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U.S. Postal Service starts nationwide electric vehicle fleet, buying 9,250 EVs

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Re: U.S. Postal Service starts nationwide electric vehicle fleet, buying 9,250 EVs

#381

Post by SamBam »

m4rtink wrote: post #94
viraptor wrote: post #13

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…

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.

Re: U.S. Postal Service starts nationwide electric vehicle fleet, buying 9,250 EVs

#382

Post by gwbas1c »

b112 wrote: post #203
gwbas1c wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 stan…

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.

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.

Re: U.S. Postal Service starts nationwide electric vehicle fleet, buying 9,250 EVs

#383

Post by mrsuprawsm »

crote wrote: post #315
nine_k wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 prett…

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)

Re: U.S. Postal Service starts nationwide electric vehicle fleet, buying 9,250 EVs

#384

Post by vanderZwan »

mcv wrote: post #353
jonasdegendt wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

Re: U.S. Postal Service starts nationwide electric vehicle fleet, buying 9,250 EVs

#385

Post by vanderZwan »

mcv wrote: post #282
mschuster91 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

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.

Re: U.S. Postal Service starts nationwide electric vehicle fleet, buying 9,250 EVs

#386

Post by LeanderK »

jonasdegendt wrote: post #320
mcv wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: U.S. Postal Service starts nationwide electric vehicle fleet, buying 9,250 EVs

#387

Post by botro »

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

Re: U.S. Postal Service starts nationwide electric vehicle fleet, buying 9,250 EVs

#388

Post by lowercased »

gffrd wrote: post #158
m4rtink wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

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.

Re: U.S. Postal Service starts nationwide electric vehicle fleet, buying 9,250 EVs

#389

Post by dev1n »

SamBam wrote: post #381
m4rtink wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

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

Re: U.S. Postal Service starts nationwide electric vehicle fleet, buying 9,250 EVs

#390

Post by screwturner68 »

SamBam wrote: post #381
m4rtink wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.
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