Delayed Delivery: The US Postal Service Says Its Made-To-Order Electric Mail Trucks are MIA
http://twitchy.com/warren-squire/2024/12/13/post-office-evs-slow-getting-deliver-n2405148
It’s a little ironic that the US Postal Service is complaining something is late for a change, but that’s what’s happening. The company that is charged with building the Postal Service’s fleet of new electric vehicles is way behind schedule. A mere 3% of the expected 3000 vehicles have been delivered.
Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) ~ NEWS: A $10B program to buy EVs for the U.S. Postal Service is far behind schedule, with defense contractor Oshkosh not disclosing significant manufacturing difficulties for more than a year.
The USPS has received only 93 trucks - far fewer than the 3,000 expected by now.
Trump's transition team is considering canceling the contract to buy over 60,000 more of these all-electric USPS vehicles.
The price tag of the program had many posters reaching for their calculators. They were shocked at the math.
Kevin Crystal (@PhilaBOR) ~ $10B divided by 93 = $107M per truck. $10B divided by 3,000 = $3.3M per truck. $10B divided by 60,000 = $167K per truck. I can't believe Ford, Chevy, Toyota, or many of the others couldn't have made them for $100,000 each and actually gotten the production done properly. Oshkosh is in the business of making big expensive vehicles in low production.
Bradley (@MikeBradley27) ~ You’re probably leaving out the cost for the associated infrastructure needed to charge said vehicles.
Some same this raises some red flags. They’re blaming corruption for a company winning the bid without much experience in creating electric vehicles.
Sam Wize (@SamWizen) ~ Oshkosh paid someone off to get that contract. Workhorse was set to win the bid and then Oshkosh, who had never even produced an EV, was awarded the contract. It was clearly corrupt as hell.
John Helmich (@itsborken) ~ I agree, the government is just shoveling cash to their cronies like usual, and if anything remotely usable comes out of it, they can trumpet it as a win (ignoring the cost).
That’s speculation, we don’t know if that’s the case.
This new duck-billed EV design has some nostalgic for the older, military-designed ones.
John Heard (@John_W_Heard) ~ Mail Jeeps were pretty cheap and efficient. This ... this is crazy.
There’s no estimation of when the rest of the vehicles will be delivered. But, like the post office is fond of telling us, ‘It’ll get there when it gets there.’
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