If the torrential rain in California, intense flooding in Tennessee, and hail and snow in springtime tell us anything, it’s that climate change is real. And if we don’t do anything about it, it’s just going to get worse and worse.
So in yet another bid to make a change in America, the US Postal Service (USPS) decided that it’s going to do what it can. In order to lessen its carbon footprint, it will buy 9,000 brand-new Ford electric vehicles to swap its usual gas-guzzling, carbon monoxide-releasing vans.
In order to support these efforts, and these new EVs, the USPS will also build a whopping 14,000 additional charging stations in at least 75 different counties and municipalities all around the continent.
In a statement, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy shared, “We are moving forward with our plans to simultaneously improve our service, reduce our cost, grow our revenue, and improve the working environment for our employees.”
“Electrification of our vehicle fleet is now an important component of these initiatives. We have developed a strategy that mitigates both cost and risk of deployment, which enables execution on this initiative to begin now,” he added.
While the benefits of electric vehicles are eminent, the fact that they mostly move at slower speeds means that they will work well in the inner city delivery routes. That’s because, for inner city delivery routes, these types of vehicles are great choices for a service that’s dependent on a 0-35 mpg average speed. This generally refers to the number of miles a vehicle can travel on one gallon of fuel. But in the case of the electric vehicle, it’s more about how much it can move per charge.
The USPS inspector general also found out recently in an analysis that ‘99% of all postal routes are between 24-70 miles long,’ since even the smallest towns in the country have post offices. This means that they can be serviced by basically all commercial types of EVs.
It was shared in a Government Executive article that the Inspector General wrote on the USPS website, “The agency can, as it has in the past, take a leading role in advancing the adoption of new transportation technology. As the technology has evolved, there is no longer any question that electric vehicles can serve the functions necessary for postal delivery.”
Moreover, DeJoy shares that by 2026, they hope that all their new vehicles will be electric ones.
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