enormous government contract. Traditional automakers just aren't in this business.
Why not just buy off the shelf vehicles like other posts or courier companies? Like Volkswagen Transporter, Mercedes Sprinter or Ford Transit if you want American
The original LLV was designed as a custom body atop the Chevrolet S-10, including using the original drivetrain. Everything aside from the body comes from the S-10, hence why they were able to keep them on the road for so long.
Even as simple as it was, the LLV was a major departure from the Jeep DJ-S, which was just a modified right hand drive Jeep CJ-5 with a sliding side door. In both cases the off the shelf parts available directly from the manufacturers extended the service of first two official USPS mail trucks well beyond their intended lives. Something which is unlikely with Oshkosh given the heavily custom nature of it. Refits to the LLV have included buying drop-in replacement LED headlights to replace the original square sealed beams since the form factor is a standardized part shared across the entire automotive industry from the 1970s onwards. Meanwhile the headlight assemblies for the NGDV are custom made, from the shrouds to the LED driver boards (an expensive problem shared with most headlights these days). We may have a similar problem to the Cadillac XLR's taillights where the driver boards make it infeasible to replace them.
The USPS has a bunch of highly-specific requirements that they aren't willing to change, which makes an off-the-shelf van impossible.
These are things like: giant unpainted bumpers, sliding drivers door, the rear door has to be roll-up rather than normal doors, step through from front to rear, some size requirements.
One of the alternatives which was rejected when they signed the contract for the new vans was a customised Ford Transit.
> Domestic auto production is defined as all autos assembled in the U.S.
45k-60k units would be a 1/5th or 1/6th of all domestic production in the US for a year.
Contract stipulates between 5k to 16.5k units per year, with a production run for a ten years, which means parts, repairs and overalls are going for another 10-15 years after the run. It's a quarter century investment, if not more - the last LLV was made in 1994:
>> The lifespan specified by the U.S. Postal Service was 24 years, but in 2009 this was extended to 30 years. The majority of LLVs have been on the road for over 27 years.
DeJoy and a few of his peers have shares in Oshkosh. It makes sense that he would award the contract to Oshkosh, a military contractor, to build even more vehicles for the government. The more immediate problem putting aside the obvious favoritism is that Oshkosh had and effectively still has no ability to actually build passenger vehicles, and is reusing the drivetrains they use for their military vehicles. Meaning they're dirty, inefficient, and stupidly overbuilt diesels instead of batteries and in-hub electric motors that would benefit from stop and go routines all day, and charging at a central location in a fleet overnight.
With diesel, you don’t have any upfront huge capital and brainpower expenditure of retrofitting each of your facilities as multi-vehicle charging centers. Going electric is a real commitment.
I understand that Li-ion production is limited, but I think USPS could be 100% Hybrid, PHEV, or Electric moving forward.
I understand that EVs are boutique items that use lots of limited Li-ion cells. But Hybrid technology is very good these days, and USPS stop-and-go style movement only makes regenerative braking more important. Hybrid is the "lightest weight" style regenerative braking car, so I'd like to see Hybrids across the fleet. At a minimum.
It’s a good thing if done right. But there is the risk of greenwashing going on if we don’t track the details.
Two things to consider: First, when someone announces a huge fleet of trucks being purchased, take note of whether they are upgrading the electrical facilities of their depots and on what timeframe.
Charging a fleet at a local truck depot that previously didn’t use much electricity is a nontrivial problem.
One shell game being played is that to meet some arbitrary/political deadline, they bring diesel generators on-site to charge the trucks. It’s a bit head-smacking but I’ve seen it discussed in trucking trade publications when reading about similar announcements.
Second, if you are inferring a global-warming benefit from CO2 reduction from electric trucks, do note also that trucks at a depot charge at night when solar power from the grid is not available and factor accordingly. Huge industrial batteries could mitigate that but I am not sure what environmental costs they come at (pointers welcome.) Do the entities pony up the fiscal costs to support that too?
When people start buying electric cars AND workplaces put chargers in parking lots such that solar power can be used to charge them during daylight (rather than at home, at night), the end to end system makes sense to me. But that’s a whole other topic.
P.S. Yes I know wind and nukes work during the day…
30 comments
[ 2.0 ms ] story [ 73.3 ms ] threadThe impact of cutting down trees using diesel, processing the paper using fresh water, hauling the paper using diesel, printing, hauling the end product using diesel, throwing it away, then hauling the trash the landfill using diesel...
Yay for government run businesses.
The USPS is an amazing service that absolutely deserves to be funded, but as long as we're paying for it, let's choose a method that would mean finally putting an end to all the crap in our mailboxes and eliminating all the waste in energy and resources spent carrying it all from the post office to the mailbox to the landfill.
Military contracting companies like Oshkosh would charge USPS so much money for long-term support, and creating an expensive co-dependence with USPS. USPS wont be able to escape because they would need them to maintain 66,000 bespoke EVs.
Watching the YouTube videos about the EDV I was thinking of that dogshit diesel Oshkosh thing the USPS ordered and shaking my head.
The EDV is very Amazon tailored but if the USPS could front some cash to get another factory built and have Rivian produce a truck based on the EDV there I feel like that would be better than getting some electric motors bolted to an armored car like Oshkosh would provide.
Strategically, it might be smart to avoid for the time being a company that is so new. Will they be around in a meaningful way in 5 years when you need the fleet serviced?
Oshkosh has experience with making workhorse trucks (i,e their firetrucks), but their EV initiative is banking on the USPS contract, its like a new startup; As risky as partnering with anyother EV company with just a concept car.
Rivians, for example, already have the talent, manufacturing processes, and financial backing to get USPS trucks much quicker
I'm always happy to see mail carriers who walk between homes.
>Podesta told The Washington Post he believes it will pressure other shipping and delivery companies “to up their game, too.” Some companies like FedEx have already reserved 2,500 electric delivery vans from GM-backed BrightDrop, and Amazon ordered 100,000 Rivian EVs to be on the road by 2030.
Is a military contractor really the best solution we have for cars? As much as I love the headline, this feels like a handout to defense contractors
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grumman_LLV
Even as simple as it was, the LLV was a major departure from the Jeep DJ-S, which was just a modified right hand drive Jeep CJ-5 with a sliding side door. In both cases the off the shelf parts available directly from the manufacturers extended the service of first two official USPS mail trucks well beyond their intended lives. Something which is unlikely with Oshkosh given the heavily custom nature of it. Refits to the LLV have included buying drop-in replacement LED headlights to replace the original square sealed beams since the form factor is a standardized part shared across the entire automotive industry from the 1970s onwards. Meanwhile the headlight assemblies for the NGDV are custom made, from the shrouds to the LED driver boards (an expensive problem shared with most headlights these days). We may have a similar problem to the Cadillac XLR's taillights where the driver boards make it infeasible to replace them.
These are things like: giant unpainted bumpers, sliding drivers door, the rear door has to be roll-up rather than normal doors, step through from front to rear, some size requirements.
One of the alternatives which was rejected when they signed the contract for the new vans was a customised Ford Transit.
> Domestic auto production is defined as all autos assembled in the U.S.
45k-60k units would be a 1/5th or 1/6th of all domestic production in the US for a year.
Contract stipulates between 5k to 16.5k units per year, with a production run for a ten years, which means parts, repairs and overalls are going for another 10-15 years after the run. It's a quarter century investment, if not more - the last LLV was made in 1994:
>> The lifespan specified by the U.S. Postal Service was 24 years, but in 2009 this was extended to 30 years. The majority of LLVs have been on the road for over 27 years.
I can’t prove it, but the whole thing smelled very strongly of corruption.
”I’d like to save the world too, but I have friends that make diesel trucks.”
I understand that EVs are boutique items that use lots of limited Li-ion cells. But Hybrid technology is very good these days, and USPS stop-and-go style movement only makes regenerative braking more important. Hybrid is the "lightest weight" style regenerative braking car, so I'd like to see Hybrids across the fleet. At a minimum.
Two things to consider: First, when someone announces a huge fleet of trucks being purchased, take note of whether they are upgrading the electrical facilities of their depots and on what timeframe.
Charging a fleet at a local truck depot that previously didn’t use much electricity is a nontrivial problem.
One shell game being played is that to meet some arbitrary/political deadline, they bring diesel generators on-site to charge the trucks. It’s a bit head-smacking but I’ve seen it discussed in trucking trade publications when reading about similar announcements.
Second, if you are inferring a global-warming benefit from CO2 reduction from electric trucks, do note also that trucks at a depot charge at night when solar power from the grid is not available and factor accordingly. Huge industrial batteries could mitigate that but I am not sure what environmental costs they come at (pointers welcome.) Do the entities pony up the fiscal costs to support that too?
When people start buying electric cars AND workplaces put chargers in parking lots such that solar power can be used to charge them during daylight (rather than at home, at night), the end to end system makes sense to me. But that’s a whole other topic.
P.S. Yes I know wind and nukes work during the day…