Featured President wants to replace government fleet with EV's.

I'm so ready for the price drops on EV

SM-N986U1 ?

 

OR even a specially designed hybrid.
One that would automatically stay in EV mode up to about 30 MPH or so.

 

Except for his armored and mega horsepower limo.
And all those legislatures and staff will still travel by private jet.
They should all switch to Harley Davidson E-bikes, especially when it snows LOL and Zoom Video meetings with Pi and Putin.

 

They should also include expansion of charging for employees at the government sites across the country.

The LLV's aren't maintenance free. They were designed to be easy to fix; replacing entire engines and transmissions if needed. They also are quite low tech compared to modern cars. Using well proven technology meant better reliability, but lower efficiency and higher emissions.

An EV would be ideal, and the USPS experimented with electric LLVs that used lead acid batteries. The obstacle is that there isn't many BEVs available suitable for postal delivery. The German post office basically went and started their own EV company because nobody wanted to make an EV for their needs. The new Bolt will have a CUV variant. Maybe stripped of the extra seats, it will work.

The Secret Service has final say on what the President rides in, and they do have legitimate priorities over fuel efficiency.
The majority of legislatures do not use private jets; Biden used the train when he was in Congress. They all voted to provide the funding to not have the airport delays when it would have effected them after all.

 

Sure could.
Stamps will go up to $1.50, and first class mail would take three weeks to get to its destination....and since when did the USPS give up on this 'fan dance' of government/not-government status.

https://facts.usps.com/top-facts/ (#6) Vehicles. The Postal Service has more than 228,000 vehicles, one of the largest civilian fleets in the world. New next-generation vehicles will have improved ergonomics, safety features, fuel efficiency and design flexibility.


Taking the first point first, maybe the USPS should do what more environmentally conscious nations like Canada do....or what other (more fiscally sound) delivery agencies do - which is rely on the little "Hello Kitty" transit vans until BEV technology matures.
The 4.something gigabucks that the USPS "ESTIMATED" would take to replace their Grumman Iron Works vehicles with......some notional BEV replacement is fantasy.....even if you forget (as intended) to include infrastructure upgrades to charge them.

$6.3 billion delivery: New U.S. Postal Service truck to be picked this year | Fox News
^ Given his "China First" proclivities.....I'd put money down on Mahindra's entry.

As indicated......the USPS end of this "story" about 250,000 of 600,000 vehicles.
The idea that all 600,000 G-cars could or should be replaced AT ALL in the next 4 years is just click bait.

 

Why the Indian company, and not the one using parts from a Chinese owned one?

 

USPS Not Ready to Replace Deteriorating Grumman LLV Postal Trucks

The only company that has bid bev is workhorse which is in ohio. The government probably needs to update the requirements and get more than one bev bid. That will delay replacement but likely save a lot of money over the next 30 years.

If a vehicle travels 100 miles @10MPG then it will consume over 3500 gallons per year of gasoline, add the $3000/year maintenance costs and spending $8B on replacement bev vehicles and charging makes a big cost savings over a 25 year lifespan. I really don't know average miles driven but this is not a fantasy when you start thinking about the numbers. The Fleet of old gasoline vans maintenance and fuel cost around $2B/year, replacing them with bevs will drop that cost significantly.

Under trump imports from government spending increased. That article is old in the 2020 one I posted above mahindra isn't even in the bidding, and we should not believe campaign lies from a losing campaign and expect the current administration to go off and switch to a foreign manufacturing requirements. I would like oshkosh to have a chance to bid a bev, perhaps working with ford and/or tesla. Its likely it would be an American company that wins this bid given the executive order.

 

You could literally choked to death sucking fumes if you happen to get caught driving behind one of these things, or even when they pull up & drive off from in front of your residence. They must be exempt from any smog reg's in order to stay on the roads - with all the stench they Belch.
.

 

Fascinating opportunity for EV builders... Seems they'll need to have several different options for transitions. It would make sense given existing vehicles simplicity to contract out for electric motor conversions, with a more long term plan for vehicles to be built from the ground up. They will have to be durable though. Not even taxi cabs have to put up with that much starting and stopping abuse.

 

"President Biden announced that he would like to replace the government fleet of over 600,000 vehicles with EV's"

Hold onto your wallet!

600,000 BEV's x $40,000 = $24,000,000,000

This is $24,000,000,000 a government that is many trillions of dollars in debt already must come up with.

Remember a Government has no money- it only has money it takes from others.

In many areas of our country with gas at its current price it is also much cheaper to run on gas rather than electric. A BEV will cost more to operate from a cost standpoint in much of the US. This is particularly true in the West Coast and much of the North East urbanized areas.

While I am a proponent of BEV's this is frightening news from a financial perspective.

 

A better picture would include the salvage value of the replaced vehicles. Then there is an operational cost savings. Do a full financial analysis with all costs, not just procurement.

Bob Wilson

 

for the 200,000+ thousand old postal vehicles it would actually reduce government spending significantly over the life of the vehicles. I am not sure of others, but you need to consider the current costs of maintenance and fuel. The government is wasting so much money not replacing this outdated fleet.

I think with this change they need to do a bid. Those black SUVs probably could save a lot if replaced as they got old with phevs. Each vehicle class is different, but the trillions lost because of poor response to covid because we didn't want to spend tens of billions early, should make people think of where some of the government waste is coming from.

 

A hybrid would be much better than current vehicles but as I learned in a traffic jam with my prius long slow still uses a lot of fuel. A phev would work to really reduce consumption, but that would be more expensive than a bev. In 2015 when bids first went out that would probably have made the most sense. A 75 kwh pack which is smaller than the long range model Y pack, would provide enough power for 90% of the fleet and be less expensive than doing a phev with a 10 kwh pack. Those 10% with cold weather and long routes without a place to quick charge during the day might need a bigger pack.

If we look at bev busses costs are already down to $100/kwh, so a 75 kwh pack if produced for 200,000 vehicles should cost $7500. Of course its the government so cost in the vehicle would likely be $20K for the batteries ;-)

 

Do you suppose they spent much less than that on the LLVs?

EV isn't the scary/expensive part of this. Replacing all of them at once is.

 

Not replacing them means continuing to spend whatever it costs to keep those 24 to 32 year old vehicles on the road, another number that John321 forgot to include in the post. Neither number tells anything without the other one next to it.

I wonder whether "all at once" is intended to really mean "all at once", or "as they come up for expensive repair or replacement."

 

When we are talking about 200,000+ postal vans and spotters, the bid went out in 2015, and they should have been ordered already. The youngest was built in 1994, they are all past their projected useful life. In 2014 they spent $3000/vehicle to maintain, I am sure it is higher right now. In 2017 they put telematics on 400 vehicles and they averaged 5500 gallons of gasoline in a year. My guestimate is the average uses 3500 gallons a year on fuel. I would guess that a bev would use 1/3 or less of that money for fuel. The post office already loses money replacing these things with bevs is going to decrease their costs greatly for the fleet over the useful life of these vehicles.

On the balance of the federal vehicles many are leased or newer. I would think in the next 2 years the federal government could have a plan to replace them at end of lease, or usefull life with plug-ins built in America. That really is not much of the federal budget and likely would reduce federal vehicle costs over the next decade.

 

I agree.

There would also be the associated cost of installing the enormous charging networks for fleets of these vehicles as well as upgrading Utility capacity to supply the power draw for these huge new charging centers. Mechanics would also have to be hired and trained to meet the needs of these new technological vehicles.
Hopefully this would not happen all at once- probably not even possible to do it all at once.

Again not saying its bad just pointing attention to the enormous cost of implementing.

At times we or at least I get excited looking and thinking about new technology or advances without considering the cost. My post was to maybe draw attention to the cost of something like this while considering our current national debt.

Eventually it is always the citizens who will be responsible for the Governments spending.


U.S. National Debt Clock : Real Time/

 

If we are just looking at the pv fleet which is about 1/3 of the federal fleet, maintenance costs are very high as are fuel costs. An electric fleet will need fewer not more mechanics. They will need to be retrained and some mechanics will need to be moved to other positions or no longer work for the federal government. Utilities (outside of California) already have the capacity to charge these vehicles its not much, upgrades and charging stations need to be considered.

The pv fleet is very old (average age 30 years) and no delivery business in private hands would deal with the extra costs associated with this. Fuel and maintenance is over $2B/year. Replacing 200,000 vehicles over 4 years and placing infrastructure and training costs to around $8B (budget $2B/year over each of the next 4 years) really would not be noticed at all in the budget deficit. New vehicles will be quiter and more comfortable for the postal employees. Versus current vehicles these will save many times their costs over their 24 year projected useful life.

Let's look at the federal budget. September estimates are the federal government spent $6.6 T in 2020 and had a deficit of $3.3T. Even if we replaced the entire federal fleet with plug-ins and did infrastructure in one year (not what I would propose) that would be in my estimation $30B or 0.45% of last years federal spending. Later years would have savings every year.

In reality we should have gotten a bid for hybrid postal vehicles in 2010 and the fleet should have all been replaced by now, but its 2021, I think we can replace it all by 2025 with bevs and relatively reduce the deficit. Some things just make sense, and with a fleet that stops and starts a lot bevs make sense. It also will spur us industry to replace most delivery vans with plug-ins (PHEV and BEV) which will save a great deal of oil.

The government is really bad at making cost benefit decisions. I believe if you crunch all the numbers at least for postal delivery vehicles costs come down over the life of the vehicles.

I encourage you to plug in maintenance and fueling numbers for the next 25 years and tell us how much the government will spend versus business as usual case.