These new trucks, running on gas, achieve a whopping 8.6 mpg with AC running, 14mpg without.
And this level of environmental "so there!" attitude is what I call "bad decisions". BTW, I disagree with electric trucks not being suitable for rural areas -- there are probably fewer than 5% of rural Postal routes that exceed 200 miles daily, and on a truck frame it's easy to specify an increased battery capacity and higher charge rate for those specific routes. Tesla sells a Model S that can beat most (all?) gasoline muscle cars in a quarter mile, and
still has a range of up to 400 miles when driving like a family car -- and a Model 3 (costing less than the USPS paid for those trucks, despite being loaded with expensive lithium batteries) that can beat 90% of gasoline cars in that same quarter mile sprint and has similar range (in a smaller vehicle). Electric would probably save money over the life of the trucks in terms of maintenance and replacements, too -- Teslas in rental service, last I saw, at 300,000 miles needed almost nothing done; the only ones removed from service in the report I read were due to accident damage. Gasoline rental cars typically last
1/5 that long in service.
Battery technology isn't the limitation on range for a delivery truck, it's charge rate. If you can't replace the charge used in a day during overnight down time, you need to shell out for high-current charging -- but that's still only a one-time expenditure (say, 30-amp 240 V charging systems). Yes, upgrading electrical service and breaker boxes is a lot of money up front, but so is a fleet of trucks (and yes, electric trucks with the range for rural routes would be expensive). However, even if the rural route trucks were kept on gasoline for another ten years, just having the city and short rural routes on electric power would make a very large difference in the USPS carbon footprint.
Unfortunately for the environment, DeJoy and friends were Trump cronies and likely specifically chosen, in part, as climate deniers.
