Sign In or Create an Account.

By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy

Electric Vehicles

America’s National Treasure Goes Electric

On the U.S. Postal Service’s wonderfully weird shift to electric cars

A postal worker.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

When you think of a gas-guzzler, what comes to mind is probably a gigantic pickup like the Ram 1500 TRX, which gets a combined 12 miles per gallon, or a sports car like the Ferrari Daytona, which manages a less-than-impressive 13 mpg. But you may not think about a vehicle you’ve likely seen a thousand times: the small trucks driven by most local mail carriers, known as the Grumman Long Life Vehicle. They lived up to their name, since they’ve been in service since the mid-80s; the newest of them were built 30 years ago. But they get an abysmal 9 miles per gallon, burning fuel by the tankful and spewing emissions as they go about their appointed rounds.

So after a long and winding journey to a replacement for the LLV, the first of the Postal Service’s Next Generation Delivery Vehicles — most of which will be electric — just hit the road. And they are beautiful.

A new USPS truck.Oshkosh Defense

This may not be a widely shared opinion. Indeed, some will find the NGDV downright ugly, and they won’t exactly be wrong. But the new postal truck’s weird appearance — many have remarked that it looks like a duck, or something from a Richard Scarry book — is what, I predict, will make it iconic. In addition to bringing a touch of whimsy to your neighborhood, the NGDV will advance the cause of vehicle electrification much more than you might expect.

Postal delivery vehicles were always a no-brainer for electrification: They do a lot of stopping and starting, they follow fixed routes so they can charge at a single location, and since the existing fleet uses so much gas, electrifying them will make a real dent in the nation’s emissions.

The old trucks didn’t just add to our nation’s carbon emissions, they got no love from the workers who drove them. If you’ve noticed your mail carrier sweating profusely as they bring letters to your door in the summer, it’s not just because they have to carry that heavy bag up and down the street. It’s also because their creaky, uncomfortable vehicles have no air conditioning. In 2024.

“It felt like heaven blowing in my face,” said one carrier after trying out the NGDV, which does indeed have air conditioning, along with many of the safety features, including backup cameras, antilock brakes, and airbags, that are common in modern cars but the LLVs lacked. The new truck also looks unusual because it solves many of the problems the old vehicles pose for letter carriers. The truck had to be tall enough to allow them to stand up in the back, so they won’t have to hunch over the way they do now. It had to be low to the ground so they can get in and out easily dozens of times in a shift. It had to have a big enough windshield for the shortest and tallest carriers to see out comfortably.

A new USPS truck.Oshkosh Defense

All that meant that the NGDV wound up looking like no other vehicle. Once they are fully deployed — the current plan is to put 60,000 into service over the next few years — their unique profile will become familiar to everyone. And it’s important that this strange electric vehicle will be associated with the Postal Service. Because people love the Postal Service.

That might be a surprise given familiar complaints about lines at the post office. But it turns out that when surveys are taken, the Postal Service always ranks at or near the top of public approval among federal agencies. A recent Pew Research poll put the USPS’s approval at 72%, behind only the National Park Service. Gallup polls show them at the top. A 2020 survey by the department’s Inspector General found 91% of respondents saying they had a positive view of the USPS.

Perhaps people have a sense that what the Postal Service accomplishes is nothing short of miraculous. They move over 300 million pieces of mail every day, and deliver to 167 million addresses. They’ll pick up a letter at your door, take it anywhere in the country by land or air or water, and deliver it right to your Aunt Myrtle in the space of a few days — and not for $50 or $100, but for 73 cents. It costs the same whether that letter is going to Atlanta or Alakanuk. As U.S. law states, the purpose of the Postal Service is “to bind the Nation together through the personal, educational, literary, and business correspondence of the people.” The USPS is nothing less than a national treasure.

Maybe people appreciate that, or maybe it’s just that most of us like getting mail, and our mail carriers are part of our communities (and usually friendly). In any case, the new electric vehicles will be associated with all the positive feelings people have about the USPS.

Which is why it’s fine — and maybe even better — that the NGDV is odd-looking, or even ugly (but in a charming way). One prevailing theory about EV adoption — advanced by Tesla’s Elon Musk and embodied in other vehicles like the Ford F-150 Lightning — is that the way to get people to buy EVs is to make EVs that are cool. It’s a valid perspective, but another way to think about the long-term goal of transportation electrification is that EVs ought to be in as many places and as many forms as possible. If you want to normalize them, what better way than to have a funky-looking EV rolling down your street every day, delivering mail to your door?

It may be a while before you spot an NGDV in your neighborhood; among other things, it will take time to install the charging infrastructure at all the postal facilities necessary to electrify the entire delivery fleet. After all, one of the things that makes the Postal Service such a vital part of our national life is that it touches Americans, and delivers to them, no matter how far-flung they are. At least at first, we may be more likely to see electric delivery vehicles in big cities than in remote rural areas.

But before long, the NGDV could become the most widely recognized EV in the country, and one that people associate with service, community, efficiency, and patriotism. And yes, they look weird. Which is part of what makes them great.

Green

You’re out of free articles.

Subscribe today to experience Heatmap’s expert analysis 
of climate change, clean energy, and sustainability.
To continue reading
Create a free account or sign in to unlock more free articles.
or
Please enter an email address
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Spotlight

How a Giant Solar Farm Flopped in Rural Texas

Amarillo-area residents successfully beat back a $600 million project from Xcel Energy that would have provided useful tax revenue.

Texas and solar panels.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Power giant Xcel Energy just suffered a major public relations flap in the Texas Panhandle, scrubbing plans for a solar project amidst harsh backlash from local residents.

On Friday, Xcel Energy withdrew plans to build a $600 million solar project right outside of Rolling Hills, a small, relatively isolated residential neighborhood just north of the city of Amarillo, Texas. The project was part of several solar farms it had proposed to the Texas Public Utilities Commission to meet the load growth created by the state’s AI data center boom. As we’ve covered in The Fight, Texas should’ve been an easier place to do this, and there were few if any legal obstacles standing in the way of the project, dubbed Oneida 2. It was sited on private lands, and Texas counties lack the sort of authority to veto projects you’re used to seeing in, say, Ohio or California.

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow
Hotspots

A Data Center Is Dead, Long Live a Solar Farm

And more of the most important news about renewable projects fighting it out this week.

The United States.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

1. Racine County, Wisconsin – Microsoft is scrapping plans for a data center after fierce opposition from a host community in Wisconsin.

  • The town of Caledonia was teed up to approve land rezoning for the facility, which would’ve been Microsoft’s third data center in the state. Dubbed “Project Nova,” the data center would have sat near an existing We Energies natural gas power plant.
  • After considerable pushback at community meetings, the tech giant announced Friday that it would either give up on the project or relocate it elsewhere to avoid more fervent opposition.
  • “While we have decided not to proceed with this particular site, we remain fully committed to investing in Southeast Wisconsin. We view this as a healthy step toward building a project that aligns with community priorities and supports shared goals,” Microsoft said in a statement published to its website, adding that it will attempt to “identify a site that supports both community priorities and our long-term development objectives.”
  • A review of the project opponents’ PR materials shows their campaign centered on three key themes: the risk of higher electricity bills, environmental impacts of construction and traffic, and a lack of clarity around how data centers could be a public good. Activists also frequently compared Project Nova to a now-infamous failed project in Wisconsin from the Chinese tech manufacturer Foxconn.

2. Rockingham County, Virginia – Another day, another chokepoint in Dominion Energy’s effort to build more solar energy to power surging load growth in the state, this time in the quaint town of Timberville.

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow
Q&A

How the AI Boom Could Come Back Around for Natural Gas

A conversation with Enchanted Rock’s Joel Yu.

The Fight Q & A subject.
Heatmap Illustration

This week’s chat was with Joel Yu, senior vice president for policy and external affairs at the data center micro-grid services company Enchanted Rock. Now, Enchanted Rock does work I usually don’t elevate in The Fight – gas-power tracking – but I wanted to talk to him about how conflicts over renewable energy are affecting his business, too. You see, when you talk to solar or wind developers about the potential downsides in this difficult economic environment, they’re willing to be candid … but only to a certain extent. As I expected, someone like Yu who is separated enough from the heartburn that is the Trump administration’s anti-renewables agenda was able to give me a sober truth: Land use and conflicts over siting are going to advantage fossil fuels in at least some cases.

The following conversation was lightly edited for clarity.

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow