US Postal Service Announces Shift Toward Electric Delivery Vehicles

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy announced the agency’s EV adoption strategy on Tuesday alongside a handful of Biden administration officials. Starting now, the USPS will begin replacing its aging fleet of 30-year-old delivery trucks—most of which are said to lack air conditioning and get approximately 10 MPG—with 66,000 total EVs. Of these, 45,000 will be from defense contractor Oshkosh, which currently has a deal to provide the USPS with 60,000 updated delivery vehicles. The remainder of the agency’s new electric fleet will come from mainstream automakers. By 2026, all new vehicles purchased by the USPS will be electric.

“We have a statutory requirement to deliver mail and packages to 163 million addresses six days per week and to cover our costs in doing so,” said DeJoy during the announcement. “If we can achieve those objectives in a more environmentally responsible way, we will do so.”

The existing USPS delivery fleet is largely made up of outdated, carbon-belching combustion vehicles. (Photo: Sam LaRussa/Unsplash)

According to DeJoy, the USPS will immediately begin integrating EV infrastructure into its facilities and preparing staff to use the new vehicles. The Postmaster, who was originally appointed by President Trump back in 2020, has been working to reduce the agency’s carbon emissions via logistics improvements including route efficiency efforts, which reduce the amount of cargo shipped via air as well as ground vehicles’ overall drive time.

The $9.6 billion shift is supported in part by the Inflation Reduction Act, which is set to invest nearly $400 billion into energy security and climate change reduction efforts. The Biden administration has ordered federal agencies to purchase only emissions-free vehicles by 2035. While the agency’s 66,000 electric delivery trucks and vans might make up just a fraction of its 220,000-vehicle force, they’ll still comprise one of the country’s largest EV fleets. The USPS is expected to continue adopting EVs past 2026 as well, with 108,000 zero-emissions vehicles total by 2028.

The Biden administration and environmentalists hope seeing EVs involved in critical services like mail delivery will push combustion-versus-EV fence-sitters to consider their electric options more seriously. “It’s wonderful that the Postal Service will be at the forefront of the switch to clean electric vehicles, with postal workers as their ambassadors,” John Podesta, White House senior adviser for clean energy innovation, said at the USPS’s announcement. “It will get people thinking, ‘If the postal worker delivering our Christmas presents…is driving an EV, I can drive one, too.’”

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