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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

#431

Post by coryrc »

jaclaz wrote: post #373
fbdab103 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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

#432

Post by PM_me_your_math »

orangepurple wrote: post #159
avhon1 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...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.

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.

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

#433

Post by rootusrootus »

jedberg wrote: post #272
rootusrootus wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

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.

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

#434

Post by mcv »

vanderZwan wrote: post #384
mcv wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

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

#435

Post by 0cf8612b2e1e »

7speter wrote: post #409
nicholsonpk wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

#436

Post by rootusrootus »

globular-toast wrote: post #276
rootusrootus wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

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 notic…

> 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.

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

#437

Post by nonethewiser »

kalleboo wrote: post #302
mojoe wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

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

#439

Post by johnday »

mattymf wrote: post #438

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?

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

#440

Post by starkd »

smileysteve wrote: post #350
b112 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.
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