The US Postal Service announced today that its delivery vehicles will be electric. Out of more than 60,000 The next generation delivery vehicle that the USPS intends to order by 2028, at least 45,000 units will be electric. And starting in 2026, it will exclusively order electric NGDV.
However, NGDV is not the only means used by the Post Office. As part of its plan to buy a total of 106,000 new vehicles to replace its 220,000 aging fleet, at least 66,000 vehicles will be electric by 2028. The total investment is expected to cost about approx. $9.6 billion.
USPS originally planned to order only 5,000 electric delivery vehicles but announced in March that they already have increase that number to 10,000. Then in the summer it announced that it had plans increase its EV orders again. According to the release, the Postal Service was able to increase the number of electric NGDVs due to an additional $3 billion in funding allocated to it in the Inflation Reduction Act.
In a statement, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said:
The $3 billion funding provided by Congress has significantly reduced the risk associated with accelerating the nationwide rollout of the infrastructure needed to electrify our delivery fleet. While most funding for electric vehicles will continue to come from Postal Service revenue, we are grateful for the trust Congress and the Administration have placed in us to build and achieve these goals. What has the potential to become the largest fleet of electric vehicles in the nation.
While an electric NGDV will certainly cost USPS more than an equivalent number of petrol vehicles initially, an EV will almost certainly be a better long-term investment. That’s because the gas version of NGDV only got an estimate of 8.6 mpg. That’s better than what the current car has, but just barely. Oshkosh Defense only manages to beat the vehicle’s gas mileage by an estimated EPA of 0.4 mpg.
