Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumPush to electrify mail trucks gains wide support, an unlikely win for both DeJoy and Biden
House Democratic leaders are lining up behind a White House push to allocate $8 billion in taxpayer funding for the latest iteration of mail truck, paving the way for a fully electric fleet instead of the piecemeal strategy U.S. Postal Service leaders have been pursuing.
The agency, which is generally self-sustaining and does not draw public money, has drawn up a bootstrap plan for new vehicles the vast majority of which would run on gas as it wrestles with $188.4 billion in liabilities and faces years of projected losses. The lawmakers plan would relieve the agency of the truck expense while significantly advancing one of President Bidens key sustainability objectives.
Last week, the chairs of the House committees on Oversight and Reform and on Transportation urged members of the Democratic caucus to support the Next Generation Delivery Vehicle program, which would allow the agency to purchase as many as 165,000 trucks in the next decade. But the support would come with certain clean energy stipulations.
Party leaders had shown little enthusiasm for the program as outlined by the agency, which in February tapped Oshkosh Defense to build the trucks. But the postal plan, worth as much as $6 billion, called for only 10 percent of the vehicles to be electric exasperating Democrats given the administrations aims. The remaining trucks would have internal-combustion engines that could be retrofitted with electric drivetrains later in their life spans.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/05/09/usps-trucks-electric-biden/
abqtommy
(14,118 posts)think of supporting him.
mac2766
(658 posts)My next vehicle - unless a vehicle that better suits my needs comes along.
Finishline42
(1,091 posts)Drive to a spot, get out and walk, move to the next spot, etc then return to a local distribution center, plug in and repeat the next day. A smart charger would wait for a low demand time to charge the vehicle for the next days work.
The amount of vehicles being built should drive the cost curve down for anybody else with a need for this type of vehicle.
Probably should be combined with solar panels at the distribution center.