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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

#71

Post by rootusrootus »

akira2501 wrote: post #61
photochemsyn wrote: post #32

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 cap…

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.

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

#72

Post by mulmen »

photochemsyn wrote: post #32

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.

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.

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

#73

Post by ulfw »

akira2501 wrote: post #61
photochemsyn wrote: post #32

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 cap…

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.

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

#74

Post by IncRnd »

kube-system wrote: post #58
IncRnd wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. So, to answer the GP's question, "Where are they going to charge them once a post office has a few?" Nobody knows.

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...

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

#75

Post by Helithumper »

kube-system wrote: post #66
justanother wrote: post #48

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...

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

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

#76

Post by rootusrootus »

danans wrote: post #59

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.

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

#77

Post by mulmen »

p1necone wrote: post #70
akira2501 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 cap…

> 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…

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

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

#78

Post by mulmen »

bobthepanda wrote: post #64
akira2501 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 cap…

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.

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

#79

Post by rootusrootus »

bobthepanda wrote: post #67
rootusrootus wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

#80

Post by mikeyouse »

maxerickson wrote: post #53
Blackstrat wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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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