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For comparison, Australia Post went with mostly 3-wheel electric bikes for local deliveries (3100 out of 4100 EVs in the fleet mid 2022). https://auspost.com.au/our-stories/inspiring-stories/sustain... there's a photo in the link. The low noise compared to the previous powered bikes is really nice.

Yeah - while it seems easy/logical to just swap a normal delivery vehicle for an electric version of it, you don't really have to do that & electric vehicles do come in many more shapes and sizes due to the might higher flexibility and scalability of the electric power system.

For example here in Brno, Czech Republic, the entry to the city center is nowadays quite restrictive for regular cars/vans - a lot of it is a pedestrian zone & its not really built for cars anyway, the street layout dating back to the middle ages in places or to the 19th century.

As a result, a lot of the deliveries happen via alternative means - for example when you order a pizza from the local Dominos, they will come with an electric scoter or on a bike. A lot of the food delivery happens via guys on small e-scooters (or even electric monowheels!) or just on foot/going by public transport. In other cases you can see a DHL cargo e-bike, etc. :)

> electric vehicles do come in many more shapes and sizes due to the might higher flexibility and scalability of the electric power system.

True. For example, this Norwegian article from 2021 has two pictures in it.

https://fagbladet.no/nyheter/posten-stanser-kjop-av-fossile-...

The first picture at the top are mostly big electric cars. But scroll down a bit.

As shown in the second picture, the other electric cars that the Norwegian postal service use are much smaller. Almost like a quad bike with small wheels and a roof.

Around me (Boston USA area) there are ebike grocery deliveries (Getir) wizzing down every street. It's a great idea, although clearly the incentives are set up so that the delivery guys need to complete as many orders as possible, the predictable result of which is that these kids are driving dangerously the wrong was down one-way streets and cutting lights.

I really love the concept of ebikes, for an urban/suburban area it's a viable alternative to a car. This issue as I see is that the regulations just aren't there and people are ebikes ride like complete idiots. Pre-ebike if you were riding at 25mph chances were you were a pretty good cyclist and had good control over your bike, now anybody that can find an ebike is zipping along at 25mph. This wouldn't be a problem if they followed the rules of the road and rode like they were driving a motorcycle (which is what an ebike really is) or a car, but that isn't the case, they ride like an 8 year old on their first bike, on the sidewalks, going the wrong way in traffic, not stopping for stop signs and traffic signal basically a free for all at 25mph not 8mph. Going back, you used to only see this from riders or messengers, so it was really limited, and even then riders/messengers got doored and put through windshields as a matter of course. I think it's just a matter of time before we see these ebike guys getting killed in significant numbers, enough that there's going to laws put in place.

As an avid cyclist it really bothers me when any cyclist, e-bike or not, violates the rules of the road. It's so important we follow them. Much of the hatred received is because of bikers doing things they are not supposed to giving us a bad reputation.

Where I live, it’s pretty common for non-cyclists, and even cyclists sometimes, to have no idea that the rules for pedestrians, cars, and cyclists are all different. Car drivers frequently believe that cyclists have to obey they same rules as cars, such as stopping at a stop sign, and get upset when cyclists don’t do this, without realizing that it’s the law; cars are required to stop and bicycles are not. (This is of course not true everywhere, but is where I live.)

I don’t know that there’s all that much ‘hatred’, my road rides are by and large peaceful, but the cars that do seem upset by cyclists tend to be unwilling to respect bikes that are following the rules of the road; they don’t like bikes using a full lane and they will often break the rules of the road to pass a cyclist unreasonably quickly and unreasonably close.

One thing I’ve noticed about e-bikes is that they are increasing the number of cyclists considerably. I feel like this is very very good for cyclists, it’s making bikes much more present on the road, increasing the city’s interest in maintaining bike paths, normalizing bikes in traffic for powered vehicle drivers, etc.

The road system and rules were built with cars in mind. They do not make sense for a cyclist, and following them is not the safest way to ride. I will follow rules that keep me safe, and allow my free movement. I won’t follow rules that make me less safe

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YES! I often get (unreasonably) upset at bicyclists because, in my experience, one in maybe ten follow the rules of the road. Where I am, it is very common that bicyclists will behave like a car when it is convenient for them, and like a pedestrian when it is convenient for them. They weave in and out of traffic, if they obey traffic laws at all. They run red lights, ride at night without reflectors, etc. I have nothing personal against bicyclists, but a lot of them drive very unsafe.

I imagine dedicated bike lanes would help with this, but at least where I am, there are dozens of cars for every bike, so I’m not sure how much sense it makes.

The ebikes aren't dangerous, the cars that hit them are. I think that's an important distinction.

It's not the ebikes that he's saying are dangerous, it's the couriers. I got hit by a Getir rider in Brookline (probably near the parent) who zipped the wrong way out of a one-way street into the crosswalk I was using. Any vehicle driven by someone who isn't following the general rules/flow/expectations of everyone around them is dangerous.

And large vehicles are dangerous too. But that's orthogonal.

E-bikes are absolutely dangerous to the pedestrians they hit.

I don't much like cars, but cars aren't driving on the sidewalks where I am.

Right, its the cars that are dangerous when people on bikes (ebikes or not) ride on sidewalks.

I think part of the problem is that the danger from cars kind of force the bikes onto the sidewalk. If a biker has a choice between possibly getting hit by a car or possibly hitting a pedestrian, the choice is kind of obvious.

The solution is better infrastructure for bikes. Separate bike lanes from cars and pedestrians, slow the cars down, and improve visibility at conflict points.

> If a biker has a choice between possibly getting hit by a car or possibly hitting a pedestrian, the choice is kind of obvious.

I don't think that's true, though. The alternative is not "endanger pedestrians", the alternative is "walk". A biker has a choice to not bike. And that's what I do; I walk when I'm in Boston, because I don't think urban biking is safe enough for me to make that choice.

Like, yes, better bike infrastructure is a good idea and separated bike lanes is something that I absolutely support, but biking is a choice, and right now a lot of people on e-bikes (not so much regular bikes, to be honest) make me feel unsafe to walk in places that they tend to congregate.

If biking is a choice then so is driving a car, and cars are far more dangerous to pedestrians.

Cars absolutely are more dangerous when pedestrians and cars intersect. They're also not on the sidewalk, where pedestrians usually are, while bicycles (and, in my experience, especially e-bikes) tend to be. I've never gotten hit by a car. I have gotten hit by bicyclists. I'd rather not be hit by either.

If we're all on board with punishing bicyclists (and, again, especially e-bikes), who get to act like vehicles when it suits them, from being on sidewalks and potentially endangering pedestrians, I think there's a great dialogue to have about that.

For some reason I find it really funny that there are Dominos in the Czech Republic …

There are Dominos everywhere, it's not a laughing matter.

I felt the same way the first time I went to London and everyone in the pub was drinking Coors light except me I was drinking a fine English Bitter. I wouldn't wish Coors upon anyone.

Hard on anecdotal observation Domino's is far more popular in Europe than the US

First time I traveled from US to Europe was Spain in 1988, and I was interested to see Burger King and McDonalds there. A decade later, visiting the UK, I was 'surprised' a bit to see so many 'US' brands there. Mid 2000s - visited Shanghai - so many Western/US brands, didn't feel much different than being in NYC. 2010s - visited Russia and Romania - again, many US brands there (or other European/UK brands I knew). I got Sbarro pizza in Moscow - cost about $45 for one large pizza, but still tasted the same.

Lately, I've started noticing 'UK' brand products coming to the US (Persil detergent, for example). Maybe many of these are Unilever brands being exported to more countries?

When people talking about "multinational corporations", this is what they mean. As a US person who's never traveled abroad, it might be jarring (or 'funny') at first to see familiar brands in a 'foreign' country. But we're ... a pretty global society now.

I remember being in Italy(?) about 30 years ago and for whatever reason my friend went into a Blimpie's, of all places! Once they realized he was American, they gave him free food in exchange for a critique of how their sandwiches tasted compared to the ones over here.

Nice!

Not sure if they are anywhere else in Czech Republic, but in Brno they even reside in the magnificent functionalist Palace Moravia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palace_Moravia

As far as I can tell their service is good & pizzas tasty. :)

As an American I refuse to believe there is anything in Brno but a gigantic Česká zbrojovka factory.

The current Česká zbrojovka is located in Uhersky Brod, the Brno location is long gone.

Aye. But there are millions of rifles with such insignia on them [0] and they were exported all over the world. If you asked some guy in the corners of afghanistan what Brno was, in the off chance they knew the word, they would probably think it was a brand of rifle.

I'd be curious if there is anything more iconic in recent history from brno that covers the ends of the earth than brno firearms.

[0] https://images.guns.com/prod/2021/06/21/60d0c845dabd0402af4f...

It's the birth place of Adam Ondra, arguably the best climber of all time and also his preferred climbing region. He does cover the ends of the earth by smashing the hardest climbs in the world everywhere :D

Had no idea about Brno firearms but have seen Starobrno beers in quite a lot of countries I've been to, in and out of Europe.

Villa Tugendhat by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe is pretty iconic, probably in different circles though.

Yeah - it used to be a pretty gigantic complex & it is now being re-developed: https://www.novazbrojovka.cz/

It will essentially become a whole new quarter, with housing, office/retail space and new schools. That's how big it was.

BTW, main focus now in Brno is high tech (a lot of electron microscopy), IT (Red Hat, Kiwi, YSOFT, Seznam, Netsuite, Avast, etc.) and lately also space (OHB, SAB Aerospace, etc.).

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Imagine if it was run by an Australian.

Seems like this might be a case for solar panels on-board. Long delivery route, moderate speeds, open road.

From quick search electric car uses 0.15-0.2kWh per kilometer. That's amount of energy you get after delivering 200 Watts for an hour. Let's say you have 2m2 of roof (pretty generous), of very efficient panels in your driving in absolute optimal conditions when they are giving you full power (that's around 200W/m2). No loses on the inverter and such.

So you need to be going at the speed of 2km/h. Well, that's actually not that bad for a postal service. It's assuming absolute optimal conditions, but energy usage is for a typical electric car.

I doubt it would be financially net positive or carbon negative, but the idea is not as crazy as I thought assuming final delivery in medium density sunny urban areas.

I don't think the urban areas would work/are needed. Right now all mail is delivered by foot and likely faster than you could deliver with any vehicle, lots are 25-30feet wide so the density makes walking the best method. Where I do see it happening is out in the suburban subdivisions where people don't even have personal mailboxes, there's usually a cluster of boxes in the middle of the block for all the residents. So deliveries would be every 400m or so, electric would be perfect.

I suppose it makes sense to at least power the AC with them, as its drain correlates with the amount of sunlight.

AC is pretty power hungry; solar panels on the roof of an average van (best case) aren't going to make much of a dent. I find estimates of 10-20 miles per day of range in the best cases.

At current prices, my sense is that solar panels on vehicles are marketing, not materially contributing to the energy budget. Nothing wrong with that but I wouldn't like to spend my feature money on the option.

> AC is pretty power hungry; solar panels on the roof of an average van (best case) aren't going to make much of a dent.

If you space them off the roof by about an inch, like the old Landrover "Safari" roof, it'll make a hell of a difference.

What would the solar panels do, power the clock?

one little panel to power a clock, a light, a fan and a radio would be perfect.

They're Kyburz DXP trikes, specially designed for Australia Post: https://www.kyburz-asia.com/delivery-vehicles/dxp-au

120kg load capacity (270kg with trailer), 50kph max speed, 50-100km range. Curb weight is 315kg, total vehicle weight is 510kg.

For comparison, the USPS NGDV requirements were for a vehicle that could carry a loaded Kyburz DKP (minimum payload capacity of 680kg in 155 cubic ft) at twice the top speed (97kph) for longer operating ranges (110km minimum), all with an 18-29°C cabin temperature range at ambient temps of −34°-49C.

I don't really understand why they went with a one-size-has-to-fit-all solution here when there's such a high variety of climates and terrains in the US.

Or is the idea to start with these where appropriate and develop other vehicles for more extreme climates?

> I don't really understand why they went with a one-size-has-to-fit-all solution here when there's such a high variety of climates and terrains in the US.

Makes logistics cheaper if you only have one model to take care of, and since these are bespoke vehicles you'll also save on costs because the factory only has to build one variation.

Dutch postal service PostNL has a wide variety of vehicles ranging from trucks to bicycles. And as far as I know, bicycles have always been a big part of the last few miles of mail delivery here.

https://www.postnl.nl/over-postnl/pers-nieuws/beeldmateriaal...

They have all these vehicles but what's actually being used in practice in the Netherlands for last mile deliveries?

I'm in the city center of a large Belgian city and 99% of my deliveries from both BPost and PostNL are still the regular white panel vans, even though both have local sorting centers.

It's entirely possible that Belgium is different. PostNL has also always had cars and vans, but I've also seen them use bikes of various types for as long as I can remember. Of course before the advent of cargo bikes and especially cargo e-bikes, bikes were of course mostly limited to delivering letters, but they definitely did that. Lately they've been moving to bigger and bigger cargo bikes, presumably in order to use less cars, even for larger packages.

But they also used bikes way back when they were still called PTT: https://www.transportfiets.net/2007/06/27/postfietsen-van-de... https://i.pinimg.com/474x/5c/00/9f/5c009f57703d05c367078d55e...

But on this search, I can even spot some Belgian mail deliverers on bicycles: https://www.google.com/search?q=postbode+op+fiets

I suspect that the rise of on-line shopping has also drastically increased the need for cars then

Oh definitely! Sending/receiving large packages used to be rare. Mail ordering has existed for a while, but didn't really explode to replace nearly all of retail until the rise of webshops.

And I've seen lots of discussions about whether it's wasteful to have things delivered to your door instead of buying it at a central shop, or that it's actually efficient to have a single van deliver all of that stuff instead of having everybody get in their own car to drive to the shop. I guess it depends on whether you need a car to go to the shop or not.

In any case, there's lots of experimentation with ever larger cargo bikes in order to try to keep city deliveries by bike. Still, we do get a lot of delivery vans in our street.

In germany, in my smaller city, there's the usual bigger van handing out parcels but it is complemented by a fleet of smaller vehicles (e-bikes, those super small vans etc.) handing out letters and smaller packages. They probably sort it by size or something locally and distribute it onto the vehicles. The smaller vehicles visit me more often.

In Rotterdam, PostNL delivers the mail or packages that fit through the letterbox using someone on a bike (they're usually walking their bike, but that's beside the point I guess).

Packages are delivered by a PostNL guy driving a white van (or, more accurately, a subcontractor using their own rented non-PostNL branded van, but wearing a PostNL uniform)

Well, I can't find any numbers on that right now (although I'm sure they're on-line somewhere) but where my family lives in the Netherlands it's mostly bikes. One of my sister delivers mail on one too.

Perhaps the policy is different in Belgium?

I think a lot of it has to do with density. In the urban areas of the US mail carriers walk, lot sizes are small (8-10m) so getting on an off a bike every 30 seconds doesn't make much sense. In the rural areas it could me a mile or more between houses. They both can use the same truck, in urban areas they just park it in a central location and refill their bag as needed then drive it back to the shop when done.

Given the lack of safe bike infrastructure in the U.S. I can't blame their postal service for not wanting to endanger the lives of their drivers though, so the lack of (cargo) bikes is hardly surprising.

I agree I was in a very very humid jungle like atmosphere near Cambodia and certain EV cars work better in this environment than others where u can adjust certain parameters so that humidity doesnt wear and tear certain components

Wow that is faster than I expected since they are 3 wheeled. Honda stopped producing 3 wheeled trikes because they were far too easy to tip over during cornering and many people died. These things look like they could do the same if not careful. I hope they give employees lots of training.

I can say they do give Australia Post riders lots of training.

I have a relative who did rider and driver training for learners. As well as the general public, they also ran Australia Post training courses which were large, regular, and took a lot of time.

Yeah the weight distribution looks like it's pretty top-heavy when fully loaded, doesn't it? And it's not like it's a Carver that compensates for all of that whenever you take a turn (sadly), so I'd be very cautious while driving it.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TK4wzBYmTIo

[1] https://www.carver.earth/en/

It looks like the battery is in the bottom of the vehicle. Since batteries are really heavy I assume the weight distribution won't be too bad.

Why does that need to be specially designed? It looks general purpose to me!

I heard of state tenders where they basically have some minimum requirements that have to be met and otherwise choose the cheapest option. For a large amount of vehicles it is probably cheapest to design one that meets all the minimum requirements exactly.

When Seattle started with light rail, they ordered custom cars that were "specially designed for the Pacific Northwest". Nobody was ever able to explain what was special about the PNW and light rail cars. But hey, it cost a lot of money!

There were two major differences from the stock Kinkisharyo cars, one technical, one political:

- Most North American light rail systems use 750V electrification, Sound Transit used 1500V to reduce the number of substations.[1]

- The cars arbitrarily had to be assembled at Boeing in Everett "because of a 'Buy American' requirement written into the Kinkisharyo International contract ... Federal grant money is being used to help pay for the light-rail fleet, which means a percentage of the rail cars must be built in the U.S. and that final assembly must take place in Sound Transit's service district".[2]

Seattle's cars also used 70% low-floor access for ADA accessibility and included more bike racks, which isn't unique now but were both relatively novel at the time.[3]

1: https://web.archive.org/web/20150924022530/http://www.global...

2: https://web.archive.org/web/20070524112643/http://www.herald...

3: http://www.kinkisharyo.com/main/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/S...

Yeah they use bikes in Switzerland but the temperature range (at least in The Valley part and not the mountains) is pretty narrow compared to the US. Basically -5C to 30C

> Reliable deliveries with all-weather protection. The roof over the DXP AU provides great visibility and protection against the wind and rain.

Calling BS on this. Anything more than a light drizzle (or any kind of wind + rain combo) and that driver is getting wet.

You know they have to get out to deliver letters and parcels? They have a solution and it's called a rain coat.

I feel like being pedantic for a moment. Our suburban posties don't get off the bike to deliver the letters, they ride up alongside the letterbox and deliver the letters right from the vehicle, as can be seen in the link in the GGP comment. They also deliver small parcels that will fit in a standard letterbox.

You are quite right though, as soon as the rain starts, they're in full wet gear. Bright yellow, you can't miss them.

Suburban parcel delivery is specifically taken care of by Startrack, an Auspost subsidiary, usually in a trusty Toyota Hiace van.

Photo for reference. If it rains they're ready.

https://kagi.com/proxy/Australia-Post-trials-three-wheeled.j...

> They have a solution and it's called a rain coat.

So you're agreeing with previous commenter that the description is incorrect?

Additional protection would keep them 99% dry instead of 90% dry even in a storm. Right up to the point where they have to deliver a letter, where they would be 0% dry.

It's more important to be able to get in and out easily.

I'm wondering whether you agree with the commenter that the claim about the vehicle in this regard is likely exaggerated.

"Protection" does not mean absolutely proof against. But even more, "calling BS" implies that the statement is not just wrong, but deceptive, and I completely disagree with that premise. (Which is additionally a claim it would be idiotic for them to make for an occupant likely wearing a rain coat.)

True, but full cover would probably reduce the amount of exposure from, say, 80% to 10%, during a bad day.

Sure. They used to use motorcycles though. So the comparison is a little more favourable against a postie bike

One I see regularly has a semi official "50 kph speed limited" sticker and underneath another less official one: "you wish"

Compared to the old step through moped they had this new trike is a big improvement. It has shade and it carries far more mail. But it is bigger and I can see it may sometimes be less "agile" on badly maintained pavement and grass. The mopeds used to scoot around like zippy little dogs

Could you explain how the tricycles work, practically? Auspost delivers parcels, correct? That tricycle looks like it could fit about one days worth of package deliveries for my street. Then it would need to go back to the post office. Unless the post offices are very close together that seems really inefficient. Also, since Australia was not built in the 10th century, you can fit normal sized cars most everywhere, no? What am I missing?

The e-trikes replaced old motorcycles with saddlebags. The trike rides up onto the footpath and delivers directly into the mailbox. Usually letters and catalogues. They hop from letterbox to letterbox along the road and footpath. They are coloured fluroscent yellow, same association as high visibility shirts.

Packages are done by courier in a van or truck. Grocery deliveries are done by supermarket branded refrigerator trucks. Local fast food is done by the ubereats/menulog crowd.

A local automotive store will drop off parts by an employee in his car.

It sounds like americans get more packages delivered in one go, by the us postal office trucks?

Yes. Congress required the USPS to be profitable, and then required it to up-front fund its pensions, and then capped the rate they can charge for first-class mail. This created incentives for them to deliver more parcels. One service they offer is "last-mile" service for private parcel carriers; so e.g. FedEx will get it to your city and USPS will deliver to your house. A significant fraction of packages ordered through amazon will arrive via a postal carrier where I am.

In turn USPS uses FedEx for international and (maybe not anymore) for overnight deliveries to certain destinations.

Seems like a sensible division of labor. So what's the catch ?

It’s largely filled with letters and maybe small packages (e.g., my coffee subscription). Anything larger than a large book seems to still be delivered by someone driving a van. The trikes roam the streets going door to door, the vans operate more like a courier service.

That, and also the post offices in towns are pretty close. In my area that means there's 4 of them, around 1km apart. Covering probably 20k people in the town itself + another 10k in the general area.

> Anything larger than a large book seems to still be delivered by someone driving a van.

Or a roving Packagebot(TM) ?

Seems like it’s really only suited for cities. That’s not where the challenge is.

Why only for cities? There's quite a few of them in the local small towns which were previously handled on pushbikes and small motor bikes.

There's lots of challenges with mail delivery depending on the area, density, business/residential ratio, and many other things. Those vehicles satisfy some situation. "the challenge" is not a thing.

I think what parent is saying is that in the US a disproportionate percentage of USPS budget is spent delivering mail to extremely rural areas (far from both cities and small towns).

My parents live in rural Australia and their postwoman just drives a regular 4wd pickup truck, not some special mail van. She delivers on a lot of dirt/mud tracks and has to traverse small rivers, I don't think the special USPS van is built to do that.

The USPS delivery vehicle in the rural, mountainous neighborhoods outside my city is an older Chevrolet Suburban. I am assuming this is a private vehicle, contracted to delivery mail in a certain area but its possible that it is government owned.

That makes my point. The 3wheel bike doesn’t work in that case.

I remember being at the post office and thinking it was dumb that the clerk thought Micronesia was part of the US and they could charge domestic rates.

Only later that I discovered I was the dumb one.

IDK how you can possibly economically send mail to places like foreign barely habited deep pacific islands for the same price as mailing to your neighbor.

You can't, but the USPS is legally obligated to have a single flat rate for domestic deliveries, which is extended to certain former territories as a goodwill measure. They attempted to charge international rates many years back, but the effect it had on the affected countries' economies was so significant that the change was immediately rolled back until they had a viable alternative, which hasn't emerged.

Back in the 70s I tried to send a letter to San Marino and the local post office guy did not believe there was a country so named. We (he) had to go to the post office reference manuals.

First, the post office is not a company but a government service so it can LOSE money and that's fine. Second, they don't they make a little on local delivery and bulk and lose a little on long distance. It's not rocket surgery.

I don't think it's fine we're subsidizing domestic shipping rates to mail to foreign citizens on foreign soil, save maybe a few rare exceptions like they're acting in an official capacity on behalf of the US.

Are American citizens not entitled to send mail to other citizens overseas? I would argue that most mail that is sent abroad is between American citizens and their families (military care packages, Xmas cards for expats, etc).

Well, we could have a government policy of subsidising international mail sent from the US.

China does that, for example - which is why you can get a $3 widget on AliExpress sent from China with free shipping.

However, right now congress doesn't act like they're doing that intentionally. That doesn't seem to be the policy they're aiming for.

The linked one is more like a golf cart form factor. In the city areas they also use something resembling a regular ebike with pedels. Makes it easy to get on the footpath since most buildings have no parking.

That looks like it can carry less than a simple cargo bike: https://www.postnl.nl/Images/stadslogistiek-banner_tcm10-223...

Netherlands and Australia have different requirements for postal delivery bikes.

You should really look at the differences in delivery areas, parcel sizes, the location of the post box on a property. They are all different for different countries.

But you're absolutely correct. It looks like it can carry less than a simple cargo bike. :+1:

La Poste in France went to Ligier for its 3-wheelers: https://www.ligier.fr/product/pulse-3/

That's cool but would not work for much of the US. The NYC - DC area is a huge % of our population and that wouldn't work there at all for like 50% of the year really.

Hard to fit Amazon packages on a tricycle, Mate.

Yeah, I don't know what it's like for your postfellows but that the back of that truck is full up every day.

Isn't that what we want - vehicles that go out full most days? (As long as the number of vehicles or trips cover the average daily flow)

Why does a full truck or a half empty truck matter? The truck is still going out each day regardless.

Weight and size correlate with fuel/energy usage. There's also availability of access/parking space and time to access the packages. If you don't deliver more than a bag each day, a car is not needed. If you don't deliver large things, a van is not needed. Etc.

So if you already have a van, it didn't matter if it's half loaded or full. But if you're getting new vehicles, 1 bike doing 3 trips may be way cheaper over time than 1 van.

Fair points.

What I would love to see is a ban on advertising in the mail. It all just ends in the bin. Such a waste to see those poor postal people sorting trash flyers for each house. Has to be soul crushing for them. And all I do is skim it and chuck it and get annoyed I had to sift through to find real mail…

Some sort of “opt in” code… that companies who sent bills and places I signed up to could use. But that would block unsolicited communications…

Oof, I had no idea... the USPS is actually behind all those trash ad campaigns.

They even sell you mailing lists for your target audience. Cringe.

https://www.uspsdelivers.com/direct-mail-cost-calculator/

They could get vans and trikes at the same time.

The trikes deliver letters and small packages (padded envelopes, etc). The larger packages are delivered separately by a van.

This will save a lot of money over time. Last time I checked in any detail, electricity prices per mile of transport per ton were about 25% that of fossil fuel prices per mile of transport per ton, and that was three years ago.

They should really move all long-haul trucking to electric as well, at least for the main trunk lines, and for city-wide delivery. Remote rural routes will likely be the hardest to electrify.

> electricity prices per mile of transport per ton were about 25% that of fossil fuel prices per mile of transport per ton

In shipping and logistics, time is money. Fuel can be dispensed in the US at a maximum of 10 gal/minute. Factor that against the largest charger you can find and see why the single cost difference doesn't matter yet.

> They should really move all long-haul trucking to electric as well

Reduced capacity from doing this requires additional vehicle time to haul the same amount of material. This isn't a single factor equation. Plus, over the road drivers sleep in their vehicles, and not always at truck stops. They're only allowed to drive for 10 hours, so it's not always as convenient as you might expect.

Consider the weight of 600 gallons of fuel vs. the reduced hauling capacity from using an electric truck and see why we're a ways away from this yet. Have no fear; though, the moment this is logistically favorable, they will switch.

> In shipping and logistics, time is money. Fuel can be dispensed in the US at a maximum of 10 gal/minute. Factor that against the largest charger you can find and see why the single cost difference doesn't matter yet.

You charge the mail trucks overnight, when they aren't being driven. I don't know about you, but I've never seen a postman out in the evening or nighttime. I also don't know about you, but I don't stand next to my car when I charge it at a rapid charger. (I stop where I can run an errand or use the bathroom.)

In comparison, it takes time to get gas. You have to go out of your way to get to the gas station, go up to the pump, pay for it, and then get back on your way. It always takes me 5-10 minutes to get gas.

So, time being money, what makes the most sense is to install a charger at every parking space that a mail truck occupies overnight, and getting rid of the trips to the gas station. The time it takes to plug the car in is negligible.

No one is claiming electrification isn't practical for mail delivery vans. The grandparent comments are discussing long-haul trucking.

This a post about USPS delivering? Grandparent comments are off topic

USPS also does long haul.

The 9,250 vehicles the article discusses are for local delivery.

USPS generally contracts out long-haul.

Long haul trucking is solved by electrifying US highways. Trains can charge from overhead lines at 200+MPH doing the same for trucks at highway speeds is relatively trivial and allows for on trip charging.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_road

An EV semi with a relatively modest 100 mile range battery easily solves the last mile problem off highways while weighing the same as a traditional ICE engine + fuel.

C'mon guys. "Relatively trivial" is not the two words I would use to describe electrifying highway grids.

And to convert road vehicles to conduct off that highway? The words I would use to describe/implement that is "Absolute Taxpayer Aversion". Billions and billions in R&D with no guarantee of adoption and likely greater operating costs for 10s of reasons.(Maintenance, contract costs, accidents, teething.

Many counties, even liberal ones, in the US still have dirt roads. In western ireland it's about half the roads are dirt that I saw. If we can't figue out laying concrete at scale, how can we accomplish this "trivially"?

There is zero need to electrify dirt roads, just specific loans on ~1% all us roads due to that 100 mile range battery I just mentioned.

We had electric trollies 140 years ago and modern trains have surfaces in contact at 3x the speeds and much higher power draws. Trucks in comparison don’t need constant power, so you can maintain the line without interfering with traffic.

But you don’t need to trust me it’s a proven technology with the obvious revenue stream of charging for electricity.

PS: America has dirt roads because dirt roads work well when you have low traffic. Their old, cheap, and therefore proven technology just like electrified roads.

Agreed, my point on dirt roads doesn't make much sense.

But point still stands, if state govt's struggle to repave arterial roads every few years to the standards of our taxes, do we think any national gov't would shoulder paying 10,0000 times that cost yearly to maintain bleeding edge technology across 100k highway miles?

In the 19th-20th century rail/trolley was used in the same way municipal buses are now. Great for absolutely defined schedules across short distances for local residents. Do you see that scaling up to highways though? Even if we used old school powered rail and cable technology to charge up highways for big rigs only, that would be such an unfathomable, enormous cost to implement and maintain. We can't maintain the rail network in this country, which is dwarfed in size by highways.

You seem to think this is expensive, but these systems are cheap enough to save money when used infrequently by electric trains. Highways see a lot more truck traffic.

At scale this isn’t the kind of thing state or federal government needs to pay for out of pocket, it’s a revenue generating opportunity like total roads and can be financed as such.

It’s a classic chicken and egg problem where you need enough miles of electrified highways to convince people to buy new or modify old trucks. Realistically if hot swapping batteries or hydrogen was the cheaper alternative that’s the correct infrastructure to build.

Passenger rail largely failed because of the last mile problem, but here batteries solves the issue. A mile of electric highway can easily let you drive several miles of non electric roads.

>this is relatively trivial

No it is not.

Why do you assume that?

We were doing this 100 years ago for inner city trolly’s. Trains travel 3x the speed of highway trucks, vastly higher power draw, and we solved that decades ago. There’s even been successful demos of actual highway trucks and power delivery. With modern battery technology we don’t even need a continuous system just enough to keep trucks topped off on highways so maintenance is easy and existing automated toll lanes even cover billing.

So, yes it really is trivial as shown by how cheap existing demo’s have been.

e.g., the system deployed in Germany: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3P_S7pL7Yg&t=193s

You have to go out of your way to get to the gas station, go up to the pump, pay for it, and then get back on your way. It always takes me 5-10 minutes to get gas.

Wow. Gas stations are everywhere, conveniently located, and always on route to some place or another.

The mental gymnastics employed, to try to make this seem arduous, does not make for a compelling argument.

Many rural areas have no gas stations nearby, but they do have electricity.

So it's now actually more practical to have an EV in those places.

Only if you don't need to travel further than your available range in a single day. While gas stations might be less common, there are still way more of them than high powered electric chargers.

Having an electric vehicle is not useful if the only "fast" charging available to you as a consumer is a 240v hookup at your home (and you need to drive long distances regularly).

USPS trucks that deliver mail aren't driving more than 100 miles (rarely) a day. I'm pretty sure these trucks can be on a 2-3 day recharge cycle and still have plenty of juice left even if they don't hit those recharge cycles.

FWIW:

I just went out to buy gas for my snowblower and generator. The gas station was a mile away. It was 17 minutes round trip.

Granted, some of that time was taken up by opening up the gas can and adding stabilizer, but the point stands that getting gas is a chore.

Seriously, take a moment to calculate how much stopping at a gas station takes out of a trip.

For example, when I have to get off of a freeway in order to get gas, I usually have to navigate an intersection and might have to sit through a traffic light.

In places I used to live, getting gas meant turning left instead of going right on red. Then leaving the gas station meant sitting through another stop light or two.

You might not have to put up with this if you live somewhere rural, where you're not dealing with divided highways and traffic lights.

Otherwise, getting gas is a chore.

Yes, I’m sure there will be usps charging stations on every block in the near future.

It doesn't need to be USPS specific, but that is an interesting thought. Many new neighborhoods have spots for postal workers to park and distribute the mail on foot. This is typically faster in my experience. I don't think it's a big leap to also have those dedicated spots have chargers.

Conveniently, gas stations also have small commercial electric, and in some localities are partnering with utilities to provide high speed charging. (solves the street parking and no high amp service issues)

Gas stations also have large flat roofs that some are putting solar panels on top of.

Those high-amp chargers are very expensive. You would need a few of them at every station. Solar panels are not going to be sufficient to power them. To power all these charging stations, you need massive power generation. The USA can't even seem to complete a new nuclear facility in Georgia right now.

Getting gas about every week and a half means about 35 stops a year. If a stop takes me a little over 5 minutes that means about 3 hours a year.

Compared to maybe 10 seconds to plug in my car when I get to my garage.

I spend way more time recharging my ICE car than I do my EV.

>You have to go out of your way to get to the gas station, go up to the pump, pay for it, and then get back on your way. It always takes me 5-10 minutes to get gas.

Almost everybody consuming a "your local post office" volume of fuel has a tank and pump to dispense with on site.

That said, consumer shipping has enough regularity that it lends itself well to electrification and electrifying any given class of vehicle in that industry should pencil out a little sooner than the equivalent vehicle in general.

I know it's been talked about a lot and never really implemented, but if you've got a fleet of identical vehicles, then doing battery swaps should be possible and practical.

The economics of long haul trucking make electrification hard.

Fortunately, for local deliveries like the post office, constant stop-and-go means that regen braking can really stretch the range of electric batteries.

Regen braking plus zero-cost idle. Electric is at a clear advantage for local delivery.

Most gas delivery vehicles don't idle these days. But maybe the starter motor requires more maintenance.

Wait, "most" (over 50%) long-haul trucks and vans have start-stop functionality?

Am I missing something? This whole thread has been about delivery trucks not long-haul trucks.

I think we are all just talking about start and stop delivery trucks. I know the UPS vehicles as well as the USPS vehicles in my area all stop running the engine when they stop and get out.

Doesn't every gas motor start spew out some uncombusted fuel ?

Maybe? I think direct injection motors are actually pretty good at reducing that. Catalytic converters help too. But yeah, there’s more waste than an electric motor.

The reassuring thing to me is that in just over 100 years we made the ICE so efficient. It’s a fundamentally wasteful design and we have taken it very, very far. With another 100 years of battery and electric motor development we will have equally impressive capabilities with the added trick of energy source agnosticism.

When the engine is warmed up starting it doesn't AFAIU cause any big pulse of pollution. Also vehicles equipped with these stop-start systems AFAIK have more powerful starters so they can start faster.

There is a little bit of waste associated with engine start, but it is worth it if you are idling for more than +- 10 seconds.

Plus they aren't driving at high speed between suburban and city houses, plus they aren't actually driving that far (probably 50-100 miles in suburbs, less than 50 in city) so they don't need a huge battery.

They don't need 0-60 in 4 seconds, so a single axle motor is probably all you need.

You don't need NMC chemistry for the range, you can just use LFP or sodium ion when it reaches mass production later this year hopefully.

You can even use a range extender ICE for the rural models like the BMW i3.

This is an assumption without the hard realities to back it.

Sure, a long haul semi with multiple drivers is a use case that won't be filled by electric trucks anytime soon. But that's a fairly narrow niche. Even on long haul routes it's pretty normal for trucks to have only one driver and stop for several hours for a rest. With a megawatt charger and 500 miles of range on a charge, even long haul trucking is just a mild engineering problem.

For in town trucks the math works out very well, and very quickly. Which explains why there are already multiple entrants into that market niche.

A megawatt charger might not be cheaper than fuel. It's a lot of power to dispatch. It'll also still take longer to recharge at that rate than it does to refuel.

On the other hand, megawatt chargers might get cheaper rates because they're buying in bulk, and it's (generally) easier for power companies to provide service to one big customer than a hundred or a thousand little customers.

(That's assuming the infrastructure in the area can accommodate it. I expect any heavily-used truck charging stations are going to be located where the utility hookups are comparatively cheap and easy.)

Fuel is money as well. Recent diesel price inflation caused a lot of misery for truckers. A full tank of fuel costs way more than a typical trucker earns per day. And most truckers own their trucks and are under heavy debt. 600 gallons is a lot for a truck. Depending on where you get your diesel, you are going to pay 2-3 dollars per gallon at least. Closer to 5 in some places. So even a "modest" 150 gallon tank could set you back close to a 800$.

Recent price fluctuations due to the rise in oil prices have hit that sector really hard.

How many truckers will answer the question "would you like to save more in fuel cost per day than you currently earn per day?" with a "no?. Time loss for charging is maybe inconvenient but the price tag isn't that high for everyone.

Anyway, this stops being optional pretty soon after electrical trucks start undercutting transport prices because they simply have lower cost of course. But while there is still a choice, there are going to be smart truckers and broke truckers. They'll pay the difference out of their own pocket.

In any case, if the vehicle charges at night and has enough charge for the route, there is no time loss.

We're talking mail delivery here not trucking. They are not doing hundreds of miles per day. More like tens. With lots of drive a little, idle, drive a little, etc. driving. This has very poor fuel economy with an ice vehicle. An EV essentially has no energy cost when it is idling. At best you lose some energy to keep the AC and the radio going. Which isn't free with an ice vehicle either.

Mail and package deliveries are an ideal use case for EVs. Most commercial delivery companies have largely completed their move to EVs for this reason and are rolling out EVs as fast as they can get their hands on them. That debate is over and there never was much of a debate beyond "Would you like to cut cost? Yes!". Ancient history, the industry has moved on and the answer was conclusive. If you want to compete in that sector, EV is the only way. There's no case left for ice vehicles in that sector.

Trucking will follow.

According to the USPS, "The longest rural delivery route is in Clarinda, IA. The carrier travels 181.4 miles daily and delivers to 234 boxes." It seems like most electric vehicles should have no problem covering that in a single trip and I assume this was something they tested before ordering.

Yeah, hopefully they tested range for the coldest days in winter in that region as well, considering an aerodynamically optimized tesla gets 200 mile range in optimal weather conditions (i.e. sunny day in Los Angeles/the bay area)

They do not need the trucks to work in the most extreme cold and rural routes. A lot of low hanging fruit in electrifying easy targets: urban delivery in warmer climates. For instance, a delivery truck in LA might only ever go tens of miles per day and never see cold weather. At the scale of USPS, this could bee hundreds of thousands of trucks.

The comment im replying to literally says that theres a route in iowa with a distance is 181 miles. I dont understand why theres so much gaslighting in this whole comment thread.

> In shipping and logistics, time is money. Fuel can be dispensed in the US at a maximum of 10 gal/minute. Factor that against the largest charger you can find and see why the single cost difference doesn't matter yet.

If the time wasted charging/refueling is super valuable you can fix this by provisioning a few more vehicles than there are drivers, or having hot swappable pre-charged batteries and provisioning a few more of those than there are vehicles. Then your recharging/refueling time drops down to a couple of minutes max because you're either swapping batteries out or hopping in a different truck.

That creates more overhead, downtime, and complexity. Now you need 3 or 4 additional semis lined up and waiting for a cross country trip.

The thing in the article is a van, not a semi, though.

Over-provisioning vehicles has a capital penalty and requires staging areas that don’t already exist.

All of this has a capital penalty and requires stuff that doesn't exist yet. We're discussing exactly what stuff might be worth said capital penalty.

If the basic running costs of these are really 25% of ICE vehicles then there's a lot of wiggle room for some extra "capital penalty" while still saving a tonne of money.

I’m not convinced EVs have a capital penalty over ICE. If an operator already has a truck they aren’t going to be in the market for a replacement, EV or not, until it reaches EOL. The lower cost of operation may move the needle on when ICE trucks reach EOL but not by much. How does an owner-operator justify the cost of buying two trucks and staging them? Even for larger operations how do they justify buying trucks that will sit still? Once EVs can meet the hours per day limits they will be appealing without additional infrastructure or over-provisioning.

he’s suggesting using more trucks to counter the lower range. That’s the capital penalty

Logistics companies currently need 1 truck to go cross country. Why would they opt for 4 instead? That have to be driven to checkpoints and wait. It makes no sense

If your load is cross country, railway might be a better solution.

Implementing a battery-swap system at major truck stops seems plausible. The semi would pull in, its battery pack would be pulled out by a light crane and slotted into a charging unit, and a fresh pack would be installed, no stop-over time needed.

I also wonder whether semis on certain well-defined long-haul routes (I-80 etc) could be partially automated, such that the driver could sleep in the back of the cab much of the time. Not sure if the technology is really there yet, though.

> I also wonder whether semis on certain well-defined long-haul routes (I-80 etc) could be partially automated, such that the driver could sleep in the back of the cab much of the time. Not sure if the technology is really there yet, though.

Sure, it's called a train.

Maybe combined with autonomous electric forklifts to shuttle cargo to/from a waystation.

Forklifts?! No, you either use intermodal containers, or just put the entire trailer onto the train.

Sure containers are the standard... except for the last mile for non-industrial, which is a lot of stuff.

Even at that last mile, you could use trams that take NATO bicons. 80 tonnes per 40ft container, which divides into four equal 20-tonne bicons.

Another consideration might be forklift pallets, except that the market is badly fragmented.

Bicons are forkliftable.

You don't need a swap system even. Just tow a trailer (you know like those multi-trailer semis UPS and others have) but one of them is a battery (or generator if you want), and swap the trailer at a swap station.

Or just swap the whole truck.

I've never seen mail being delivered at night, in any country I lived in.

Plenty of time to recharge vehicles.

If anything, local delivery vehicles are the best thing for EVs as they're inherently daytime use only.

Where I live I definitely see mail delivery after dark but not over night.

This tech is really promising, they can retrofit a battery that can be swapped out for a fully charged one in minutes:

https://www.januselectric.com.au

> Have no fear; though, the moment this is logistically favorable, they will switch.

I think the thing that makes this logistically favorable is electrification of major highways. What I worry about is that this requires coordination between government agencies and car and truck manufacturers and it requires political will to make it happen and find the funding. We could start building it right now, or we could sit on our thumbs for the next twenty years.

(There are several different ways to electrify highways. My preference would be to use something like the system they're testing out in Sweden that uses power rails in slots embedded in the road surface. Cars/trucks have a device that swings down and makes contact. Overhead lines are cheaper, but aren't practical for cars to use. Induction charging is another option but it's much more expensive and power delivery isn't great if there's no physical connection.)

Solar and Wind electric production costs are still dropping by 10-15% a year same for batteries. A lot of people and countries don't realise the electricity revolution that is coming. Cost of production for a lot products will start coming down with cheaper electricity.

They don’t realize it because they don’t get any of the benefits. Electricity costs are rising across the country almost without exception.

Meanwhile California is paying other states to take electricity because they generate so much excess power during the duck curve (while simultaneously having rolling blackouts)

I’d bet in California in 5 years the duck curves for demand will be fully decoupled from the supply curve through short term storage.

It’s also very likely California’s excess generation and storage will entirely flatten the generation curve for neighboring states.

I agree with the GP, we are on the precipice of an energy revolution. I look forward to see what we do with it!

No rolling blackouts here.

And prices have been falling. Most plans around here are paying $0.10496. I'm on a time schedule and do most of my charging at $0.07688.

The price per kWh has been consistently falling. I think the GP is right, energy is changing.

https://cleanpoweralliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Cl...

That's my point. We're told (wholesale) prices are falling, but retail prices are rising everywhere[1]. Especially in CA where they're skyrocketing compared to the national average[2].

That's why they don't "realize it", because so far it has had ZERO positive impact on them.

1. https://www.statista.com/statistics/183700/us-average-retail...

2. https://www.pleasantonweekly.com/blogs/p/2022/03/06/when-wil...

IL also sells off something like 250MW of excess power but it’s just like that all the time since it’s all coming from our nuclear plants.

250 MW of constantly available power from a reactor may be more valuable than 600 MW during sunshine that goes to 0 MW during night time.

Solar will become vastly more valuable once enough electrical storage capacity goes online.

And after electrical storage capacity is solved, let's work on heat storage capacity. Do I really have to spend ten grand digging up my yard ?

I think it's more than that actually, but still a great idea if you don't have subway or something under you. I finally met someone in real life that has that set up and it's a bit capital intensive even after the diffing. In about half of US you need a backup heating system for real cold spells.

Like, well, home insulation and heat-exchanging ventilation?

In Scandinavia the summers provide loooong days. When it's sunny, there is SUCH a surplus of heat that could (in principle) be captured for wintertime use.

I wish we would build out nuclear here in CA.

Thankfully we were able to save Diablo. I can't believe how close we came to shutting it down.

No blackouts here. Rural blackouts are more common in high wind situations to mitigate wildfire risk. It's just the reality of living in the WUF.

75% of electricity costs in California come from the grid, not generation. Grid costs recently are up due to wildfire mitigation for power to rural communities.

I've lived in California for decades and have never experienced a rolling blackout. The only times my power has gone out was because of maintenance, one particularly bad thunderstorm, and drivers crashing into the poles.

Whether or not you get a black out or a "flex alert" depends entirely on where you live. PG&E avoids cutting power to the rich people who live in the SF bay valley, and instead cuts it to the rural and outskirt areas.

https://sf.curbed.com/2019/10/9/20906839/map-pge-blackout-po...

That's because they chose to live in the wildlife-urban interface, where wildfire risks are elevated. Note the article talks about damage to power lines. The shutoffs were not related to a lack of capacity.

Rural grid connection and maintenance costs are heavily subsidized by urban electricity users already. These subsidies should be applied for rather than being hidden so it's clear to everyone they exist.

I live in a very impoverished area so it is definitely not a rich/poor thing.

Batteries would need an order of magnitude improvement in cost to solve grid storage.

That depends on what problem you're solving and how much you're willing to spend. Some people seem to thing grid storage is a failure if it can't store power in the summer to use in the winter, but that's really not a realistic goal. Storing power during the daylight to use at night is far more reasonable -- expensive, but doable with current technology.

Pumped hydro storage is another option. As is relying not so much on storage but rather expanding grid interconnection. Day/night solar cycles are less of a problem if you can buy and sell power across many time zones.

That is what is happening. Non lithium tech for grid storage has started to pick up steam 1/8 to 1/10 the current cost for grid storage will be here by 2030

If you really want to be environmental, long haul trucking should go by rail.

Where the rail exists, yes.

The US is not as densely populated as Europe, so outside coastal areas much less land has a train station even within 200 miles radius.

The US has quite a bit of freight rail - that's what is currently one of the things holding passenger rail back. There might not be a train station, but there definitely is rail!

Meanwhile, Europe has so much passenger rail that freight is really tricky to run. For example, there is a really busy freight corridor from Rotterdam to Germany with rail dedicated solely to freight, but the rest of The Netherlands is pretty much 100% passenger. Europe uses a lot more inland shipping instead.

In Europe there's also problems with cross-border rail freight, partly due to incompatible systems, and partly due to bureocracy (national operators lobby politicians hard to protect their home turf, while trying to expand internationally, running into the same issue there with the local national operator).

If you look at the share of freight transported by rail as a function of the distance, in the US that curve goes smoothly upwards, as long distances play into the economic benefits of rail, whereas in Europe there's a sharp drop beyond 500-1000km or so. Meaning that international shipments in Europe largely switches to trucks.

If you mean the Betuwelijn, that is apparently still not at full capacity - only 70-80 trains per day instead of the planned 150 or so. Which I guess is still fairly busy by American standards (3-4 TPH now, planned for 6 TPH, averaged across the whole day)

The US used to be littered with railroad. Density isn't a problem

Here is a map from 189X[0]

Auto supremacy was and still is a choice.

[0]https://digital-collections.columbuslibrary.org/digital/api/...

The US is still littered with railroads, and rail carries a large amount of cargo.

It's still not not as dense as UK, Germany, or Netherlands, and cannot be, outside areas like North-East. What makes sense around places like NYC, Chicago, or Seattle, may not work equally well in Nebraska. Building a road and running trucks on it is just more affordable.

Also, rail is optimized to have ridiculously high throughput at the expense of latency. Rail is great at hauling grain, huge hunks of steel, wood, etc, but is too slow for time-sensitive stuff like flowers or that birthday present you ordered at a last minute with express delivery.

This is why relatively long-haul trucking exist in the US, despite the presence of a large and busy rail system, to the best of my knowledge.

(Passenger rail vs cars is another kettle of fish entirely.)

On the European rail networks with good passenger service — not the high speed lines, but conventional lines — the tracks are good enough to support fast freight trains carrying parcels and so on. That also means they can run during the day without disrupting passenger trains.

Perishable food and parcels are commonly carried by rail, although there is still a lot by road.

Container trains in Britain can travel at 75mph on such tracks. That's faster than a truck is allowed to drive (60mph).

Checking my numbers, I found this [1] which is interesting:

> There are many other examples where people are utilising rail in new ways. For example - hot slab steel shipped from the furnace to arrive warm enough to be rolled into sheets.

http://freightfilter.com/uk-rail-freight-guide/

> The US is still littered with railroads

Far far fewer than there used to be

> Building a road and running trucks on it is just more affordable.

Only if you discount negative externalities.

And you can't even know that for sure.

The cost of operating rail is easy to calculate. Too many independent agents to accurately price automobile GDP (for lack of a better word).

> is too slow for time-sensitive stuff

Not if you have more trains running more frequently. Its a case of induced demand[0]

0.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand#:~:text=Induced....

I think the problem with long haul trucking is just getting the range. Are we close to having enough battery capacity to allow drivers to meet their hours-per-day limits? If not electric won’t be economical for operators.

Local delivery is a much clearer fit for electric, even in the short term. We see that here.

Stop-start traffic and local delivery is much clearer, but from what I've seen of the energy calculations on Tesla Semi, it actually makes sense for bulky vs. heavy shipments on flat, warm routes, as long as there is appropriately sited charging infrastructure. Especially good for consumer-facing and high margin fleets, which is why Frito-Lay is an ideal launch customer. Even if it doesn't make absolute sense today, it probably will in 5-10 years.

Yeah you point out something that is easy to miss in these conversations. This is a transition. It won’t happen overnight. Local delivery will be first, which will contribute to economies of scale that will make ideal long-haul routes feasible, which will make further routes feasible. It will probably be decades before long haul Alaskan semis can be replaced with EVs but we can deliver the mail in LA with an EV today.

If we're willing to invest in the infrastructure, it's possible to charge the trucks while they're in transit:

https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/9/18538030/germany-ehighway-...

Ok, that’s cool. Seems obvious in a place like central Washington where you can see hundreds of windmills lining the highway.

Might also be beneficial on hillclimbs where instant battery capacity may be lacking.

If we imagine building EVs that are 1:1 replacements for ICE we see challenging hurdles but with even small changes in the status quo EVs suddenly become feasible on shorter timeframes.

> Might also be beneficial on hillclimbs where instant battery capacity may be lacking.

Sounds like Norway or Switzerland would be your pilot project. Certainly Norway is all-in on electric. (They can afford to finance the cutting edge.)

Probably. But Washington has the Cascades with existing power lines that have to cross the same mountain ranges as the highways from those wind farms to the population centers around Seattle. I bet there are a lot of opportunities to demonstrate this technology.

No long-haul electric truck technology exists.

    Daimler Truck, one of the world’s largest commercial vehicle manufacturers, has unveiled its first heavy-duty, battery-electric truck – the Mercedes-Benz eActros LongHaul – with a new e-axle and a range of 500kms.

    Electric truck maker Janus has debuted the first battery-powered prime mover in Australia and has plans to set up battery swap stations up and down the eastern seaboard within months. ..  a first taste of the company’s plans to electrify long haul truck fleets using only batteries.

500kms isn't really long haul in the US though

> Drivers must not exceed 4.5 hours of driving without taking a 45-minute break and a standard day of driving for a HGV driver is considered to be 9 hours long.

The speed limit for this vehicle will be either 80km/h or 100km/h, I'm not sure how they decide, but with some good logistics for a rapid charge part-way through that's not far off.

Mainland USofA is the same land area as Australia.

500 kms w/out having to stop is a long leg.

Being able to stop and swap out | replace batteries in the same time as a refueling | load | unload is indeed "a long haul technology" as it enables long haul trucking.

Catenary on main trunks, combined with a requirement that all trucks have some battery range, would be super interesting. Trucks could be extremely efficient without needing to carry their own energy sources

I have a hard time believing electric semis are cheaper because of range limits.

Also this may not be true for the US now but in parts of Europe the charging cost for driving an EV has at times already surpassed the gas cost for regular cars. And that was despite the war also leading to increased oil prices in Europe at the same time, thanks to the EU's climate policy and certain countries shutting down coal and gas power plants without even having enough alternate capacity yet. Germany was the king of that, they're shutting down nuclear, coal and gas power plants at the same time :)

If you think that sounds idiotic, that's politics for you. I wouldn't count on this never happening in the US, a lot of people support "climate action" without caring about the details or understanding anything about any of this on a technical level.

The rapid charging cost, on occasion, in the countries with the highest dependence on natural gas for electricity.

That's not relevant for current commercial delivery use cases.

True. But keep in mind the price of electricity has gone up for everyone in all of Europe, not just at charging stations. For private car owners with no place to charge at home the effect is most drastically visible, as the example shows. But of course when the prices go up it also affects every businesses bottom line.

Btw in many countries there are discounted rates for large electricity purchasers, like corporations. They pay less the more they use. So companies do have an incentive to go electric. There's just a lot more nuance. The charging times the other user mentioned are one thing. Parts of North America also get pretty cold in winter which drastically reduces the range of EVs. That's something many people who've never driven an EV don't know about for example. Will be interesting to see real world results. From the electric bus projects I've seen in some cities, they're far from as cheap in real life as cities thought they would be when they were presented the numbers on paper.

I'm on a market rate plan (price changes hourly).

Today I'm paying all of 3c/kWh for electricity. Can't get much cheaper than that.

Also the EV+range thing is mostly negated by pre-heating the car while it's plugged in at home, warm battery = more range. Just like we need to do with ICE cars to make the engines even start in the winter.

Wow, that's cheap! Is that in the US?

As for winter, what you say may be good for people with a house and garage who are driving to work and back (but then range should not be an issue anyway). It doesn't work when you street park and it also doesn't really work when you're driving long distances or with a car that's mostly outside, like a delivery van.

The amount of energy needed to "fast charge" must be immense.

...why is it so much more than the energy required to charge slowly? The battery might get a little warmer while charging, so that's some more waste heat, but the battery gains the same amount of stored energy either way.

You need bigger transmission lines to fast charge. That's expensive. You need to charge enough at the site to justify the line costs.

Alternatively, use cheap local storage to "build up" energy for a fast charge.

It takes $100 of batteries to store 15 cents of electricity. What kind of cheap storage are you envisioning?

You could look into cheaper batteries, as there is no need to use the latest and greatest technology. Supercapacitors might also be an option.

It's all an economic sum, really: when do the higher connection fees and increased demand pricing outweigh battery cost? We are already seeing grid-scale battery storage being used in practice, applying that to a more local use case might not be that unrealistic.

Besides, if the alternative is no charging station, you can probably charge significantly higher fees.

A battery is a box of minerals. It can never cost less than the commodity value of those minerals.

More battery = more minerals. Iron law of batteries.

There is no cheap way to store large amounts of electricity.

EVs are great when in used in the right applications, but trying to make them work for everyone and everything is just going to tarnish the platform.

[dead]

The grid is unreliable and has problems serving base load in rural areas where charging would be needed

The grid can never support a 100% EV demand. Nationwide, every single transmission line, transformer, and substation would need to be scaled up.

It is a pipe dream to do it in 30 years. I don't even know what to call it doing so in seven. Dementia is probably the most appropriate word given who is pushing it.

The mailman stopping and starting the engine at every mailbox is so ridiculously wasteful, not just of energy but also time. That’s an additional 15-20 seconds between mailboxes fiddling with the ignition and transmission. In various neighborhoods I’ve lived in all the mailmen did this. Looking forward to EV delivery trucks to make life easier for the drivers and not having to hear that screeching of the ignition at every house.

And every startup (or minute idling) is pushing particulate pollution out onto residential streets.

People don’t appreciate the difference EVs make just by shifting the pollution burden of traffic away from the human environment.

I really noticed how much better the air near me (in the UK) was during the first lockdown, when there really wasn't much vehicle traffic in the suburban area I live in. I go for a walk every morning, and the air was noticeably better then. As the cars started to reappear, I began to notice just how smelly they are.

I now have an EV as my family's main car, and it was driven in part by this (obviously obvious!) realisation.

Why don't they just let the car idle? I have never seen a postman not doing that.

I know right. It’s one of those mysteries. Maybe they thought it saved gas, like in the old days when great grandpa would deliberately stop the engine at intersections. (Which by the way is common now in some modern cars and startles me.)

Automatic start-stop features do save a meaningful amount of fuel. This article [1] cites about 8% in heavy traffic.

[1] https://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/car-technology/a229943...

Emissions from restarting can be higher or lower than idling [1]

• Idling for more than 10 seconds uses more fuel and emits more CO2 than engine restarting.

• Idling fuel usage varies from 0.2 to 0.5 gal/h for passenger vehicles across a range of sizes, and increased with idling speed.

• NOx and THC emissions from restarting are larger, but at least an order of magnitude lower than those from starting a cold engine.

• For short stops, it makes sense to turn the vehicle off in order to minimize fuel use and CO2 emissions. At least for the conditions evaluated in this work, the penalty in terms of criteria pollutant emissions

[1] https://afdc.energy.gov/files/u/publication/which_is_greener...

Oh, is this an automatic "feature" ? That explains what I've been seeing.

And with a lot of cars having turbos, which introduce a noticeable lag (especially as the cars get older - it seems to be inevitable), now you have an additional lag with the auto-stop/start.

Turbo lag isn't increased by start/stop. Start/stop may delay the initial acceleration but from then on, any turbo lag would be the same regardless of the state of the engine before initial acceleration.

That's what I mean. I stay away from dieselturbos etc due to the lag. And now they add another lag on top of that. Bring on electric.

Yeah I hate turbo lag (it was awful on my old Tiguan). Start/Stop worked fine though - not once did I feel like the engine wasn't ready to go after letting go of the brake. I drive super safe these days though so it's not like I was jumping from pedal to pedal.

I have an EV now (id.4) and I'm of two minds. The acceleration is awesome but the inability to do a full road trip is (mildly) limiting and the suspension/drive quality is middling at best (partly because it's an SUV, partly because of the weight).

I'm in South Africa and the country isn't exactly ready for electric cars yet, so I went for a pragmatic choice instead; Toyota Land Cruiser with huge petrol engine. Yes, it costs tons to fill up, but it's not a car you just toss away as it lasts forever. There's also something to be said about longevity when considering the environment.

Land Cruiser/Prado is the car to have! I used to live in Kenya and that was the dream car (had a Rav4 which did the job but was no Prado). I do still have fond memories of my little manual Mitsubishi Pajero Mini:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsubishi_Pajero_Mini

I don't like that feature very much since it basically introduces a lag.

While I didn't like the start/stop feature when I had a hire car briefly, I can't see how it would ever add a lag. By the time you have pressed the clutch pedal down to put it in gear, it has started.

Most cars in the US are automatics, and it does introduce a lag. I turn it off the moment I turn on the car.

It caused me to almost have an accident when I was in stop and go traffic, specifically because of the lag. The person behind me did not expect me to start so slowly right after stopping (I had to wait for the engine shutoff and then to turn back on).

I've had rental cars where it had an annoying lag and every start felt like a start from cold (ra-ta-ta-ta-voom), but in my current car there is no lag, by the time I've lifted the brake the engine is ready to go. An auto-stop start is also much quieter than starting from zero. I'm not sure what it's doing - this car has an ISG (integrated starter-generator), I'm not sure if that's the difference.

What car is this? Seems like they are making improvements in this technology, then.

It's a 2016 Suzuki Spacia, just a cheap kei car, nothing fancy.

Nobody uses manuals anymore unless you are a driving an enthusiast car like Toyota GT86 etc

Um, what? Last time I saw an automatic, or heard of a friend driving one, was 2004.

Also, s/anymore/any more/

Where is this? Most of the world today uses automatics, I think. Or are you thinking of electric without gearboxes?

It doesn't introduce lag. At least not in a manual car. By the time you've pressed the clutch down and selected a gear the engine will be ready. You can completely forget about it. If you're talking about automatics then maybe you should get a manual if you are so concerned about lag. Engine start/stop might just be your first "don't like it because it's different" thing.

A manual has the same lag, except you're coving it up by adding clutch lag instead.

Not really. The start/stop system is only activated when the car is put into neutral. This is completely the driver's choice. Most drivers will shift into neutral when they anticipate a longer stop (like when they've just seen the light change red or they've pulled over to take a phone call) and then shift back into gear when they anticipate movement. It's rare to be caught "out of gear" and would generally only happen when the driver isn't paying attention. Nobody shifts into neutral every time the car comes to a complete stop like at a give way sign or in a queue.

The clutch lag is there regardless of the auto stop/start, so adding auto stop/start does not introduce any additional lag.

Exactly. That’s what I said.

> If you're talking about automatics then maybe you should get a manual if you are so concerned about lag.

I agree with the rest of your comment, but this seems disconnected from any reasonably modern automatic transmission vehicle I’ve seen. The torque converter is never really fully disengaged, so there isn’t lag from a stop to a creep, compared to in a manual transmission which is generally disengaged and covers up the start-stop lag during engagement.

In the US only 2.4% of cars are manual mostly driven by enthusiasts.

One argument against is that it's forbidden in many places (at least in Europe) for a car to idle on the street. It's obviously not always enforced, especially on a mailman, but the spirit of this regulation still makes sense

I guess density of housing is a big factor. Where I live they postlady parks her van centrally ish near the post box, collects that then fans out on foot delivering stuff. But some rural roads you've got a long distance between properties.

In American suburbs where there’s a mailbox in front of every house, the mailmen will roll up to each one. They don’t even need to step off. Go to next, stop their Grumman LLV, sort the mail for that address, reach out and stuff, repeat.

right. i live in a high-density old building with ~60 apartments. our USPS mailperson generally spends about ~20-30 mins back and forth between their truck and the wall of mailboxes in the building.

this is the recommendation from Amazon (at least) citing driver and vehicle safety

close to minimum wage, the last thing you want is for your vehicle to be driven away by a thief

And they are loud. I can hear the mail person in my basement when they arrive each day. Their trucks sound like the mufflers fell off years ago.

I think you may be under-appreciating just how loud an internal combustion engine is without mufflers. I suspect that the big issue with LLVs isn't that they are particularly loud (they are louder than a typical modern consumer-oriented car fresh from the factory, for sure, but pretty similar to other purpose-built delivery vehicles), but that they have a very distinctive tone. You hear it once a day, every day, so it becomes something your mind picks up on as a pattern.

Starting the truck doesn’t take 20 seconds.

Between the mailboxes isn’t merely twisting the key to start. It’s the sum of starting, removing parking brake, shifting to Drive……(…)…shifting to Park, turning off the engine, set parking brake.

Well every mailbox is extreme. My mail people park and walk the neighborhood

My neighborhood delivers the mail on foot, while the truck is parked most of the day. The delivery man walks more than a Pacific Crest Trail thru-hiker.

Seems to be at the discretion of the delivery person. Our usual one walks a lot, but there's one sub that literally drives to every house, hops out, delivers.

There's a glimpse of the Amazon delivery dystopia on tiktok where the driver shows the monitoring camera and goes through the rules the system enforces. (Favourite ones: can't drink water while driving (even if stopped), can't touch centre console (e.g. for airconditioning, radio).)

Because of the delays due to rules (vehicle in park before unbuckle, seat belt buckled before moving, door shut), and the huge penalties for forgetting a rule even once, it is common for drivers to park and then run back and forth to the truck.

https://jalopnik.com/watch-an-amazon-driver-explain-the-comp...

> Seems to be at the discretion of the delivery person.

Historically: It's by section of the route. Each route is supposed to have designated walking or riding sections.

That might have changed recently though.

Most American humans and pets know the distinctive sound of an LLV trolling around the block delivering the mail. EVs are Ninja-like by comparison. I'm not suggesting this is a bad thing, but it's gonna be a different world.

EVs are kind of loud these days due to FMVSS No. 141

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2018/02/26/2018-03...

As the owner of two EVs, with neighbors that have various EVs and hybrids, I am actually kinda miffed at the new regulations. For a typical appliance car like a Corolla, Camry, or similar, the engine is all but inaudible unless the car is stationary. Once it is past walking speed tires quickly become what you hear.

This need to make EVs loud sucks because I was really looking forward to a quieter environment. But no. Now I can tell you exactly when my neighbor two houses away is backing his Tesla into the garage, but not when his wife comes & goes in her Tahoe.

People were dying because they couldn't hear the cars coming. Elderly, children, hard of hearing, people just looking at their phones or otherwise visually distracted.

Noise pollution is a problem but the safety issues are more important.

> Noise pollution is a problem but the safety issues are more important.

Noise pollution has it's own consequences too, I'd like to see the numbers on people injured in the specific situation before declaring it an unambiguous good.

Horns are a thing?

People are hard to see when driving. Especially children and people on sidewalks who are about to step into the street.

Also if I’m backing up would you rather a muted noise or me constantly hitting my horn?

> constantly hitting my horn

India has entered the chat. =)

Noise pollution just isn't taken seriously yet. Manufacturers are free to implement as much noise as they like. Think about the cumulative effect of completely pointless stuff like the Windows startup sound or Apple device locked sound.

Cars are some of the worst offenders, of course. They always have been. But they've become a lot worse and apparently EVs are only going to continue that trend, apparently. I've noticed the utterly pointless "door open" chiming sound has started to appear on cars sold in Europe. Why do I and everyone around me need to know the car door is open when I've literally just opened it to enter the vehicle? Again, think about the cumulative effect of all these stupid pointless noises.

> Manufacturers are free to implement as much noise as they like.

No. They are not. Nor have they been since at least the 1990s (probably longer)

There are standards for "drive-by noise" as measured at various speeds, distances and throttle positions and these standards have been in places and constantly been revised (to be more comprehensive) over time.

I'm unfamiliar with the specific FMVSS #s but I am familiar with the engineering shenanigans that have been implemented to meet them.

> the utterly pointless "door open" chiming sound

Ha, that's a good example. My neighbor has a new F150 and I can tell every time he gets out of it to run back in the house to get something he forgot. Ford's chimes have been a meme for many years, and the newest ones are the best yet. And by 'best' I mean somehow musical and pleasant but also terribly irritating.

As someone hard of hearing, I'm glad for it.

I've been working in my driveway on something, and had my wife pull up in our EV and I don't know the car is there until she's 4' away. Glad she knew I was there.

Same, it's like they introduced truck reverse sounds to the common driver (which they also had on Priuses but only on the inside). Should be like 80% quieter to match what an ICE would sound like.

Cars are too dangerous for them to be quiet, which might increase accidents.

I want a quieter environment too, but one with dramatically less cars.

Along with having some pretty goofy sound packs, https://youtu.be/xpvQ1Y27t70 in particular that to me is super eerie.

I am all for reducing noise pollution. It's quite a transformative experience to move from a lower floor apt where you are bombarded with sound up to a higher floor where the only outside sound comes from birds.

I had this thought recently too. I was wondering how a USPS vehicle being nearly silent could impact elderly who know the sound of the vehicle to know when mail has arrived. It could result in elderly making additional trips to the mailbox increasing their risk for injury in the event of bad weather. Or could they miss getting their medication because they do not think mail was delivered. Where I live mail is not always delivered on the same time even weekly. Without hearing the distinct sound of the mail truck barreling down the road I would probably have to check the mailbox more than once a day.

I’ve been wondering what the most repairable vehicle might look like, and I guess the USPS already put a lot of brain power into that problem. I presume this is ugly because it’s both purpose built and highly repairable.

At the moment they actually are buying electric Ford Transits, not the thing pictured at the link. Looks a lot like a van:

https://www.ford.com/commercial-trucks/e-transit/

I would love an electric version of the little "Transit Connect" with at least a 200 mile range...

There's an electric Transit with a 196 mile range, so I'm sure it won't be too long.

https://www.ford.co.uk/vans-and-pickups/e-transit

This ugly look will grow on folks who will nostalgically bemoan going away of these "ugly but trusty/distinctive/unique character/all familiar/<add nostalgic adjective>" trucks when they are replaced with a new design 10 years down the line.

Current postal LLVs have been in use since the 1980s. I don’t see these new ones being replaced in 10 years.

Repairability isn't one of the top design requirements. The previous postal truck was the Grumman LLV (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grumman_LLV). Check out this article on the design requirements and testing procedures: https://postalmuseum.si.edu/collections/object-spotlight/lon...

Because it was for (non-military) government use, it naturally sucked. No air con (but you got a tiny fan!), a dinky heater that didn't really help, the chassis of a Chevy S-10, a 3-speed auto, and the engine from a Fiero. But the parts were easy to source and cheap.

The very "function" look will take some getting used to.

I haven't figured out the styling around the front lights and grill. It doesn't seem as function-driven as the rest of the appearance, which I guess might be adding to the front looking odd.

it's ugly for visibility, so they don't have blind spots in front. This has been studied extensively, I can't find the link now

Ugly is subjective. I see it as "modern style has been sacrificed to achieve functionality/safety/..." and that's a form of beautiful for me.

Also, the current ones aren't all that stylish either.

I guess they are saying it’s “functional” but lacks “form”. These are distinct things which do not imply one another. What we value is of course subjective.

Utilitarian or industrial can be seen as a form itself as well. The lack of complex design in the body is both functional and a form.

In the year 2100 it will be remembered as the Camaro of early EVs.

Nah, it's objectively ugly. Doesn't really matter, though.

The design looks like it would have very good visibility. It's a huge problem with most vans and trucks where you have these huge blind spots in front.

These delivery vans are 100% function over form. They have exact specs on how much the driver has to see of the surrounding area from the driving seat and the car is designed around that.

In Berlin, Deutsche Post use electric trikes and mail here is very efficient.

I think in the states the cost in lives might be significant if we did that.

If you look at USPS annual reports to congress they have ~27k motor vehicle accidents a year with a fleet of ~236k vehicles (~216k delivery).[1]

So possibly 10%+ of their vehicles are involved in accidents each year.

If we look at occupant fatality rates for vans (what usps currently use) they're one of the safest vehicle types.[2]

Meanwhile if we look at motorcycles the fatality rate is nearly 10 times higher.[3]

Bicyclist numbers look better at first glance but that's probably because the rate is by total population and not registered vehicles (because you don't have to register a bicycle).[4]

I know in my state (Louisiana), riding a bicycle on a road with other vehicles is considered notoriously unsafe.

Anecdotally I've had friends who reported incidents of people opening doors of moving vehicles to purposefully hit cyclists (and if you search american news media you'll see reports of intentional 'dooring').

[1] https://about.usps.com/what/financials/annual-reports/fy2022...

[2] https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/Publication/8126...

[3] https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...

[4] https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...

It sounds like there could be selection bias in those numbers, so I’m not sure that can be extrapolated. I’d expect that the percentage of vans driven by professional drivers is relatively high, compared to motorcycles.

They separate out minivans from large vans and both types of vans are still some of the safest vehicles.

You could also ignore vans entirely and look at compact cars (the worst of the passenger vehicles) and it's still a bad look for motorcycles.

I don't know that driver quality really matters here. If you're hit by an SUV or a truck (which is what most americans buy) when you're on a motorcycle it's going to be a worse time than if you're in a vehicle with airbags and crumple zones.

Motorcycles in particular famously have a curve where older people buy them after not riding for a while. I remember seeing a chart showing crashes as a function of recent driver experience and it was IIRC the first 2-3 years which had the highest fatality rate by a surprising margin.

Kids are out of college, house is paid for, nest egg is funded, wife finally lets husband take up his old "dangerous" hobby again. (I'm joking, but also not joking).

Also don't forget about all the young guys who are riding spiritedly everywhere. Even if you're good the inherent risk of that is high and given enough exposure...

That was basically how I heard it from an EMT: guy buys a Harley when he can actually afford it, and wants to ride like he’s 20 but whatever experience he had has atrophied over a couple decades and now his eyesight and reflexes are worse, too.

I would like to see the accident rate for those riding motorcycles as couriers, as that is possibly the most relevant metric

Yes, but Deutsche Post only delivers letters and small untracked packages. Large packages come through DHL, in a truck.

AIUI, the US Post Office does everything in one.

I see Amazon's electric trucks in Berkeley quite often. I wonder how that fleet is working out for them. Of course the mail in my city is delivered primarily on foot.

I have no idea for certain, but I would guess really well.

Mostly because I saw one of them for the first time ever in Seattle about 3.5 months ago. At first it was just one, then I saw another one a week later. The frequency kept increasing to the point where I see multiple ones every time I go on a short grocery trip a few miles away. They expanded to the point where they are everywhere here now, and I doubt they would continue expanding it so aggressively if it wasn't working out.

I wish I could buy one of those vans. They're almost exactly what I want to make a camper from.

EVs are still not campervan ready unless you have no plans to boondock (i.e you will always have a connection to the grid when you stop for the night).

If you use solar for recharging, best efforts (with a huge unfolding PV array) get you maybe 100 mile hops. That might be enough for some folks, but it's probably not going to be generally satisfactory (and, btw, it is a huge PV array that is required).

My plan is large PV array for supplying daily needs but paid charging or campsites for the vast majority of travel energy. Slow or local travel is the primary usage.

Would a diesel generator solve the problem?

Now you have to carry the diesel inside the cabin. I have no idea what the efficiency is, but I have to assume diesel generator->electric battery is going to take a sizeable bite out of the energy budget. At that point why not just buy an ICE?

>Now you have to carry the diesel inside the cabin.

Or have a trailer with the generator and fuel tank, I always thought (if we can depart from the "ideological" part of EV vs. ICE) that it could be a "standard" range extender for any kind of electric car, a sort of hybrid on demand, you normally drive (short range) an EV and if you have to do a longer trip you rent the trailer with the generator set.

I know with the Leaf that would be relatively easy, because it doesn't ensure current from the battery matches the current going to the motor, so if you add a plug into the HV and inject power so the battery current nets zero, it can drive indefinitely. The gen2 (non-plug-in) Prius throws errors if it detects current out of balance so it's a lot harder to hack. So whether any given car could easily be hacked to use a generator is up to the particular implementation and us hackers don't have those Rivian vans! Though, I wonder if anyone has hacked the pickup yet?

People would make fun of the generator trailer too much. They already do.

It'd be for emergencies or maybe the one planned night you can't charge from the grid. Same as those primary-EV hybrids, it's just that you wanted this specific truck that happens to be full electric.

One driver recorded a pretty good video of his early experience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TFz1xqp3us

The regen advantage must really pay off on deliveries up in the Berkeley Hills...

Where are they going to charge them once a post office has a few? I thought I read somewhere that charging infrastructure is fine for a household but a fleet of 10+ EVs will need significantly more juice (technical term) and hardware to mitigate significant safety concerns.

I believe the USPS has worst case requirements of 56 kWh per vehicle per day. That's assuming very low efficiency and very long route. Assuming they have 208V 3-phase 200A service then perhaps they charge at the equivalent of 1 vehicle completely each hour. 10 a night is no problem.

As a practical matter, most routes are not 70 miles, they're more like 25. And the truck probably gets better efficiency than 800 Wh/mi.

Also, they stop and go constantly, so I would imagine regenerative braking could do a lot of heavy lifting here.

Yep. I wouldn't be surprised at all to find that in real life HVAC accounts for half or more of the total consumption on a typical stop-n-go route.

and postal trucks don't even have HVAC. At least the ICE ones. They get a lowsy fan

Yeah that is a major perk of the new postal trucks both EV and ICE is that they will finally get Air conditioning and an adequate heating system. The LLV had no AC which led to many issues in hot climates, and the heater was not large enough to heat the cabin well with the window open all the time.

I just had to Google to see whether or not they even had doors.

At least in SoCal they (almost?) always leave the door completely open and they wear shorts, clearly because they don't have A/C.

In GA, it's the same. They usually wear shorts too. It's hot and humid so I don't blame them!

20A per is plenty sufficient for overnight. A house has 200A service, commercial sites usually more and/or 3-phase which supports 3x the vehicles per amperage.

There is no "significant safety concern" or special hardware needed for additional chargers.

I think there's a few assumptions here that apply to households, but not purpose built business vehicles.

1. They may not be typical chargers. Connecting multiple vehicles to the same source which can distribute the power based on time and need may be possible in this case.

2. If these are purpose built, we don't know if charging the vehicles even applies. Totally made up idea: batteries easy to replace get shipped off for charging off-site and cycled daily. (+ single on-site charger for emergencies)

3. You're not charging 10 EVs immediately - you have 10 EVs which need power at the beginning of the next business day.

These are good points. We already have residential chargers which coordinate to share power, so it's very likely that any business-grade charger will have similar capabilities.

I do think swapping batteries is unlikely, however. It adds a lot of complexity, and if the typical route is only 25 miles long then a battery swap is overkill.

True about swapping - it was a totally made up idea. The point was that at some scale you get to consider things you can't apply to homes or even parking lots.

USPS isn't the first to buy electric delivery vans.

Installing chargers at the depot is what many other large business with electric delivery vans has done. Some smaller businesses have their staff charge the vehicles at home, and pay them for the electric.

The answer is gonna be based more on how many miles does a USPS driver drive a day? Average mileage on an EV is about 100 mile for 25 kWh. A standard (lower end) home 100A breaker panel would do about 20kw, enough for 200 kWh overnight, or 800 miles. A commercial site will likely have more than 4x that with at least a 400A panel, 3200 miles.

Some searching brings up 24 miles a day as the average for a postal route. Even if you round up to 50 miles a day per vehicles, a 400A service will do more than 50 vehicles at night. It's not ideal for trucks between facilities, sure. But for neighborhood last mile delivery you wouldn't have that many vehicles per facility, or distance traveled, making it pretty ideal to start rolling out electric vehicles there.

First paragraph of the article:

> The service awarded contracts on Tuesday for 9,250 battery electric vehicles and for more than 14,000 charging stations.

Reading farther in the article:

  It also remains unclear where the vehicles and charging
  stations will be placed, as those details have yet to
  be finalized, the agency said.

Many post offices have parking lots where the vehicles park overnight currently. Mail carriers don't take these vehicles home, they typically park on USPS property overnight. I suspect this is the top candidate location for many of these chargers.

https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/b/usps-mail-delivery-trucks-lo...

Statements like that don't really answer the question. Other reporting on this has said that 75 locations are currently getting build-outs for charging stations. [1] The actual question is where these will be built. Answering "the parking lot" isn't actually helpful to "where".

[1] https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/3879040-usps-t...

Er, what? "The parking lot" is a perfectly good and reasonable answer to that question.

Their post history suggests they are pedantic just to be pedantic.

Yes, they are not being built yet. Where else do you think they would go?

You are making too many assumptions about the arrival of chargers and BEV in the first place.

When looking where the chargers will go, the issue is that the cars aren't necessarily going to be purchased and delivered, either. So, it isn't clear where the chargers will go, if anywhere. Today, there is a small rollout of chargers planned, but that isn't enough to say that many post offices will have chargers.

For those reasons, "the parking lot" isn't a feasible answer compared to specifying which post offices or other information. And, the USPS has said they don't know where the chargers will go, possibly a location centralized between several post offices. After all the question was asked by that poster, so it's best to presume that actual information was desired not flippant answers like are in this thread.

Many post offices have full lots today, so purchasing more vehicles and retiring some will surely mean there will be even less room for chargers in the parking lot.

You are correct, we do not have an official answer directly from USPS. The article says they still need to review which routes will work best with BEVs.

However, it is highly likely that, for the local offices and route which they find to be suitable they will build chargers in the lots, because 1) others in this space have already done this and it works, and 2) the place where the vehicles are currently parked is the place where it makes the most sense to park the vehicles, logistically.

https://www.rivianownersforum.com/attachments/amazon-chargin...

They're provisioning more chargers than vehicles. The answer seems fairly clear. For now, if you get three EVs at your local post office, I'd expect roughly three chargers installed.

Would you mind quoting the source for that? The article says something else.

You want a source for "I'd expect"? MLA style?

Me. 1 Mar. 2023. Hacker News, comment #34991363.

No, for the part where you made an assertion of fact. "I'd expect" is your opinion, and you're entitled to that of course. I was asking you to quote where you got the source for "provisioning more chargers than vechicles."

> They're provisioning more chargers than vehicles.

It's literally the first paragraph in the article. Scroll up, I quoted it in my original comment too.

> The U.S. Postal Service's plans for a nationwide fleet of electric vehicles are getting closer to being realized. The service awarded contracts on Tuesday for 9,250 battery electric vehicles and for more than 14,000 charging stations.

If you read more of the article, you will see additional numbers.

  As such, a contract has also been awarded for the agency to acquire 9,250
  commercial-off-the-shelf internal combustion engine vehicles "to fill the
  urgent need for vehicles." In December, the agency said that 21,000 COTS
  vehicles will be purchased and are "expected to be battery electric,"
  but said that depends "on market availability and operational feasibility."

"They plan to buy more EVs" can (again, I expect) probably be safely read to include "and the requisite infrastructure to accompany them" eventually.

The question was , "Where are they going to charge them once a post office has a few?" So, I'm not sure why you are trying to correct my factual quotes to answer that question by posting your expectations as to the future hypothetical existence of chargers.

This argument is pointless

Perhaps, like with most complex problems, there isn’t a “one size fits all” solution. I’m all for skepticism but this criticism is just lazy.

It's incredibly lazy to say my criticism was "just lazy" since I didn't post criticism but answered a question about the contents of the article.

No, you made an irrelevant and dismissive remark under the “guise” of an answer. Lazy.

No, the existence and locations of these chargers is not set. They may not even get purchased. The current planned rollout is for 75 locations. The absolute truth to "where these will get placed" is nobody yet knows. Nobody knows where, because nobody knows where the vehicles will get placed.

Logically, most of the chargers will be at post offices to accommodate the fleet. Completely negating the question asked.

Outside of the post offices, where will USPS set up additional chargers? That is the unknown right now, if they actually do set up any outside of post offices.

There is significant doubt they would set up chargers outside of post offices, considering they acquired 14k charging stations and have 30k+ offices in service.

Mail fleet work 8am-6pm they have 14 hours to charge they don't need to charge all at once in 1-2 hours

A standard service panel in a given building will struggle, but the “juice” is easily available from your standard neighborhood power lines.

So at the local level they will have to build some new infrastructure for the last few yards, but this isn’t really a big issue

I found this podcast episode about digital circuit breakers pretty interesting and is relevant to this:

https://www.volts.wtf/p/the-digital-circuit-breaker-and-why#...

I don't have any idea what USPS plans are here, though.

Many post offices are not in residential zoned buildings, generally when you're low density commercial a building is closer to a substation. Though I'm sure many mail distribution centers have had low density industrial connections for sorters.

The Tesla Supercharger at my local Meijer is a little 10 foot by 10 foot fenced area for the electrical equipment. Seems fine.

Like there's the fenced area and then the charging stations next to the adjacent parking spots.

This may already be possible. But if not the capitalist in me says that upgrading thousands of post offices and their associated grids will create a lot of jobs.

How does this interact with the huge contract with Oshkosh a couple years ago to replace the LLV?

That contract was investigated, controversial, scaled back, and might end up being cancelled. Oshkosh has never built small electric delivery vehicles. Their specialty is big, heavy vehicles. Fire trucks, concrete mixers, military vehicles, etc.

Using the boring but practical electric Ford Transit van makes sense. Those things are going to take over the local commercial van market. They're already in mass production.

I imagine Ford is also a lot better at building huge quantities of vehicles than Oshkosh.

Plus USPS can buy parts from Autozone.

From the article this is a separate contract for COTS trucks, along with some gas ones from Stellantis.

I believe this is the 10% of the trucks from that contract that were to be EV

That number is outdated, and USPS revised its plans after a lawsuit and other political criticism.

> The plan drew heavy criticism and spawned a lawsuit from 16 states aiming to block the purchase.

> Since then, the USPS has slowly raised the number of EVs it plans to order. In July 2022, it estimated that at least 40 percent of its new purchases would be electric, and in December, it said it was exploring the “feasibility of achieving 100% electrification.” The agency says that it expects to invest around $9.6 billion into the initiative and expects pretty much every vehicle it buys after 2026 to be electric.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/1/23620658/usps-ford-transit...

Cool, I thought I remembered something like that but all I could find was the 10% number from a quick search. Really Happy to see it's higher.

Sucks that they are not 90% EV. EVs are perfect for mail delivery, with frequent stops.

It’s surprising for me to see how underappreciated the USPS appears in some of these comments. I’ll make the bold claim that the following industries / companies would not exist without the USPS:

The Airline Industry: In the early days of American aviation, air transportation was unproven and not financially viable, until the USPS built the necessary infrastructure and gave contracts to airlines to allow them financial feasibility… starting in 1918! [1]

Machine Learning: In 1989 Yann LeCun wrote his seminal paper “Backpropagation Applied to Handwritten ZIP Code Recognition”, which used the USPS’s data set and has today become the hello world of machine learning tasks. More importantly this is the first commercial or industrial application of machine learning. [2]

Netflix: Before Streaming became a thing, Netflix was shipping DVDs via the USPS. The Postal Service adapted its processes and equipment to make this financially feasible, supporting Netflix through its transition to streaming. [3]

Amazon: Early Amazon was only a book vendor, the USPS offered special rates for books that made it possible for Bezos to be profitable from his garage … in 1994, thus birthing the behemoth it is today. [4]

Chickens: okay, not really. But the USPS ships millions of pounds of live chickens and other animals each year! [5]

[1] https://www.history.com/news/us-aviation-airmail-passenger-f...

[2] http://yann.lecun.com/exdb/publis/pdf/lecun-89e.pdf

[3] https://www.zdnet.com/article/u-s-postal-service-to-netflix-...

[4] https://faq.usps.com/s/article/What-is-Media-Mail-Book-Rate

[5] https://pe.usps.com/text/pub52/pub52c5_008.htm

"3 suppliers". Ok, thanks. Do they have names?!

Edit: Name dropping over here https://www.benzinga.com/news/23/03/31134628/us-postal-servi...

In China, Wuling produced a supermini EV for short-distance deliveries.

https://carnewschina.com/2022/11/01/wuling-sells-an-ev-truck...

'a contract has also been awarded for the agency to acquire 9,250 commercial-off-the-shelf internal combustion engine vehicles "to fill the urgent need for vehicles." In December, the agency said that 21,000 COTS vehicles will be purchased and are "expected to be battery electric," but said that depends "on market availability and operational feasibility."

In this case, the internal combustion engine vehicles will be gas-powered and made by Fiat Chrysler Automobile, a spokesperson for USPS told CBS News. They added that, unlike older USPS vehicles, these will "feature air conditioning and advanced safety technology and are more suited to modern day operational requirements."

> but said that depends "on market availability and operational feasibility."

Oh great. Living in a rural area this phrasing immediately brings to mind certain people.

"Heer in the hills we only got OIL cars, see. And ourn roads got RUTS would swollow your 'lectric. Nope, 'lectric won't get you up there honey, ain't feesible atall. WEEE HEEE HEEE HEE"

I love the look of this thing so much. I wish I could buy this as a personal vehicle.

For some reason it gives “The Homer” vibes haha.

https://simpsons.fandom.com/wiki/The_Homer

It's very divisive but I love the NGDV too. I wouldn't want it as my personal vehicle but mail trucks have had an iconic look my whole life and these even more so. I think a lot of kids will grow up with fond memories of this dorky mail truck.

CNBC had an interesting video about the Tesla semi's that Pepsi Co. is using. I say interesting because it just broadly touches on the project and in certain segments feels more like a marketing puff piece than journalism. Nonetheless still some stuff that can be extracted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-BVM673pDs

For as long as I remember, my mail in Germany has been delivered by bicycle. Not ebikes, just bicycles with some small extra wheels so delivery persons could quickly stop, hop off, walk to residential mailboxes to throw in mail, and hop on again without the bike falling over.

The newest “mail truck” in the US is pushing 30 with a 40 year old design.

No AC, no airbags, no ABS breaks… how can anyone insure this or have it pass OSHA regulations?

https://www.hotcars.com/grumman-llv-brief-history/

I'm sick and tired of the lack of attention to asthetics. why does it have to be so ugly? same thing is happening with operating system UI design since after Vista and OSX leopard. even new consumer cars and trucks are ugly with NPC gray paint jobs and huge plastic front bumpers.

I wonder what the functionality of that big nose is. I doubt it's all for a crumple zone. That and the flat front windscreen certainly aren't a problem for aerodynamics at the low speeds at which these typically operate.

Looks like something out of a kids movie though, which is kinda neat actually.

> I wonder what the functionality of that big nose is.

In addition to crumple zone, that's where the wheels and steering gear is. And it's a handy place to stuff things like air conditioning and such. The alternative would be a much higher cab floor, which isn't an ideal choice for a mailman who probably gets in and out quite regularly.

> The alternative would be a much higher cab floor, which isn't an ideal choice for a mailman who probably gets in and out quite regularly.

Ah, that makes a lot of sense. Also, I suspect the snout isn't really that huge, but the vertical windshield exaggerates that look.

What would be the impact of such fleets on electricity production management?

As these charge overnight, I'm guessing USPS could easily program them to charge when the electricity is the cheapest (i.e. overproduced), or skip charges when the remaining range is enough and electricity expensive.

Charging management based on electricity price is a solved problem already with multiple solutions. Seems like a no-brainer for an org like USPS to implement.

Large scale power management like this can help smooth out the supply and demand fluctuations.

Makes sense for USPS for urban and suburban environments - relatively small distances, predictable routes, predictable timing (so you don't need fast charging even - nobody suddenly urgently needs their mail delivered in the middle of the night, at least not from USPS).

I think this makes a ton of sense for local distribution of mail. They need to load and can charge.

That said, my local mail delivery is made via 4 wheel drive down an often running creek bed. Lol I think we are pretty far away from fully get electric…

Great, but they look terrible. I won't enjoy seeing these eyesores.

Agreed, they are profoundly ugly objects. Looks like someone manifested a 3-year-old's drawing of a milk float.

Surely we as a species still appreciate things looking _good_ as part of an objective goal?

surely that deters people from stealing them

I think they are cute little duck vans. Look at that duck bill. Quack!

I dunno, they make me smile because they are so ugly/goofy.

They really went with that goofy-looking van, huh? :D

(wasn't there some blurb about how the postal workers weren't too happy with that design? i mean, practical reasons, not just 'i don't like it')

I'm looking forward to the day physical mail is outlawed with few exceptions. Junk mail is such a wasteful endeavor only meant to subsidize shipments of value that can't be electronic.

I receive maybe 5 lb of paper mail a year, stuff which could be electronic.

I receive easily 500 lb of physical parcels a year, stuff like dog food, cat litter, coffee, etc.

Also, banning physical paper mail implies that you have to have an official email address for official documents like taxes.

> Also, banning physical paper mail implies that you have to have an official email address for official documents like taxes.

Or have a government online service where you receive such documents (as done here in Finland, though it is entirely optional).

European here: I do. I also have a federated government login that I can use to officially identify myself with the many government agencies.

Took 'em long enough. Meanwhile in the UK Royal Mail, Supermarket deliveries, many London Busses, Black Cabs, etc have all gone electric/hybrid.

Repetitive urban travel with lots of stops and starts, with hours of down time at night, is probably the best use case for electric vehicles.

The one in the picture in the article looks like a cartoon car. Why? Rivian’s one for Amazon looks normal.

Because it doesn’t matter how it looks. It only has to work.

I wonder what will happen to the 9250 non-EVs they will replace.

Will they end up in the landifll?

Recycle them, probably. Or whatever they normally do with their vehicles when they're taken out of use for other reasons. It's not like those things live forever.

Oh yes, they have aluminum bodies and are very useful for this reason. You'll also find a few people out there who want them for projects or just to drive around. I knew one person with a VW rabbit diesel swap LLV.

Recycled. USPS's fleet is in dire condition with many vehicles past their useful life and being actually dangerous to operate. Not to mention being extremely expensive to operate because of fuel and maintenance of such old stock.

Well that's great, I'll be getting almost 100% junk mail via EV now.

Is paper junk mail still that much of a problem? I hardly receive any (but I've got one of those stickers saying I don't want it), and assumed it had died due to the rise of online advertising.

It definitely is for me (US) - I basically check my mail once a week only to throw it all out. I do wonder if maybe I should just stop checking it entirely.

What does your sticker say?

https://plakkers.nl/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/nee-nee-stick...

Translation:

NO unaddressed printed advertising material, door-to-door news papers NO

These stickers are reasonably well respected here, and violating them leads to a barrage of complaints to the advertising company. Lots of people have them.

I hope this actually works

> President Joe Biden signed an executive order at the start of his presidency saying all federal vehicles would have to be zero-emission by 2035.

Well, that isn't going to work. Batteries don't do well in the cold, like in Alaska.

Alaska has a tiny road network. Regular cars don't work there either.

Mail in most Alaskan towns comes by plane. In Anchorage and Fairbanks, eTransits will be more than enough.

the "clean" energy fad is selling snake oil.

https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/electric-vehicle-ownershi...

https://theramreview.com/the-true-cost-of-electric-vehicles/

"While the benefits of electric vehicles certainly are appealing, there are unintended consequences not openly being discussed. Among these are “indirect pollution,” and “natural resources availability” related to the wiring, traction motors, and batteries that are the primary drivers of electric-drive vehicles.

Let’s begin with “indirect pollution” resulting from mining and processing of materials. Battery-pack materials include aluminum, copper, steel, lithium, glass fibers, carbon fibers, and polymers. Electric motor materials include aluminum, cobalt, copper, iron, silicon-steel, manganese, graphite, lithium, and a variety of rare-earth minerals (dysprosium, neodymium, niobium, terbium and praseodymium).

For example, the amount of copper required for electric-drive vehicles is staggering compared to that for fossil-fuel-powered vehicles. Conventional cars use 18 to 49 pounds of copper, while hybrid vehicles (HEVs) use 85 pounds. But it doesn’t end there. PHEVs use 132 pounds of copper, while EVs require over 180 pounds. Electric buses and hybrid electric buses contain 196 and 814 pounds of copper, respectively. And there’s a real cost for that.

Copper, much like other primary metals, begins with mining the metal bearing ore. Beyond mining, the process steps for producing copper include transportation, concentration, roasting, smelting, converting, and refining before it is ever formed into bus bars, terminals, connectors, and wiring. Those processes require massive amounts of electricity and result in large amounts of impurities and pollutants that must be contained and disposed of. These include sulfur, antimony, arsenic, lead, sulfur dioxide (SO2), sulfuric acid, iron oxide, and naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORM) such as uranium and radium. The waste streams include solution ponds, smelter slag, and solid waste.

Note, too, that “natural resources availability” of many of the metals required for electric vehicles is in environmentally sensitive regions, countries with unstable or economically hostile governments, and globally- constrained supply chains. Let’s take a look at where massive amounts of just three of those required minerals are found: cobalt, rare earth, and copper.

♦ Cobalt: The Democratic Republic of Congo possesses 47% of the global reserve. China processes the largest amount of cobalt for the world market. New cobalt reserves are being exploited. Deep-sea mining of metal nodules mixed in the sediment is one of the most promising sources of cobalt, copper, nickel, and manganese, especially among the Pacific Islands. Waste rock and sediment is re-deposited on the sea floor destroying deep sea marine life.

♦ Rare-Earth Minerals: China possesses 95% of the global rare-earth mineral reserves. The supply chain is constrained by geo-political forces and a volatile price history. Until the 1980s, the U.S. was one of the world’s largest producers of rare-earth minerals. Northeast Wyoming, home to one of the highest-grade rare-earth deposits in North America, is currently under development. However, China has increased production by more than 500% since 1990 due to that country’s substantial deposits and cheap labor. As China began to produce more high-tech products requiring rare-earth elements, the mining intensified. That mining, in turn, uses a mix of water and chemicals, which causes extensive water and soil pollution. China’s local and federal authorities have reportedly shut down illegal and small-scale rare-earth mining operations.

♦ Copper: Domestically, copper is mined in Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Montana, and Michigan. Internationally, Chile, though, possesses over 30% of the global copper reserves."

----

And lastly: https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a38043667/study-electric-c...

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Paper comes from tree farms. Only illegal logging operations increase deforestation.

There are lots of reasons for us to have a postal service other than receiving bills in the mail.

Like what? Literally everything can be sent over email except packages

Sure about that? Literally everything? There's not a single solitary document that might require receiving somehow other than email?

USPS provides a vital service of connecting rural people in America to both package and letter delivery. People need to get medicines, supplies, and yes, letters, and have very little access without USPS. Everything from voting to legal documents to IDs to taxes to cash and checks and much more flow through USPS, at very affordable rates.

I swear I still get paper bills for crap I turned electronic billing on years ago

I don't get it either. One would think that corporations would cut unnecessary costs by not sending paper bills at the advent of electronic communication. Is there a legal obligation to keep sending them, I wonder.

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Are you assuming the grid situation won't change over the next years? And that the charging stations will use the same source as the city? Have you actually checked their plan for the charging stations and how will they be operated?

When you do large projects like that, the reliability is considered and infrastructure is planned to account for it. Unless you're criticising a specific part of their actual plan, that's just a lazy dismissal.

The person you're replying to is too divorced from reality to reason with (or they're a troll), just downvote and move along.

Engaging with climate change deniers is just giving them what they want.

No. Without capacity and grid improvements, it will fail. At this point, it’s at best a pipe dream.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-ev-transition-explained-265846...

Palo Alto is considering investing US $150 million toward modernizing its distribution system, but that will take two to three years of planning, as well as another three to four years or more to perform all the necessary work, but only if the utility can get the engineering and management staff, which continues to be in short supply there and at other utilities across the country. Further, like other industries, the energy business has become digitized, meaning the skills needed are different from those previously required.

That's like an 8 year timeline. How is an 8 year timeline a pipe dream?

Like there are lots of issues to address, but not many that seem insurmountable.

For another point of reference here - Palo Alto's annual city budget is over $900 million.. $150M over 8 years represents at most 2% of the budget over that time frame. They're already planning much of that work, and big portions are already included in their annual capital budget, so realistically, the net increase is maybe 1% of the budget? 1.5%? It's a serious amount of money so should be appropriately weighed, but to pretend like it's fantastical is just disingenuous.

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9,250 EVs vs 14,000 charging stations.

Why start off with 30% more more charging stations than EVs?

At least here in Norway, getting connected to the grid is starting to be problematic, as capacity is already pretty stretched. In our neighborhood our condominium got our chargers connected without issue, but now the local transformer is maxed out. Next ones who come along might get a no or will have to pay for an upgraded transformer (not cheap).

So at least here, it would be advantageous to get connected as soon as possible.

Hotspotting.

Why does this thing look so ugly? Is there a specific reason?

The electric postal type vans I have seen look almost identical to the gasoline version. [1]

[1] https://www.man.eu/ch/de/transporter/man-tge/elektroantrieb/...

Bit misleading but I don't think the image is what was actually purchased. That's a concept car from CES.

What they've purchased are the "Ford E-Transit Battery Electric Vehicle", which AFAICT look pretty much identical to the standard Ford Transit vans that are ubiquitous all over the US.

I’m just guessing, but…

Significantly smaller. They are designed to be stopped on small oneway roads while still leaving enough room for a full sized vehicle to pass.

It’s also somewhat reminiscent of the existing fleet of last-mile carrier trucks:

https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/usps-mail-delivery-truck-bac...

The concept shown has wonderful visibility.

Some places are mandating designs along these lines for pedestrian safety.

My wife thinks they’re cute.

There is so little need for a post office any more except as a junk mail delivery system. I'd rather see phase out plans.

There are a lot of remote areas that only the USPS will deliver to because they aren't profit motivated.

The Post Office is a constitutional responsibility of Congress (Article 1, Section 8). There is no mention that it has to be profitable

The nation should subsidize package delivery to remote locations? I'm sure there is a good reason why, but I can't think of an example.

I can only hope their lack of profit motivation will make them stop taking money from bulk mailers.

Because there are people doing things out there that are valuable to us, but we don't pay them enough to do those things that they could dream of paying the full cost of mail delivery.

Shouldn’t we be instead paying them the fair value of their labor rather than this and let them choose how to spend that money ?

We tried subsidizing rural broadband for last 3 decades with 100s of billions of dollars with little to show for it , Starlink on the other hand is able to solve it with purely commercial enterprise not withstanding the small rural subsidy they got.

Maybe it is better for the market to decide ? If the market does not value the important things rural economy produces and is absolutely important then they either start valuing them correctly and pay for it or we can stop producing them ?

Government subsidy always creates inefficiencies and is slow to adapt to change . It is acceptable trade off in some areas like defense, police, healthcare, insurance, or foundational research where for profit enterprise is not viable but package delivery is hardly one of them.

> Shouldn’t we be instead paying them the fair value of their labor rather than this and let them choose how to spend that money ?

What is the fair value? We want them doing whatever they're doing, but we don't want to face the actual cost. So we subsidize the services they need/want, so that they will be willing/able to live there and do those things.

> We tried subsidizing rural broadband for last 3 decades with 100s of billions of dollars with little to show for it

It connected my village and the rural corridors on either side of Santa Fe.

> Starlink on the other hand is able to solve it with purely commercial enterprise not withstanding the small rural subsidy they got.

Everyone I know out here who uses Starlink says it is getting visibly worse as more people use it.

> If the market does not value the important things rural economy produces and is absolutely important then they either start valuing them correctly and pay for it or we can stop producing them

I thought COVID made it very clear that the market doesn't price based on the level of actual need, but rather on the desires of those with the most control over resources.

> It is acceptable trade off in some areas like defense, police, healthcare, insurance, or foundational research where for profit enterprise is not viable but package delivery is hardly one of them.

Clearly, you don't live in a rural area with a substantial drive to local retail. Living without any effective policing is a tradeoff many of us are willing to make, but a return to the pre-Sears days for shopping will empty the hinterlands out in an instant.

There are arguments you could make in favor of this outcome, but then be honest and say that's the outcome you're aiming for.

> Maybe it is better for the market to decide ?

It is better for the market to decide. Otherwise you will have some small percentage of people who have excellent reasons why their particular area should receive a disproportionate amount of money.

Higher costs, higher prices, it works out. But the USPS has plenty of other reasons to exist.

>I can only hope their lack of profit motivation will make them stop taking money from bulk mailers.

If your objective is to lessen your bulk mail, the FTC recommends this service. I've done it and my bulk mail is significantly less. It takes a few months to notice a difference.

https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/how-stop-junk-mail

Yeah, who needs farmers. Food is so overrated.

Also loggers, quarrymen, miners, hunters, fishermen...

Naw, clearly the world is a metropolis measured in tens of square miles large with fiber internet, supermarkets that spawn stuff on shelves, and electricity dyed green.

wouldn’t the market pay the actual value for all the essential things you mentioned if subsidy is not there and rural cost of living goes up significantly?

Instead of of subsidizing, we would merely pay for what we consume isn’t that a better deal ? Both you and the farmer get to choose how the money is being spent ?

No,

Farming is heavily subsidized worldwide. If the US stopped subsidizing farming unilaterally, it would decimate (for the pedants yes I know decimate means decline by 10%) US farming.

Are you saying that we should depend on other countries for food? You think our chip dependency leaves us vulnerable…

Today we are exporting Alfa Alfa as feedstock to global markets from our drought stricken southwest.

The subsidies we are providing has encouraged farming in desserts and is destroying precious water we have . Is depending on another nation so bad compared to that ?

Besides There are other ways to protect industry without subsidies- put a tariff on imports for example .

A tariff would not protect exports however just local consumption, farming subsidies are designed to dump are unsustainably grown produce in global markets not protect the local Industry.

To the best of my knowledge the USPS doesn't deliver food. Farmers are quite digital and even though remote, many use PO Boxes for their junk mail which could easily be done by an alternative service.

Though they're not quite ready to eat, the USPS delivers millions of pounds of live chickens along with a large variety of other animals every year:

https://pe.usps.com/text/pub52/pub52c5_008.htm

Though your farmers are digital, there is no API for getting live bees.

It's also for anything government-related, like voting. Pretty important to have.

Important for facilitating fraud. I can't speak for the US specifically as I've never lived there but in the countries I know almost all cases of court proven voter fraud were connected with the postal service. Through interception of the mail, the fraudulent ordering of mail in ballots, "lost" mail in ballots that never got counted or simply because in some places the mail in ballots are counted separately and there is less oversight, so more of an opportunity to manipulate the count.

Also that doesn't even include all the cases where a relative helped the person fill out the ballot.

Voting is a political hot topic in the US. Voting by mail is either 100% safe or totally broken depending on who you ask. Unlike many countries, there's nothing acting as a required voter ID here, and that's always on the platform in important races. You can register to vote with just a name and say you have no home address or SSN, of course it's illegal to lie about those things. I think people only agree that electronic voting is untrustworthy.

I guess my point is, it's very hard to change how voting works here.

Agreed. I'd counter that much (all?) of it should be online.

In a perfect country. Currently even the govt services that are online are terrible, and not everyone has internet access. I don't know the history behind mail, but I suspect it's become kind of a personal right in the US. If/when all these problems that rely on mail get solved, mail trucks will be the last to go, not the first like someone a few comments up was hoping.

The United States Postal Services is legitimately a national treasure.