as usual with any large-scale procurement decision, it is a whole lot of politics. the anti-EV people were pushing against it, the defense contractors that run the government had more experience in gas powered vehicles, and the environmentalists were pushing for impractical targets like 100% EV, which just gave ammunition to the people who didn't want EVs.
the cool thing here seems to be that practicality is actually going to win out, and the postal trucks will end up being EVs on routes where that makes sense, and internal combustion on routes where EVs don't make sense.
Its probably too soon to know if that pressure succeeding was lucky or a mistake.
I love the idea of having an all electric fleet if it's feasible and better than the alternatives. I also have to assume the original plan to only electrify part of the fleet has functional reasons behind it.
If those reasons are overcome, or if that decision was somehow entirely political, then the pressure is lucky. Otherwise...we'll see?
Depends on driving habits and price of electricity and gas. In Washington state, electricity is cheaper compared to most of the US, and gas is among the most expensive compared to most of the US.
For less than ~10k miles per year, the higher up front cost of an electric vehicle and the greater depreciation due to eventual battery replacement might make a hybrid gas vehicle still cheaper per mile.
But for high mileage, high frequency of stop and go driving, I imagine all electric is cheapest?
Electric is likely cheapest considering duty cycle and fuel usage, and the battery should not need to be replaced for hundreds of thousands of miles, at which point we will have better batteries that last even longer and are cheaper.
> might make a hybrid gas vehicle still cheaper per mile
I agree. What is unconscionable is deploying 10s of thousands of vehicles that spend every day of operation accelerating rather quickly then coming to a full stop within a few seconds without using regenerative braking.
The published ratings of battery depreciation are per-mile, because there’s not really any other way to straightforwardly measure it, but the chemistry of battery degradation is very complex, and factors like number of high-current heating cycles and depth of discharge definitely matter.
the problem is we aren't comparing person vehicles, you have to consider these vehicles are estimated to need a 20+ year life span which mean replacing the batteries at least once, most likely twice. electric vehicle metrics are also not based on carrying a heavy load, at start and stop distances, moving at too low a speed to really benefit from reclamation.
The truth is, we have no real data to tell us how electric vehicles will fair over the expected time length with this expected work load.
When you factor in the building of instructor for charging stations, and their maintenance.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-postal-service-gas-trucks-el...