Those awesome USPS EVs might be jeopardized by Donald Trump’s stupidity

The USPS’ upcoming electric vehicles, which promise more reliability and comfort for drivers, cost savings for the agency, and cleaner air for communities nationwide, might be in jeopardy, according to a report from Reuters.

The US Post Office has been running the same vehicles, Grumman LLVs, since the late 80s. Every mail truck on the road today is at least 30 years old – and if you live in the US, you can tell.

While they’ve served their purpose well for a long time, the trucks are smelly, noisy, and at this point feel like they’re on their last legs.

For the last decade, there has been a process in place to replace these vehicles. The USPS has been taking bids for contracts for the Next Generation Delivery Vehicles (NGDVs), with several different powertrains represented in the bidding.

But electrification is a perfect choice for delivery vehicles. These vehicles do set daily routes with lots of starting and stopping, in neighborhoods where people live and breathe, and return back to the same place every night. It’s an ideal application for EVs.

So, the USPS settled on a contract with Oshkosh in 2021 to build NGDVs, right here in America, after a lot of back and forth.

But the original plan only included some 10% electric trucks. The vast majority of the purchase would still consist of 8.6mpg gas guzzlers.

So the back-and-forth continued, with Congressional committee hearings, lawsuits, and the Senate (and, of course, we here at Electrek) all pushing corrupt Postmaster DeJoy – who was appointed by Mr. Trump – into making a real commitment to electrify the fleet, as was one of President Biden’s first commitments in office.

All this pressure resulted in the USPS doubling and then doubling again its purchase intent, and finally committing to 100% BEV purchases after 2026, with only a small number of fossil-powered vehicles to come from Oshkosh before then. USPS will also buy some number of off-the-shelf EVs, with a big contract already handed out to Ford for 9,250 E-Transits.

Of course, as we’ve become familiar with in this whole process, the rollout of NGDVs was also delayed. But in September, NGDVs finally started rolling out, and it turns out they’re better than expected.

Drivers, so far, absolutely love them – they offer more features, like air conditioning which the LLVs didn’t have, and are more comfortable to use leading to less chance of repetitive stress injuries. And of course they’re beneficial for neighborhoods (who don’t have to rush to close their window whenever they hear one coming… like I do).

USPS’ awesome new EVs jeopardized as Mr. Trump favors more pollution, higher costs

But, last month, on his third attempt (and after committing treason in 2021, for which there is a clear legal remedy), Mr. Trump finally managed to get more votes than his opponent for the first time. So now, America is dealing with the fallout of just less than 50% of its voters choosing to vote for an astoundingly ignorant individual, who has openly promised to make Americans’ lives worse in all sorts of ways.

It’s no secret that Mr. Trump and the republican party are anti-EV, and favor more costly vehicles, dirtier air, and harming US manufacturing by letting China get the lead on EVs. The campaign has promised repeatedly to end the boom in domestic jobs and investment brought by President Biden’s EVs policies, and send US manufacturing back to the stone age.

Reuters is reporting that Mr. Trump, whose corrupt postmaster tried to pump the brakes on the EV transition in the first place, now wants to cancel the contract that would bring this peace and quiet to your neighborhood via US-built electric mail vehicles. Oshkosh is hiring 1,000 additional employees for a new facility in Spartanburg, South Carolina to build the trucks.

It would also inevitably raise the cost of sending mail, since it jeopardizes the cost savings that the new EVs represent – estimated at $4.3 billion total saved.

However, the legal pathway to go about doing this is unclear. The USPS is an independent agency, not directly under the control of the US executive. Its Board of Governors is appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, but whoever is sitting in the White House doesn’t actually get direct control over the Post Office.

Further, the money to purchase NGDVs was already allocated by Congress, and the contract has already started being fulfilled, both by Oshkosh and by Ford. And that money isn’t under the control of the executive, either.

So, like much of what Mr. Trump says, this plan likely breaks the law (whatever the law means anymore). Not that further lawbreaking would be a surprise from a convicted felon, nor that ignorance of how the law works would be surprising from a former reality TV host who doesn’t know much of anything.

It’s also unclear what would replace these vehicles. The last bidding process took nearly a decade, and USPS LLVs are on their last legs. As summers get hotter and hotter (happening due to the climate change that Mr. Trump is determined to make worse), drivers need relief in the form of vehicles with air conditioning. Another ten-year bidding cycle means more pain for those drivers.

Delays would mean lost cost savings. The USPS Office of the Inspector General recently put out an update on the process to modernize fleet vehicles, stating that delays in acquiring BEVs will cost the Post Office $77 million in lost expected savings just this year and next. Those lost expected savings would be compounded by further delays.

A transition team spokesperson didn’t comment on this specific plan, but told Reuters that Mr. Trump aims to “protect the freedom of Americans to drive whichever vehicle they choose” – which doesn’t make any sense because these are postal trucks, not personal vehicles, and more-polluting vehicles certainly jeopardize the freedom of people to breathe non-poisoned air – and that he will “save the US auto industry for generations to come,” which waffling on US-built EVs and canceling laws that have led to a boom in US manufacturing will not do.

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