As Ford Authority recently reported, incoming U.S. President Donald Trump is considering canceling the United States Postal Service (USPS) contract with Oshkosh to electrify its delivery vehicles, which could impact the Post Office’s plans to expand its EV fleet by a large margin in the coming years. However, it seems as if Oshkosh isn’t too concerned about this possibility, and is fully prepared to provide USPS with more Ford 2.0L gas engine-powered Next-Generation Delivery Vehicles (NGDV) if that is ultimately the case.
“We’ll do what they want us to do – supplying either gas or electric,” John Pfeifer, Oshkosh Defense’s chief executive officer, said in an interview at the CES trade show in Las Vegas, according to Bloomberg. “A new Congress could come in and repeal, I guess, part of the IRA that hasn’t been spent.” The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 that Pfeifer is referring to earmarked $3 billion for USPS to transition to EVs, and currently, the agency plans to purchase more than 100,000 total delivery vehicles through 2028, with 62 percent of that tally being all-electric.
Pfeifer did add that he hasn’t yet been contacted by anyone regarding the potential shift away from EVs, but currently, around three-quarters of NGDV orders are for the all-electric variant. Such a move could prove costly to Oshkosh given the fact that the EV version of its NGDV is more expensive to purchase, but it also reportedly offers USPS lower operating costs than the gas version.
USPS originally planned to order mostly gas-powered versions of the NGDV to start, but has since shifted that strategy, which prompted a number of environmental groups and other entities to drop a lawsuit against the Post Office recently. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy has defended this decision among major criticism from some lawmakers, pointing to operational cost benefits presented by all-electric delivery vehicles. In the meantime, mail carriers have praised the new NGDV as a big upgrade over the ages-old Grumman Long Life Vehicles (LLV) currently used by the Post Office.
Comments
Go electric! Trump does not drive or deliver mail. The mail carriers should decide what vehicle they need, not Trump!
It was Biden who pushed this idea, you nitwit.
The biggest concern should be crash protection. I look at the amount of glass, I’m thinking that a frontal crash is going to be nasty. The low front end design would ramp a F250 into the driver’s lap also. I’ve poked around a little looking for crash test results but haven’t seen any.
Well I’m no engineer, it just looks worrisome to me. Thoughts anyone?
Not to mention hot as a green house with all that glass! Ur so right about safety!
Agreed. Is this new delivery design held to the same crash standards as all other vehicles sold in the U.S.? Let’s see the crash test results.
@ Ford Owner, the failing grade of the USPS over the last 20/30 years is proof that even the “mail carriers” have no business making business decisions. Clearly, the stewardship of the tax payer dollars as been wastful to say the least. Gas powered vehicles will cost far less to purchase and far less to maintain than the troublesome EV’s.
I think the long term experience will prove that EVs are far cheaper to maintain and fuel than gas vehicles. Mail carriers love them, but what do they know?
If we keep ignoring climate change, insurance rates for both property and casualty lines will keep rising and disasters will keep devastating communities
But given the response from hurricane states to the California wildfires, I’d say we have a ways to go before folks finally stop the ideological madness and start working together to address the problem