US Postal Service to Deploy 66,000 Electric Vehicles by 2028 After Public Pressure Campaign

A mail carrier parks in front of a U.S. Postal Service building in Buena Park, Calif., on Jan. 15, 2021. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) has announced its plan to acquire at least 66,000 battery electric vehicles, which the company plans to deploy by 2028, with the initiative supported by funding from Congress.

The USPS is anticipating the purchase of at least 60,000 of its new “Next Generation Delivery Vehicles,” of which at least 75 percent, or 45,000, are expected to be battery electric operated, according to a Dec. 20 news release.

A total of 21,000 vehicles will be “off the shelf” commercial battery electric vehicles. The announcement comes as part of the USPS’s overall network modernization efforts.

The electric vehicles are part of a total 106,000 new delivery vehicles the agency intends to purchase by 2028. The new vehicles will begin to replace the USPS’s existing delivery fleet of more than 220,000 vehicles. The postal service received $3 billion in congressional funding under the Inflation Reduction Act for the plan.

“The $3 billion provided by Congress has significantly reduced the risk associated with accelerating the implementation of a nationwide infrastructure necessary to electrify our delivery fleet,” said Postmaster General Louis DeJoy.

“While most of the electric vehicle funding will continue to come from Postal Service revenues, we are grateful for the confidence that Congress and the Administration have placed in us to build and acquire what has the potential to become the largest electric vehicle fleet in the nation.”

Electrification

The $3 billion in IRA funding will be split into $1.3 billion for electric vehicles and $1.7 billion for charging stations. In addition, the USPS will contribute $6.6 billion for buying heavy-duty electric trucks and other nondelivery vehicles. This would bring the total amount invested in the electrification project to nearly $10 billion.

In April, multiple environmental groups and several states sued USPS for its decision to replace the existing fleet with fossil fuel-powered internal combustion engine vehicles.

USPS announced its first vehicle replacement plan in 2021, intending to only electrify 10 percent of its fleet. Following public pressure, the postal service later announced that 40 percent of its new trucks would be electric vehicles. The agency now expects to exclusively buy electric delivery trucks by 2026.

Electric Battery Fires

Electrification of USPS’s delivery fleet presents a new set of safety challenges to the agency, including the prospect of having to deal with battery fires.

“Damaged cells in the battery can experience uncontrolled increases in temperature and pressure (thermal runaway), which can lead to hazards such as battery reignition/fire. The risks of electric shock and battery reignition/fire arise from the ‘stranded’ energy that remains in a damaged battery,” according to a safety research report by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).

The report investigated three EV crashes that resulted in fires. The board also found that emergency responders are at risk of suffering from electric shocks due to exposure to high-voltage components of a damaged battery.

There is also a lack of knowledge on how to deal with fires from EV batteries. In 2017, a Tesla Model X battery caught fire after the vehicle crashed into a residential garage. In an agency video, Thomas Barth, an NTSB engineer and highway investigator, pointed out that firefighters poured thousands of gallons of water onto the roof of the Tesla in a bid to put out the fire.

“They didn’t realize that they had to direct water onto the battery compartment under the car to cool the battery and stop the reaction causing the fire,” Barth said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.