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Earlier quoted context omitted.
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...
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.
If you really want to be environmental, long haul trucking should go by rail.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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)
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!
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 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 o…
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You know they have to get out to deliver letters and parcels? They have a solution and it's called a rain coat.
> They have a solution and it's called a rain coat. So you're agreeing with previous commenter that the description is incorrect?
It's more important to be able to get in and out easily.
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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.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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)
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.
Solar will become vastly more valuable once enough electrical storage capacity goes online.
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/...
Some places are mandating designs along these lines for pedestrian safety.
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…