White House, EPA urge USPS to revisit postal vehicle plans – By Kyle Hyatt (CNET) / February 3, 2022
The hope is to convince the postal service to invest in more electric delivery vehicles.
The United States Postal Service has been trying to replace its extremely long-serving and inefficient (and flammable) Grumman LLV postal vehicles for a while now. This involved an extended RFP (request for proposal) phase, with multiple manufacturers vying for the contract, which is expected to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The USPS finally settled on a proposal from defense contractor Oshkosh Corp., but the White House and the EPA aren’t thrilled with the results, according to a report from Reuters published Wednesday.
Earlier in the process, USPS boss Louis Dejoy claimed that 10% of the new postal vehicles would be electric, which is cool for a variety of reasons, and which also jives with the Biden administration’s push to electrify the federal fleet. Now, though, it seems that 10% is out the window, and even worse, the EPA’s estimates for Oshkosh’s new postal vehicle’s fuel economy are grim.
How grim? Well, the current Grumman LLV – which was introduced in 1987 – with its ancient GM-sourced “Iron Duke” four-cylinder engine and three-speed automatic gearbox was good for around 8.2 mpg. If you thought that 35 years of technology and innovation would improve on that significantly, you’d be wrong. The EPA claims 8.6 mpg for the new Oshkosh vehicles, and that’s embarrassing, even given a postal vehicle’s unique use case, which involves lots of low-speed city driving and idling.
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