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USPS' long-awaited new mail truck makes its debut to rave reviews from carriers (apnews.com)
292 points by achristmascarl 4 months ago | hide | past | favorite | 349 comments



> The gross vehicle weight rating of the NGDV with an ICE, including payload, is 8,501 lb (3,856 kg),[2]: Table 3-1.2 just one pound over the EPA's threshold to be considered a heavy-duty truck, allowing it to avoid more stringent pollution emissions and efficiency standards for light-duty trucks.

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.


My maths may be way off, but isn't this around 80% heavier than the Deutsche Post DHL Group StreetScooter Work delivery vehicle from 2017... ? ( https://www.ft.com/content/c6913394-1ea6-11e7-a454-ab0442897... / https://archive.is/AlyRj )

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?


710kg for the Deutsche vehicle is only for the payload, that doesn't include the weight of the vehicle.

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...


> 710kg for the Deutsche vehicle is only for the payload, that doesn't include the weight of the vehicle

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).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StreetScooter


The emissions standards make zero sense here. USPS trucks don't spend hardly any time on normal driving. They move 10 feet, stop, move 10 feet, stop, etc. Emissions standards aren't set up around that, and I would not expect them to pass.

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.


In my opinion these are a huge miss.

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.


I don’t know the details… but my dad was a rural mail carrier for awhile, and the roughness of the driving they do is difficult to understand.

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.


FWIW: Regen breaking has a lot less wear than normal breaking. Normal breaking needs to convert the energy into heat through friction, which wears things down. Storing that energy means nothing has to be worn down.

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.


Buses sometimes have flywheels for that purpose, too. Although that also has weight and space, so may not be worthwhile for a vehicle where both are needed for its primary purpose.


Interesting.

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.


2-3 weeks to change brake pads seems incredibly excessive and to be honest I don't believe it. I delivered Pizzas for more than 5 years, and my brake pads would still last 20,000+ miles.


> generally are not carrying a lot of weight

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.


1000lbs is not a lot of weight. It's the weight of 5 average american men, which I would expect every sedan to handle just fine.


A small sedan can hold 5 adults in a pinch, but if you always drove your average sedan with 1,000lbs inside, and stopped every house, it would wear out extremely quickly and would drive/perform awful. Moreover, most small cars aren't actually rated to hold the weight of 5 adults, despite having 5 seats.


Not every Sedan: https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2013/09/the-heavy-r...

"The Ford Fusion, Honda Accord, and Mazda6 midsized sedans, for example, all have a combined load capacity of 850 lbs. for passengers and cargo."


that article is 10 years old, carry weights have increased, but only by about 50 pounds or so.


I just picked up 900 lbs of tile and the place would refuse to put anymore in my Subaru Forester. It's a pretty substantial load with big safety ramifications if not stored well.


I don't think your expectations are correct.

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.


I live in a very rural area. We don't even have the 1980s era of mail trucks here, out delivery drivers have passenger SUVs and vans retrofitted for right hand drive.

I'd be really surprised to see these new vehicles in truly rural areas any time soon.


That's because the mail trucks are not considered suitable for longer and higher speed routes. I would expect them to roll out to rural areas quickly so the USPS can get rid of the mishmash fleet.


Rural carriers buy and maintain their own vehicles typically.

https://about.usps.com/publications/pub181/pub181_v03_revisi....


those may be contact carriers


I have an uncle who was an employee rural carrier for thirty years. He always owned and maintained his own vehicle.


But there is going to be a mix? Also 1000 lbs is not a lot of weight to account for here. Ignoring rural routes which are a different beast, these routes are local on mostly slower roads. That kind of weight needs to be accounted for but it’s negligible.


As a kid I had a six hour paper round and a bicycle. I had my newspapers dropped off for me at four stops and nobody ever stole from them before I could get there - imagine that. In total, the mass of papers was about five times my own height, clearly a bit much to carry in one go.

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.


Just remember that road conditions and climate can be vastly different in the US compared to the UK.

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...


A majority of them are full electric.


Which was not the original plan. Luckily enough pressure was applied to improve the plan.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-postal-service-gas-trucks-el...


I don’t get it. Wouldn’t electric vehicles save them money in the long run? A lot of money?

EDIT: per this comment charging infrastructure was going to be a huge cost. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41544204


as usual with any large-scale procurement decision, it is a whole lot of politics. the anti-EV people were pushing against it, the defense contractors that run the government had more experience in gas powered vehicles, and the environmentalists were pushing for impractical targets like 100% EV, which just gave ammunition to the people who didn't want EVs.

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.


Its probably too soon to know if that pressure succeeding was lucky or a mistake.

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?


Press, followed by $3 billion extra budget from tax coffers.


With the ever increasing cost (both financially and climate) of gasoline, it seems it would pay off in the long-term

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


Depends on driving habits and price of electricity and gas. In Washington state, electricity is cheaper compared to most of the US, and gas is among the most expensive compared to most of the US.

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?


Electric is likely cheapest considering duty cycle and fuel usage, and the battery should not need to be replaced for hundreds of thousands of miles, at which point we will have better batteries that last even longer and are cheaper.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41409422

https://petapixel.com/2024/08/30/scientists-discovered-a-way...

https://www.cell.com/joule/abstract/S2542-4351(24)00353-2


> might make a hybrid gas vehicle still cheaper per mile

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.


the battery depreciation is per mile, so I don't think the mileage per year will factor into it heavily.


The published ratings of battery depreciation are per-mile, because there’s not really any other way to straightforwardly measure it, but the chemistry of battery degradation is very complex, and factors like number of high-current heating cycles and depth of discharge definitely matter.


no one is dumping their EV any sooner than an eqivalent ICE due to battery replacement.


the problem is we aren't comparing person vehicles, you have to consider these vehicles are estimated to need a 20+ year life span which mean replacing the batteries at least once, most likely twice. electric vehicle metrics are also not based on carrying a heavy load, at start and stop distances, moving at too low a speed to really benefit from reclamation.

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.


Not yet though. I would be curious how easy it is to have both an ice and ev next gen vehicle. It’s a waste imo to have both platforms.


Remember USPS provides universal service. How do you sustain an electric fleet everywhere in the US in 2024?

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.


It shouldn't be too big of a deal to have an ice and an ev share a truck style vehicle, because there's going to be structural support for batteries and probably room for them too; possibly requiring a higher load floor, but depends on design, I guess. Sounds like the target EV range is 70 mi, so the battery pack won't be super large.

Ford makes the F-150 in ice, hybrid, phev, and full ev, I think.


I don't think there's a phev F-150.


Hybrids are great until it comes to long term maintenance where you are not having to manage and work on two different systems. Having personal who can work on both electrical and gas has been one of the issues with the hybrid adoption in fleet vehicles with other groups.

Not to say it isn't worth exploring, but I do know it is a common issue when discussed.


I don't get it. The article says most of the fleet will be electric.


There was a huge fight over what proportion of these trucks would be electric. Wikipedia says 75% of the initial order of 60,000 trucks will be electric, and after 2026 they will all be electric.


> In my opinion these are a huge miss.

Oh, really? Can you share your expertise that trumps that of the people who work with them every day?


Roger, I was going to write a response to you but realized it probably would go over your head. Why don't you tell me what you disagree with Roger?


> The problem, Dejoy said, wasn’t that he didn’t want electric vehicles. Rather, the expense of the vehicles, compounded by the costs of installing thousands of charging stations and upgrading electrical service, made them unaffordable at a time when the agency was reporting big operating deficits every quarter.

It is worth reading the full article, it covers the environmental aspects and tradeoffs very well.


The NGDV is based on the 9500lb Ford Transit, so it's more like they started with a heavy-duty truck and scaled down.


It's not based on the Transit. One of the submitted designs was, but it didn't win the contract bid.

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.


"Based on" meaning that's what they started with: the same heavy delivery truck that everyone uses. It's clearly not a Transit (USPS already has E Transits in service) but they obviously didn't just take a light truck and then add a pound to skirt emissions, either.


It does look like a lengthen truck head though.


Government gaming its own regulations.


Military F250/350 all have emission deletes


The military cares about reliability. Emissions systems on modern heavy duty civilian trucks are hell on reliability.

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 homestate [Texas] does not require federal/state agencies to follow local building codes.

My new state [Tennessee] just ended government construction inspections.

Pay - to - play, folks.


That's worse than pay-to-play.

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."


>builders there regularly paid off our corrupt mayor to avoid the rules.

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."


Nope that's how CAFE standards work. You can thank the EPA for that!

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!


You can thank Congress for that, not the EPA. They were the ones that required the agency by law to create the separate standards for “non-passenger vehicles” and the weight classes, as well as the other loopholes that enable the shenanigans, like allowing medium passenger vehicles to classify as non-passenger.


The degree to which this is broken boggles the mind. The country has a strong interest in reducing fuel consumption and emissions, and the country also has an interest in vehicles being lighter. And the rules utterly fail at both.

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.


Now that chevron deference was eliminated (along with many other long-standing precedents), soon you’ll get to blame political appointees with lifetime positions!


Theoretically this would be a great opportunity for someone to take the EPA to court over this and have a chance of it actually having an effect, whereas before that was unimaginable. Of course it will require deep pockets, but a coalition of automakers could perhaps make it happen.


Are you saying that the chevron deference elimination allows the courts to overrule congress? I don't think that's the case. I think the courts still can only overrule congress on constitutional issues, the same as before the chevron deference was eliminated.


the courts de-jure can't override Congress, but de-facto, the current court is very wind to read things in bizarre ways.


But then so are the bureaucrats. Hence the ass-backwards emissions policy we have now. The different is courts are compelled to hear well-reasoned arguments from experts on both sides and adjudicate based on their analysis, whereas bureaucrats can and do turn a deaf ear to anyone that doesn’t toe the party line.


Not to mention the flex fuel scheme that GM, Ford and Chrysler pulls. CAFE fuel mileage calculations permits ethanol compatible vehicles to assume that it will be driven 50% of the time using E85 ethanol. For the worst gas guzzlers, they add the additional ethanol hardware to get the “lower” fuel mileage. Hence you only see the flex fuel badge on big trucks and SUVs. And ironically, the flex fuel label is really a label that it’s a gas guzzler.


Is the limit really 8500 to get into that unregulated category? Small SUVs are very popular and are basically sedans on stilts and weigh a lot less than 8500. So I don’t think you could blame the death of sedans on that rule, if that’s indeed what the rule is.


There are other standards that can put vehicles in different emissions categories. I believe the one that most crossover SUVs target is being considered “off road”, by having four wheel drive and meeting a few ground clearance specifications: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-49/part-523#p-523.5(b)

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.


GVWR includes passengers and cargo when fully loaded.

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.


A 10 year old Ford Focus weighs 2900lb empty. I'd be impressed if this truck weighs less than 5k empty.


Private passenger vehicles is under 10% of global CO2 emissions. Electricity and heating is about 4x. Manufacturing and construction 2x, farming 2x, freight 1x. Repurposed light commercial vehicles would be a tiny fraction of those numbers. I suspect they are not what's killing the planet.


Broken out per-pound, I suspect that private passenger vehicles represent a disproportionate amount of unnecessary global emissions.

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.


Sounds dubious considering the amount of CO2 emissions caused by uneaten / wasted food is similar to personal transportation emissions.

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.


There is a simple way to find out what is “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.


> 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”.

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.


> 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

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.


You can put a blindfold on and throw lots of darts at the board, sure. I was specifically addressing the idea that economics somehow determines which CO2 producing activity is destroying the world and which isn't. CO2 is CO2.


I don't know what your first sentence means. A carbon tax puts into focus which carbon emissions are truly essential, and which ones are optional, expressed by the spending choices consumers make. If you have it in place and most voters agree with the principle (because they make money) then you move the tax rate slider up or down to get carbon emissions to whatever level is enough.


My first sentence means that UBI doesn't change anything to somehow make the offered definition of what kind of carbon pollution is destroying the world valid.

"Essential" doesn't mean anything to the physics of climate change, it just means something like "what people choose to do".


Again, no idea what you're saying. You're just repeating "essential" over and over, with a heavy dose of cynicism.


> 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.

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.


> 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).

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.


> Those are the vehicles killing the planet!

That would be boats. Cars or trucks or even semis don't even rank.


This isn't even close. Cars globally emit 4x as much CO2 as the global fleet.

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.


Interestingly, that used to be true, but in the past few years some regulations have gone into effect regarding sulfur emissions in cargo ships.

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.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-024-01442-3


You’ve literally made the point. How many boats are there? Compared to cars? My guess is we as a species don’t have anywhere near 1/4 the number of cars as boats worldwide. I would be flabbergasted if the number of boats (with motors) was even 1/10 the number of cars.

Boats pollute massively and it’s a shame considering that water is a much more efficient medium of transportation thanks to buoyancy.


Considering a ship can carry tens of thousands as much cargo as a car, the comparison isn't even remotely fair.


> 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.


Yes but this is not some incredible realization. Cars transport individuals (up to a family) whereas these enormous ships are the backbone of global shipping and commerce. Not to say they can’t run cleaner but this comparison is pointless.


Careful: People often confuse CO2 emissions with NOx emissions when discussing ships.

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.


Would you like to explain how the transportation system with less emissions per kilogram per mile is causing more harm than one of the least efficient forms of terrestrial transport?


Ships, rather.


> the vehicles have airbags, 360-degree cameras, blind-spot monitoring, collision sensors[, AC,] and anti-lock brakes — all of which are missing on the [old ones].

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


>Woa, is driving without airbags even legal nowadays

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.


There’s also often exceptions and issues when it comes to one agency in the government trying to enforce rules on another.

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.


And there are antique plates etc. States are generally very hesitant to forbid people to drive their cars unless there's something that poses a serious imminent threat to others.


Because not enough people own really old cars for it to be worth worrying about. And as you note, and increased endangerment is generally to the owner.


There's an exception for quadricycles IIRC (very small cars).


“it was legal when i bought it, so it’s legal now!”


Better than aviation: "it was legal when we got it approved it, so it's legal to manufacture now!" (decades later)

(I like the discussion about this example: https://www.flightglobal.com/airbus-challenges-737-grandfath... )


More like it was legal when someone originally bought it. (With some caveats.)


Many things are this way. The number of houses in the silicon valley that still have knob and tube wiring is kind of hilarious.

Can't build new houses with it, but grandfathered in until you have to make changes.


You might be thinking of UPS. USPS doesn't operate outside of the US.


> Woa, is driving without airbags even legal nowadays or do they drive different ones in Germany?

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.


This is the case in most jurisdictions (and even the ones that do NOT permit cars older than X years - as I believe Japan does - have exceptions for historical vehicles and other purposes).


I have never seen a USPS truck here. And I think all of my imports were delivered by DHL or UPS within Germany.

I don't think USPS drives any trucks in Germany


When someone ships something to you from the US via USPS you’ll get it delivered via your local postal service, in this case Deustche Post. And vice-versa.


you don't. USPS is US federal government, not a company


Congress keeps trying to privatize it, which would be a disaster and is wildly unpopular. Instead, they keep sabotaging it.

This is why it has bonkers pension requirements and constantly hemorrhages money.

Anyway, it does not operate overseas.


> Congress keeps trying to privatize it, which would be a disaster and is wildly unpopular. Instead, they keep sabotaging it.

> 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.


I'm curious. Is there anywhere I could read about what has been done? An article, a book, or whatever.


I guess you can start here... (though it doesn't mention the USPS bill.)

https://www.whitehouse.gov/therecord/


Good to know the pension thing was fixed under Biden. This administration also stopped progress on USPS privatization (which seemed pretty inevitable under Trump).

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.


Prefunding pensions out of operating revenues is onerous relative to similar federal agencies, but is it really bonkers?

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.


Yes, because this is a Federal government organization, so it is backed by the Federal government/US Treasury.

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.


Are airbags required for driving in Germany?

If a German owns a 1961 BMW Isetta, is it required that it have airbags before it is driven on the roadway?


No it is not.


You can drive a model-T if you want to. They are lacking any safety features.


The top speed of the Model T was 42 mph (68 km/h), but most roads of the time were meant for far slower animal drawn carriages.

The primary danger was plate glass windows shredding the occupants, or the gearbox bushing failing (Fords early transmission designs were interesting.) =3


Airbags weren't invented until many decades after the Model T. And cars were already exceeding 100mph by the 20s. Airbags remained a premium, nonrequired feature until the 90s iirc.


And if the transmission fails so does the foot brake.


Ford sucks at transmissions even now


They turbo-charge nicely.


Begin able to only do 40mph is arguably a safety feature


Also related, the US mandated backup cameras for new vehicles in 2018 while Europe took until 2022. My uneducated guess from visiting the US is that very few people reverse-park and huge cars/SUVs have poor visibility, so the risk of backup collisions is high. I read somewhere that despite this, a lot of models in the US have had backup cameras for years, well in advance of the mandate.

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.


Do school buses even have seatbelts?


I appreciate that even a young child could stand in front of the grill and be visible. Well done.


I was going to comment that these trucks could be much less dangerous in collisions with pedestrians and cyclists, without sacrificing utility. It could encourage better design standards for things like pickup trucks, SUVs, and minivans.


Pickup truck front end design has nothing to do with this. It’s entirely based on Tonka Truck design principles I.e. bigger and boxier and higher is more tough! Tough = good! It’s the same reason glove sizing at Home Depot starts at XL and goes up from there.

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.


> glove sizing at Home Depot starts at XL and goes up from there

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.


They're comically stupid

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.


>pickup trucks, SUVs, and minivans.

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...


Seems to be coming from this https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/suvs-other-large-vehicles-o...

> 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.


The first sentence says they’re not going to win a beauty contest but I think they’re kinda cute! Presumably the low hood helps a lot with visibility.


Personally, I think it looks really bad. Especially after seeing a different angle on the Wikipedia page[0].

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oshkosh_NGDV


That picture makes it look even cuter to me, like it’s a Pixar character.

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!


> put form over function here

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.


> anyone as short as 5'2" can see over the hood

Sure beats those huge trucks that are slaughtering Americans in the thousands.

https://www.economist.com/weeklyedition/2024-09-07


It would probably be worth adjusting our esthetic preferences if it means safer roads for everyone.


I definitely see that! Lightning McQueen vibes.


I'll bet it looks fantastic from the inside with those huge windows and tiny hoods.


Those huge windows and tiny hoods also probably make them significantly safer for little kids and pets.

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.


So this is basically just what cars should look like.


Why is it so extremely loud inside, though?


It looks distinctive, in 15 years it will be how everyone imagines mail trucks are supposed to look. That is a universe I like, I think.


Really the only flaw is trying to mirror a conventional car headlight design; if they went with something a bit quirky like an LED grid covering the entire front or something it would become something totally unique.


Huh, I think that design would fit right in in Japan, but it's pretty odd by American standards.

I wouldn't say it's bad, but it's definitely a bizarre choice for a US government design.


It looks... bizarre, like someone gave a box truck the lowrider treatment. And is that a hint of Chevy I see at the top of the grill, although it's based on a Ford?


Ha! That is very strange. If you colored that area in, it would totally look like the Chevy bowtie logo.


It is the OshKosh logo…


i also think they're ugly, but they're ugly in a disarming, endearing sort of way. and maybe it's just becuase i know it's a mail truck which is a useful thing, but i think the ugliness makes me like it.


Michael Jackson "bad" or... These seem people friendly like government is supposed to be.


I agree it looks ridiculous. It is sad that such bad design will continue uglification of our streets.


Not sure that "vehicle that doesn't kill children or injure its employees" qualifies as "bad design" because ArtemZ thinks it looks ridiculous


To me, they look like they are from the movie "Up".


Yeah, these are awesome. It’s SUVs that are ugly.


…and dangerous!


They look ugly as hell but if it works and makes carriers job easier and more efficient then it’s a success in my book.


That's the difference between UX and mere aesthetics. Great UX sometimes looks goofy, until you live with it for a bit.


Great UX should aesthetic and functional. It's never a choice between the two, especially these days.


Will these not roll over easily?


The EV version would certainly have a very low center of gravity. The gas one wouldn’t be as good but they must have tested for that right?


It is always a little refreshing to hear of a successful government project. Congratulations.

I was skeptical of Louis Dejoy's appointment to the USPS but maybe it will turn out OK.


I'm more than skeptical, still. DeJoy would prefer to scale down operations and privatize as much of mail delivery as possible, as well as raise rates for regular mailpieces in (what I consider) a misguided effort to make the USPS more self-sustainable financially. I fundamentally disagree with his basic stance here: the post is a public service, and should not be run like a business. Certainly we should eliminate waste and inefficiency where possible (something most governments could stand to do in many areas), but not at the expense of service, and not by making mail costs more expensive for average people. (Jacking up rates on bulk mail is something I can get behind, though.)

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.


I wish we had a metric of "acceptable government waste, because we're providing a public service."

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.


Robustness looks like waste if you're obsessed with efficiency over all else.


I agree. Considering the old fleet had a measly 150 mile range I would expect the vast majority to be replaced by EVs, not a begrudging 50%. "Rave reviews" was not the bar. Just having AC will get rave reviews from a postal worker.

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!


I’m still very skeptical. I think we’re at this point due to pressure, the failing old fleet, and lawsuits.

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.


> I’ll miss the old Grumman LLVs though. They are the post office to me, being there basically all my life.

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".


> 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.

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...


Makes sense.

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.


The new mail truck program started in 2015 before Dejoy started in 2020. Contracts for prototypes were awarded in 2016, testing and evaluation started in 2017, and the production contract was signed in 2021. I wouldn't credit Dejoy too much.


Thanks for the info. I thought it was a little strange that he did this (Trump appointee, conflict of interest, EVs). We will see what the future brings.


Like the article said, the LLVs are 12 years past service life and catching on fire. Gotta do something.

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.


In almost every instance, I love when function is prioritized over form. This seems like a landmark implementation of that philosophy. Brava!


Why does the article only mention the mpg the older cars get? A significant number of the new ones use gas, do they perform better? I somewhat suspect not given their size.


The internal combustion engine (ICE) variant has an estimated fuel efficiency of 14.7 mpg‑US (16.0 L/100 km), decreasing to 8.6 mpg‑US (27 L/100 km) when the air conditioning is on. For comparison, the earlier LLV (built 1987–94) and FFV (2000–01) have an average observed fuel consumption of 8.2 and 6.9 mpg‑US (29 and 34 L/100 km), respectively.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oshkosh_NGDV


As a european, I am baffled by those numbers ! A 2.0L consuming 27L/100 is MASSIVE.

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


Wow, that is a massive hit to fuel consumption from the A/C. What gives?


Is it? The thing's huge, air conditioning is never cheap. A quick search says average cars consume ~25% more gas with AC, making it somewhat high.

I think short trips at low speeds are also terrible for AC, dunno how they did the projections.


A quick search says average cars consume ~25% more gas with AC, making it somewhat high.

Tons of websites say this but in my own testing during my commute the difference is almost unnoticeable, let alone a full 25%.


my car consumes 5% more with AC on. it's a 2002 Mazda. So, I don't believe 25% number.


My source was a government site, make of it what you will. I may have worded it more strongly than I should have. https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/hotweather.shtml


Consumer Reports did a study on this and it only reduced gas mileage by 3% on a Honda.

https://shop.advanceautoparts.com/r/advice/car-maintenance/c...


At 65mph and ~85 degrees. The page I linked sources several studies testing at many other temperatures and speeds.


No car takes a 25% hit from the A/C in gas mileage.


>The internal combustion engine (ICE) variant has an estimated fuel efficiency of 14.7 mpg‑US (16.0 L/100 km), decreasing to 8.6 mpg‑US (27 L/100 km) when the air conditioning is on.


It may be a “worst case, only when actively cooling at maximum power” figure. In reality you’d expect ambient conditions to make a big difference to aircon energy use.


I feel the same way. I've never had a vehicle that consumed more than 5% extra with A/C. With my current diesel I can't notice a difference at all.


No. Sorry the quick search result was dead wrong.


I think the numbers here are more like the expected consumption in actual mail delivery usage vs. something like the familiar EPA MPG ratings you'd see on cars.

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.


Perhaps you can't use the auto-start/stop feature of the ICE system when the aircon is on? When the vehicle is stopped, something needs to be turning the compressor or things get hot pretty quick in hot climates. USPS trucks probably benefit from the start/stop system more than any other efficiency feature this new vehicle has.


AC ON with door open venting to the outside at all times, no air dam.


I love it when my tax dollars are used for something like this. A worthwhile project that seems to have been well executed.


Depending if that was sarcasm or not, I may have some bad/good news for you:

https://facts.usps.com/0-tax-dallars/


That wasn't sarcastic hah. I just assumed it was taxpayer funded!


It is.

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.


"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."


Is the misspelling (dallars) a reference I've missed?


I am surprised by the long hood/nose and then thick bumpers.

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.


> 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.

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.


Presumably the mailmen can just take a lesson from Amazon, UPS et al and leave the vehicle idling in the travel lane when that happens.


Strange that Amazon can make Rivian trucks work but not USPS.


Rivians cost ~45% more per-unit than the postal vehicle (86k vs $59k), and doesn’t come in an ice variant, which the Post Office requires.


Why does it require a variant? Why can't the necessary ICE vehicles be one of the countless existing options?


Having a common platform for postal vehicles makes things like maintenance easier.


Seems like ice requirements don’t apply to every state


They don’t, but California essentially dictates them because nobody wants to cut themselves out of the richest state’s car sales


The ice requirement has nothing to do with California standards, which only applies to cars bought in California, which USPS doesn’t do.

Some postal routes are in cold climates with harsh winters where EVs would be impractical.


Amazon only delivers to the easy areas and uses USPS to deliver to all the places where they can't deliver economically


False. I happen to know that Amazon delivers in hilariously bad terrain. But yeah, they probably only use Rivians in easy areas. I've never seen one.


The old USPS trucks have a 150 mile range. That is not a difficult range for electric.


?? Amazon custom designed their vehicle. USPS custom designed their vehicle. What’s the difference here?


amazon has a variety of vehicles that they use, and the rivians are one of many options.

the USPS was trying to find one vehicle that could serve all their routes.


There's different requirements and use cases.


Why is it strange? Isn't it common and expected for the government to lag behind the private sector?


The USPS has a podcast with an episode on the process behind it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShhBZVE68-0&list=PL1NEtJgO49...


It looks like a Pixar character that's about to teach me a valuable lesson.


I was always under the impression that the lack of air conditioning in these vehicles had less to do with budget constraints and more with process constraints. If they're driving mailbox to mailbox, they'll likely want to keep their window down, and they frequently need to get in and out of the vehicle to deliver packages. Wouldn't that lead to a lot of dissipation of cooled air?


A/C with windows down and frequent door opening is still going to be a lot more comfortable for the driver than a crappy 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.


It may have made their already abysmal mileage even worse. If it nocked off 2 MPG that would be an almost 25% reduction.

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.


I admit that A/C with windows down is how I use it when driving around town. Just for when I get into a hot car. When the car cools down, I turn the A/C off.

I do run A/C on highway trips, partly because I suspect that the noise with windows open can cause hearing damage.


If it’s got AC the postal carriers will love it.


Is there an explanation for why the USPS needs custom-designed vehicles built by a defense contractor when every other last mile delivery company just buys ordinary vans and trucks?


UPS trucks are custom designed for UPS; they used to have a nice documentary about it. New Amazon trucks around where I live are clearly custom (and also not very pretty, if you ask me).


New Amazon trucks are built by Rivian.


I saw a Rivian mobile service van for the first time about two weeks ago. I was behind it in traffic. It’s exactly the same design as Amazon, just different paint.

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.


None have huge windows like this. Are the tasks that different?


Perhaps the next generation of UPS trucks will have large windows like the new USPS trucks. If it seems to be a useful feature, others will adopt it eventually.


It's very clearly a useful feature for seeing children while driving round residential areas, where they might be playing in the street.

Since it costs extra, Amazon will only adopt if if they're forced, either by regulation or significant social pressure.


UPS doesn't just buy ordinary vans and trucks.

'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,"


Didn't Arrival go bankrupt? https://fortune.com/europe/2024/02/06/british-ev-maker-value...

I think I have seen a youtuber who was buying some of the prototype UPS trucks on an auction: https://youtu.be/63R3mt61g_Y


Last mile delivery companies don't handle the volume of non-package traffic that the USPS does. At that scale, tailoring can really pay off in productivity.


Are you saying that the USPS delivering a handful of advertisements in addition to the odd package has greater demands than UPS/Fedex/Amazon delivering the bulk of the large packages in our society?


Not necessarily greater (though I'd think so, yes), but certainly different.


It’s definitely way more than a handful; spam makes up the vast majority of my USPS service by quantity and probably the largest share by volume.


Because they don't deliver to mailboxes on the curb opposite the driver in a LHD vehicle?


Name one last mile delivery company that doesn't have a purpose built van supplier? Amazon is getting Rivian to build theirs (after trying buying off the shelf)[1]. UPS uses a ford chassis but custom body work[2]. Fedex is perhaps the closest as they work with many manufacturers, but they have their vehicles custom built for them[3].

[1] https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/transportation/everything-y...

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/Trucks/comments/ppo5tu/what_model_a...

[3] https://trucksauthority.com/who-makes-fedex-trucks/


French, German, Dutch, Swiss, British, Spanish etc etc etc post office, alongside DHL/FedEx/TNT/etc. in each of those?


I do not have detailed knowledge about the various national postal services you mention, but I suspect you also don't? The German post uses custom EVs[1].

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...


Sorry, made an outdated assumption about Germany in particular.

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.


Royal Mail use a wide range of off-the-shelf vehicles. They don't seem to have any particular brand loyalty.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/76716069@N03/galleries/7215765...


I don't mean to say that delivery companies must only use custom-built vehicles - but that basically all services have some custom vehicles. As an example the Royal Mail does seem to use a lot of production vehicles, but they also are working with Arrival for what look like custom made delivery vans. You can compare the Royal Mail vehicle made by Arrival[1] and their generic landing page for their van sales[2].

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/DesignPorn/comments/iskdah/royal_ma...

[2] https://arrival.com/topic/van


They want to be able to buy the exact same vehicles for the next 40 or 50 years.


How is that a good idea?


They are testing "ordinary" vans as well. They purchased 6 Canoo vans[0] for testing and announced plan to buy 9000 Ford E-Transit vehicles[1] earlier this year.

[0] https://www.press.canoo.com/press-release/canoo-reaches-agre...

[1] https://media.ford.com/content/fordmedia/fna/us/en/news/2024...


seriously - what a waste of money. Guaranteed the maintenance is rife with corrupt arrangements. Also guaranteed that almost any American car manufacturer (Rivian, Tesla, Ford, etc.) would have done a far better job for far less. Did they even pretend to have a fair bidding system? Oshkosh Defense? Seriously?! What a joke.


Yes, there was a bidding process, you can see some of the entrants that lost here: https://jalopnik.com/here-are-all-the-mail-trucks-that-didn-...

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 receives no tax dollars for operating expenses and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations.

The Postal Service has a legally enforced monopoly that it abuses to deliver literal metric tons of spam into our mailboxes every single day.


What law is it that prevents UPS/FedEx from carrying spam?


How is this any different from the Grumman Long Life Vehicle it replaces? It worked well last time.


The only thing that comes to mind is maybe defense co. has experience building with indestructible materials, and the specs are for lasting 50 years, which when amortized is optimal for an entity like the government that can dump huge amounts of capital ($40B) at once that a private sector CEO can never do.


It is, to some degree, a jobs program. Whoever wins is guaranteed a lot of work for a long time. So contractors really want it.

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.


I think it’s mostly that defense contractors are specialized in selling to the government, which entails jumping through regulatory compliance hoops and placating elected officials by distributing the supply chain across as many congressional districts as possible.


There was a whole thing with proposals from multiple companies. Did any of those companies even bid? I don’t know.

It was all in the open. It’s not like they were just picked in secret without anyone else getting any consideration.


Do you have any evidence or do you just feel like that?


>Guaranteed the maintenance is rife with corrupt arrangements.

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...


How does making military vehicles make you qualified to build vehicles that drive in urban areas? These vehicles need to be safe for pedestrians, not emit excessive noise, exhaust etc. All these things are irrelevant for the military.


Does anyone know how USPS/UPS/Fedex trucks can start and stop their engines over and over and over without running down the batteries? Do they have 400 amp/hour monsters installed and recharge them at the depot, or what?


Modern pure ICE cars have “idle-stop” technology. I believe it’s mandatory nowadays for any new pure ICE car in the US. One of the perks of buying hybrid IMO, the engine stopping at every stop is kind of annoying.


I'm not sure it's mandatory per-say.

The stop-idle can factor into your mpg so it's an easy way to boost it (which there are requirements about).


It’s not, most high performance sedans will leave it out as they don’t have enough volume to affect the averages anyway.

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...


I've actually been curious about that. For all the zillion things I can configure in my Honda Passport, I can apparently not turn that annoying feature off. It's OK. I just reflexively hit the button when I start the car now. But I assume having it non-configurable factors into some fleet MPG calculation.

(It's annoying because it interjects a slight delay when I make a left-hand turn.)


> For all the zillion things I can configure in my Honda Passport, I can apparently not turn that annoying feature off.

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.


I hate sticking third-party modules into my vehicles but I also hate the hesitation on uncontrolled left-hand turns in particular. Seems dangerous. 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.

Too bad. It seems a great vehicle otherwise. Like it a lot more than my previous 4Runner.


> but I also hate the hesitation on uncontrolled left-hand turns in particular. Seems dangerous.

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.


It's pretty idiotic I can permanently turn off a bunch of the safety features on the car but not this. As you say, it's pretty reflexive to just turn it off when you start the car if you're used to it. When I do a road trip with a friend when we share driving, I always have to remember to reach over and turn it off for her because it annoys her as much as it annoys me.


With manual transmission it doesn’t add any delay imo, the engine starts (in Volvo/Ford? implementation? ) by pressing the clutch so engine is always responsive when depressing.

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.


In many places it’s actually illegal to sit at a red light or intersection with your car in neutral, foot off the clutch. You’ll fail your driving test if you do that. If there is an emergency, getting moving is much slower than if you were in gear, foot on clutch.


> In many places it’s actually illegal to sit at a red light or intersection with your car in neutral, foot off the clutch.

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.


Maybe it's that I don't drive in cities much (with auto transmission) so I've never noticed any real difference in terms of mileage.


Yep, a lot of people turn it off due to it lashing the hell out of the timing chain significantly bumping up the $2000-$3000 maintenance schedule, or indeed making it even necessary.

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.


I don't know the exact answer but when I worked there while in college 20 years ago the package cars were never connected to chargers overnight, nor did they receive any other special attention. I would imagine that they use heavy duty batteries and just spend an enough time driving and idling that it all balances out during the workday.


Makes being a mail carrier sound significantly better. Between having AC and a union im almost envious


I'm friends with my neighborhood mail carrier and during the summer he's told me the inside of his truck is like being in a tin can. It gets super hot. He tries to park it in shady spots while he's out making runs but that's not always possible.


Of my friends that went to 20 years in the military, half of them went to the post office after. You work for 40 years, retire at 58 with 2 pensions and full medical care. You'll never be rich but you probably never worried about losing your job a day in your life.


I call that rich


Maybe we could cut down on carbon emissions by drastically cutting down on junk mail sent


It's honestly not the junk mail, its all the crap from Amazon/Temu/Aliexpress etc etc.


If I order something from Amazon, I use it. If I get junk mail I throw it directly in the trash. They are not the same.


My point is that junk mail is typically printed locally, on paper. Much of Amazon/Temu deliveries are plastic junk, made in China and shipped overseas. Watch various Reels/Tiktoks/etc and you'll see how many influencers buy crappy gadgets that aren't really needed. We are creating so much junk.


I literally have never seen spare parts for any electronics in a Canadian store.

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)


They look like something from Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs


> Noisy and fuel-inefficient (9 mpg), the Grummans are costly to maintain.

> 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...


Here is the original environmental impact study from USPS - https://uspsngdveis.com/documents/USPS%20NGDV%20Draft%20EIS....

"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.


Same MPG but now with AC is a huge win!


I'd like to see the ratio of hours with AC on vs off fleet-wide after the first year.

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."

https://www.iea.org/reports/cooling-on-the-move


> "14.7 miles per gallon (mpg) (without air conditioning) 8.6 mpg (with air conditioning)"

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.


An open door will kill your mileage. USPS vans are designed for an incredibly specific role.


> Environmentalists were outraged when DeJoy announced that 90% of the next-gen vehicles in the first order would be gas-powered.

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).


Even ignoring lobbying, it's his party's (and the president at the time's) very outspoken position that EVs are some green nut's pipe dream being shoved down their throats.

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.


How can you possibly believe that? The first weekend I had my model 3 I drove it across two states, since that's where I bought it. It's got every bit of utility my previous ICE car had.


> Oshkosh's proposed vehicle will only average 8.6 mpg (27.35 L/100 km) according to the EPA, a barely noticeable improvement on the current Grumman-made LLV trucks, which average 8.2 mpg (28.68 L/100 km).

Such a wasted opportunity


It’s a really hard task to make an efficient gas vehicle that stops and starts constantly. They’re just really bad at it.

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.


>Sure you can make it a full hybrid but then you’re like 80% of the way there to a battery vehicle anyway.

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.


Full hybrid has the downsides of electric (electric stuff to be serviced and weight/costs associated) and the downsides of gas (emissions, complexity of maintenance + engine, weight/cost of engine).

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.


1: The cost of the gas engine is offset by the reduction in cost and weight of a smaller hybrid battery.

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.


Sure you can make it a full hybrid but then you’re like 80% of the way there to a battery vehicle anyway.

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


It's a fleet vehicle. The government can afford it and it will pay off in spades over the lifetime of the vehicles.

Upfront cost doesn't matter nearly as much as lifetime cost. And the difference is not going to be small.


Wasted opportunity for what?

> 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.


> in areas where the charging capacity is impractical

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?


Chargers cost $$ to deploy and there may not be a sufficient amount of customers and trucks to warrant that money (+ may not have easy maintenance for BEVs in those places). That could be one explanation. And yes, there are probably a lot of places where the power grid wouldn't be rated to charge up truck batteries and need updates of infrastructure such as transformers to deliver that amount of electricity to the postal depot.

I'm not informed on the matter but those would be my best guesses.


Repairs (not maintenance per say) might be something.

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.


> considering home chargers cost a couple thousand to install

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.


I can’t quickly find the mileage with the AC not running. More to the point, it is mostly a myth that running the AC uses a significant amount of fuel. The compressor is usually driven by the serpentine belt, and adding the clutch plate for the AC into that system does not add significant drag. A little, yes.


> it is mostly a myth that running the AC uses a significant amount of fuel

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.


What do you mean “what?”

You ignored a word: significant


It can have some added effects for more modern vehicles. For example, if the AC is running in my car, the engine auto start/stop is disabled.


I would assume it's not the clutch plate that adds significant drag, but the AC compressor itself.


Yeah I could have phrased that better. The clutch plate engaging the compressor would have been more specific, I assumed it was implied. Apologies.



They’re going to be replacing a lot of windshields…


Easier to replace windshields than run-over kids. Good visibility is more important.


If visibility was important then why put such a large snout?


It's unforgivable that the entire fleet was not mandated to be electric from the start, especially given the post office's nationwide network of parking and service areas where they could charge.

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.


There are probably places where gas may still make more sense, like extremely cold climates.

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%.


Or just buy existing electric van from someone like MB or Rivian.


You need to visit rural areas. Not everything is a city.


Rural areas have fewer trucks and therefore require fewer chargers. I'm not seeing the problem here.

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.


How is it the new model looks even more outdated than the old one?


Form follows function but also goofy Pentagon Wars tier design.


Does anyone know where one might go to buy the retired vehicles?


Possibly government surplus: https://www.gsaauctions.gov/auctions/home

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.


> Does anyone know where one might go to buy the retired vehicles?

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.


Damn, if the intent of electrifying the fleet is to be more ecologically friendly, allowing these older vehicles to be recirculated seems like a compelling thing to do. I suppose the weird configuration of these vehicles doesn't make it a very good option as a personal vehicle, so destroying them is probably just as ecological as selling them to hobbyists like me. It will be sad to see these things disappear from existence though. They've been a part of my life since I was a kid.


>Damn, if the intent of electrifying the fleet is to be more ecologically friendly, allowing these older vehicles to be recirculated seems like a compelling thing to do

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.


you may want to watch this review first :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3g2p4KKS74


If you did buy one, you might not be able to license it in your state. Your mileage may vary.

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.



Love these weird little guys.


Big bumper in the front.


Quick online search suggests it’s for pedestrian safety and preventing damage which makes sense, mail trucks are driving super close to stuff all the time


I wonder what’s up there in the EV version. Maybe more battery?


They are probably not putting one of the most expensive and unrepairable components in the bumper. The bumpers look ugly because they aren't integrated into the car body/metawork, and can be more easily replaced.

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.


I wouldn't think you'd do it full length to the front, just closer to behind the dash where you could get some extra battery in but still have lots of crumple zone in front of it.

Just a guess. I'd love to see a video giving a deep overview of these the way you see car reviews on YouTube.


DeJoy was a Trump appointee. As witnessed by other such appointees (education, EPA), I was concerned DeJoy would gut the postal service. Sounds like that isn’t the case.


There was indeed sabotage, in the form of dismantling and not replacing hundreds of working mail sorting machines in an election year: https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewsolender/2020/08/19/repor... https://truthout.org/articles/usps-sorting-machines-are-stil... https://www.ajc.com/news/postal-service-tells-judge-mail-sor... https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/09/politics/usps-removed-711...

I don't know how he hasn't been removed after this.


There was a TON of controversy early on. There were _significant_ cuts, and, IIRC, very poor performance during the first Christmas season. I remember a large amount of negativity about both his proposed changes and the actual changes he implemented. Of course, the extent to which you think it's trying to kill the USPS vs simply make it more efficient to save it will depend a lot on your politics.


We received Christmas cards mid-January which were sent well before Christmas.


He tried gas powered, then due to backlash got the government to give $3B for electric.

“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.”


My understanding is that the bought a majority-gas fleet with the budget he had, and as congress have him additional money for EV purchases, he adjusted increasingly towards EVs.

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.


> it was not easy to actually buy $6B in working EV vans... they were all hypothetical

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.


> Environmentalists were outraged

Remember, us normal folks were not enraged, it was the environmentalists. (sarcasm)


Rick Perry was also appointed to run the Department of Energy presumably because he was famous for previously saying it should be abolished... yet by all accounts seems to have taken the job seriously and did it well.


An abomination clearly designed by committee.


these sonehow look like.. US.




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