USPS is getting new trucks but only 10% are electric

[DeScruff]

3 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

Apparently they can be converted to electric later. Right now, there is almost no electric charging infrastructure in the US. Some of these trucks have insanely long days, so you have to be able to charge them all overnight and they need the range to complete their routes without needing to recharge. 

 

I guarantee that the reason the USPS is not going full out electric is simply because electric cars are not ready for full scale deployment.  

Pretty much this.
Before going all electric they need to set up their own infrastructure to recharge their vehicles. Not exactly an easy task when there are 31,000 post offices throughout the US.
Theres quite a bit of logistics behind this, and that will take time to install.

[poochyena]

3 hours ago, ProjectBox153 said:

Not really if electric vehicles aren't feasible in large amounts of the country.

but it is.

 

3 hours ago, ProjectBox153 said:

The charging infrastructure isn't going to be built that fast, especially in more rural areas.

lmao, what? Do people in rural areas not have electricity?
They do. Its literally just a one or two day job to add some extra connectors to usps hubs to garage or yards that the trucks are parked at. They'll have 12 hours to charge, they don't need advanced fast charging connectors.

 

3 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

They might not be able to afford going electric on the trucks and fitting out the locations. 

That makes no sense. Thats the cheaper option, the more expensive option is to buy a gas truck and then upgrade it later.

3 hours ago, BiotechBen said:

yeah, in places like Iowa, and Idaho, and Wyoming, gas is required given the distances needed to travel.

You can literally drive from one side of Iowa to the other, 300 miles, on a single charge from tesla model 3

[Brooksie359]

3 hours ago, pythonmegapixel said:

It looks to me that they're low floor, presumably to aid the driver getting in and out quickly.

I just hope they have ok clearance because in snowy states it looks like it will get stuck fairly easily.

[DrMacintosh]

21 minutes ago, poochyena said:

but it is.

Electric Cars really are not ready for wide deployment. See here: (The EV experience kinda sucks)

21 minutes ago, poochyena said:

You can literally drive from one side of Iowa to the other, 300 miles, on a single charge from tesla model 3

A post office route is not a straight line. 

 

21 minutes ago, poochyena said:

lmao, what? Do people in rural areas not have electricity?
They do. Its literally just a one or two day job to add some extra connectors to usps hubs to garage or yards that the trucks are parked at. They'll have 12 hours to charge, they don't need advanced fast charging connectors.

Oh really? It's that easy? So assuming you can do at least one post office a day....all the post offices would be done in.....31,000 years? Even if the post office could convert 20 post offices per day, that's still 4 years to convert them all. 20 a day is frankly an optimistic number for government contractors. 

 

The point is, having the cars first is simply the more practical way to go. Once you have the cars, you can trickle convert local fleets to electric without any impact on services and without wasting work on building facilities that have to wait years to be used. 

 

Parcel Services are masters of logistics, I'm inclined to believe that they made the most practical choice here.....

[Brooksie359]

19 minutes ago, poochyena said:

but it is.

 

lmao, what? Do people in rural areas not have electricity?
They do. Its literally just a one or two day job to add some extra connectors to usps hubs to garage or yards that the trucks are parked at. They'll have 12 hours to charge, they don't need advanced fast charging connectors.

 

That makes no sense. Thats the cheaper option, the more expensive option is to buy a gas truck and then upgrade it later.

You can literally drive from one side of Iowa to the other, 300 miles, on a single charge from tesla model 3

If you have a budget you have to go within that budget. They already said that they can't do more than 10% now because of budget reasons and could do more if they were provided more funding so don't act like money isn't the reason when they literally said it was. Sure it would cost more over the long run to do conversion to electric like they are planning to do but so does buying a house with a house loan vs buying a house all upfront. The reason you do things that cost more over the long term but reach the same end result is pretty simple. They can afford to pay that cost over the long term but they can't pay the high cost upfront. 

[poochyena]

9 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

Electric Cars really are not ready for wide deployment. See here: (The EV experience kinda sucks)

>Jeremy Clarkson
Doesn't he have a history of unfairly reviewing electric cars? https://topgear.fandom.com/wiki/Tesla_Roadster_Review_Controversy

11 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

A post office route is not a straight line. 

duh? Why did you feel the need to point that out?

12 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

Oh really? It's that easy? So assuming you can do at least one post office a day....all the post offices would be done in.....31,000 years?

sorry for taking your serious at first. I'll move on.

12 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

could do more if they were provided more funding

Then do it then, when more funding is provided. You either do it right the first time or don't do it at all. Full stop.

13 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

but so does buying a house with a house loan vs buying a house all upfront.

well thats a great example right there, if they don't have the cash, then get a loan, that would likely even be cheaper in the long run. This is the government, they can get the money if they wanted.

[DrMacintosh]

22 hours ago, poochyena said:

sorry for taking your serious at first. I'll move on.

23 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

No, I am being serious. At your claimed rate of doing 1 post office per day it would take 85 years to do all post offices. I made a generous scenario of 20 post offices per day that brought the number down to just over 4 years, but the reality is doing 10 post offices a day would be incredible and doing them all in a day would be even more incredible. 

[DrMacintosh]

4 minutes ago, poochyena said:

Then do it then, when more funding is provided. You either do it right the first time or don't do it at all. Full stop.

19 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

That’s literally what they are doing? They are doing it right. They’re buying the cars and converting to electric later! They’re doing it in the most practical way possible. 
 

This way they don’t have to sack the entire fleet and disrupt services while they are trying to get all the electrics online simultaneously. 

[DrMacintosh]

9 minutes ago, poochyena said:

Jeremy Clarkson

Also Clarkson wasn’t even the one in the EV. James May was. 

[straight_stewie]

4 hours ago, GDRRiley said:

but only 10% being electric is pathetic, I wanted 90-95%

That's 10% more than it could have been...

I'm wondering why on Earth a mail truck needs so much glass. That thing looks like somebody put the back of a box truck on a golf cart and topped it off with the glass from the front of a combine.

[spartaman64]

56 minutes ago, poochyena said:

but it is.

 

lmao, what? Do people in rural areas not have electricity?
They do. Its literally just a one or two day job to add some extra connectors to usps hubs to garage or yards that the trucks are parked at. They'll have 12 hours to charge, they don't need advanced fast charging connectors.

 

That makes no sense. Thats the cheaper option, the more expensive option is to buy a gas truck and then upgrade it later.

You can literally drive from one side of Iowa to the other, 300 miles, on a single charge from tesla model 3

they were probably about to give the contract to workhorse a company that pitched an EV usps truck but then texas happened. if the trucks were all EV in texas they would have been stranded 

[RejZoR]

Electric cars are overrated and their ecological benefits are greatly over-exaggerated.

 

Everyone is just "muh torque" and "wow how it accelerates in hyper ludicrous mode" and those same ignore the fact EV's are significantly heavier which means faster deterioration of roads, most of world still gets electricity from coal and gas, battery manufacturing is a rather dirty process of a lot of transportation of materials around the world, a lot of the world isn't sunny California and we have subzero temperatures for a big chunk of the year, charging is still garbage, charging stations and moronic app system is unbelievably retarded compared to gas stations, a lot of people have no means to charge them at home or near home and everyone is praising how batteries can magically be 120% recycled yet we don't know what will happen when entire world runs on batteries and they all suddenly start getting decommissioned after they get used up. And I didn't even touch things like power grid load when everyone is hooking up cars that charge at 50kW or more down to how governments will tax it all. Governments get huge tax money from petrol. Currently everyone is praising low cost of electricity just because governments haven't dropped that sweet petrol tax. Guess what will happen when petrol is sold in small quantities or stopped being sold entirely? You can bet your ass governments will shift petrol tax to electricity tax. You all should damn well know it'll happen. Oh and I didn't even mention the pricing. I know pricing and purchasing power is different in every country, but in mine, EV's are pretty much twice the price of petrol car. You have to be stupid to go into debt for EV or you're loaded enough that you just don't care.

 

There is just so many issues and if's with EV's that I'm just not buying it and jumping on the bandwagon. And so too many people just glance or ignore them and parrot same stupid overhyped talking points and ignoring the actual reality of EV's.

 

[poochyena]

9 minutes ago, spartaman64 said:

if the trucks were all EV in texas they would have been stranded 

What do you mean? The current fleet has 0 EV vehicles and they were stranded

[-iSynthesis]

40 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

Electric Cars really are not ready for wide deployment. See here: (The EV experience kinda sucks)

A post office route is not a straight line. 

 

Oh really? It's that easy? So assuming you can do at least one post office a day....all the post offices would be done in.....31,000 years? Even if the post office could convert 20 post offices per day, that's still 4 years to convert them all. 20 a day is frankly an optimistic number for government contractors. 

 

The point is, having the cars first is simply the more practical way to go. Once you have the cars, you can trickle convert local fleets to electric without any impact on services and without wasting work on building facilities that have to wait years to be used. 

 

Parcel Services are masters of logistics, I'm inclined to believe that they made the most practical choice here.....

You are taking a Grand Tour video and applying it to usps. It just doesn't work.

 

A usps route is pretty much the perfect scenario for an electric. Literally. Lots of stop and go means you can get a good amount of energy back. Short routes that should be well within current electric capabilities. This combined means that a single charge a day would probably get you through most routes.

 

The charging infrastructure at the depot wouldn't have to be insanely fast charging, it would just have to charge them over night. This is neither expensive in comparison to other spendings usps has nor does it take a long time to do.

[spartaman64]

5 minutes ago, poochyena said:

What do you mean? The current fleet has 0 EV vehicles and they were stranded

sure but the strain of a few thousand EV trucks would have put much more pressure on the power grid

[DeScruff]

39 minutes ago, poochyena said:

Then do it then, when more funding is provided. You either do it right the first time or don't do it at all. Full stop.

That... is a terrible idea for logistics, and is NEVER how anything is ever done on a mass scale. Ever.
Doing a more gradual roll out lets you address issues, analyze real world performance, or build up inventory of parts. - These are custom vehicles after all, and will probably be used for 20+ years.
The USPS has been looking to replacing/retrofititng their 100,000 vehicles since 2009. The oldest of which are well past their intended lifespan (we are talking 1987 vehicles here), and the newest of which (1994?) are still prone of same initial design flaws - Some of which are actually hazardous, like catching fire!

Also I don't wanna go into politics, but do we need a reminder of a few months back about the funding issues the Post Office has? Good luck having enough to pay for an all at once expense.

[poochyena]

3 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

EV's are significantly heavier which means faster deterioration of roads

from quick searches comparing EVs to gas cars, I only saw an average of around 20% weight difference? Thats not that much more

4 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

most of world still gets electricity from coal and gas

right, and coal and gas is more efficient than burning gasoline, so how is that a negative?

5 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

battery manufacturing is a rather dirty process of a lot of transportation of materials around the world

which is less dirty than producing and using gas cars.

6 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

charging is still garbage, charging stations and moronic app system is unbelievably retarded compared to gas stations

how so? I dream of the day I can just charge at home or while shopping, never having to stop at a gas station to get gas. Its way more efficient from a personal level to not have to make an extra stop.

8 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Currently everyone is praising low cost of electricity just because governments haven't dropped that sweet petrol tax

but that would still make electricity cheaper unless it was taxed signifigantly higher than gas is.

[poochyena]

3 minutes ago, spartaman64 said:

sure but the strain of a few thousand EV trucks would have put much more pressure on the power grid

explain

2 minutes ago, DeScruff said:

Doing a more gradual roll out

thats not whats being done here. They are doing a full roll out, but using mostly gas vehicles rather than electric. I would support a gradual electric vehicle roll out. I don't support the full rollout of gas vehicles happening now.

 

3 minutes ago, DeScruff said:

but do we need a reminder of a few months back about the funding issues the Post Office has?

Which could be solved almost instantly by eliminating Dejoy as postmaster and replacing him with someone who is actually trying to NOT run usps into the ground for politcal motives.

[RejZoR]

It seems to me you've already formed an opinion and won't budge from it no matter what. I'm not even going to bother arguing. I've posted what the differences are and what everyone just ignores when furiously defending EV's. Yet they are there.

[spartaman64]

Just now, poochyena said:

explain

thats not whats being done here. They are doing a full roll out, but using mostly gas vehicles rather than electric. I would support a gradual electric vehicle roll out. I don't support the full rollout of gas vehicles happening now.

 

Which could be solved almost instantly by eliminating Dejoy as postmaster and replacing him with someone who is actually trying to NOT run usps into the ground for politcal motives.

the blackout isnt due to powerline failures its due to power stations not being able to generate enough power. more EVs would have made the issue worth and usps would have been forced to hold off on operations for longer

[ProjectBox153]

1 hour ago, poochyena said:

You can literally drive from one side of Iowa to the other, 300 miles, on a single charge from tesla model 3

Lol.

The route that a mail vehicle takes is nowhere near comparable to driving in a straight line. That's a pointless comparison. 

One of the issues I can think of right off when it comes to getting a charging infrastructure in place is capacity. Another is reliability. There's a reason that they aren't starting will more electric vehicles than they are. 

[DeScruff]

1 minute ago, poochyena said:

thats not whats being done here. They are doing a full roll out, but using mostly gas vehicles rather than electric. I would support a gradual electric vehicle roll out. I don't support the full rollout of gas vehicles happening now.

It is what is happening. The USPS though has determined that a new car in general is more important than anything, and they need them ASAP.
It is also sated by the manufacturer the cars are made to converted into electric. And over the 20 year life of these vehicles, its likely most will be converted.
Why aren't they all coming out as electric? Who knows. It could be battery and chip shortages, it could be the Post Office is replacing the places where electric vehicles are the least viable first (because the vehicles are the most worn down)
"But only 10%!?" - This is very misleading. Its a contract over 10 years. Such contracts tend for change percentages, or exact amounts built over time.

In WWII You might have seen a contract for 1000 of a certain model Airplane over 5 years, with 10% being the updated model, but by year 3 every single one coming off the assembly line was the upgraded model. leading to in reality over 50% of all built being the upgraded model (This is according to my grandmother who built airplanes in WWII)

[poochyena]

40 minutes ago, spartaman64 said:

the blackout isnt due to powerline failures its due to power stations not being able to generate enough power. more EVs would have made the issue worth and usps would have been forced to hold off on operations for longer

I don't understand how you think more EVs would have made it worse. The problem was everything froze because they didn't winterize equipment. The number of EVs would have had 0 impact on that. If the issue was people were using too much electricity, then sure, but that wasn't the issue.

And again, this affected gasoline cars too, as they couldn't buy gas since the pump either didn't work or quickly sold out due to the rush to get gas or from inability to produce more.

37 minutes ago, ProjectBox153 said:

The route that a mail vehicle takes is nowhere near comparable to driving in a straight line. That's a pointless comparison.

can you explain why that is? What, exactly, is the difference between an electric car driving 300 miles on a straight road vs a curvy road?

38 minutes ago, ProjectBox153 said:

One of the issues I can think of right off when it comes to getting a charging infrastructure in place is capacity. Another is reliability.

Explain how those two things are issues. Every usps I know of has access to reliable electricity.

 

[ProjectBox153]

16 minutes ago, poochyena said:

can you explain why that is? What, exactly, is the difference between an electric car driving 300 miles on a straight road vs a curvy road?

I shouldn't have to explain that.

20 minutes ago, poochyena said:

Explain how those two things are issues. Every usps I know of has access to reliable electricity.

Maybe where you are, but not everywhere. I live in an area where power can go out fairly regularly due to a variety of things, whether that's weather, vehicles, etc. 

[poochyena]

15 minutes ago, ProjectBox153 said:

I shouldn't have to explain that.

you should. Its a claim you made, so explain it.

 

16 minutes ago, ProjectBox153 said:

Maybe where you are, but not everywhere. I live in an area where power can go out fairly regularly due to a variety of things, whether that's weather, vehicles, etc. 

uhh, where? The average is only one or two outages per year, lasting around 6 hours or less, according to this https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=35652

If you live somewhere in the US that has regular long power outages, then you are in the tiny minority