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Why would we *NOT* replace government fleets with electrics?

Rhea

Rhea

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There’s discussion going on about replace the USA postal delivery fleet. I heard on the radio that they are planning to make only 20% of those replacements be electric. And that is after a battle to increase from 5%

The letter carrier fleet is ideal for electric vehicles;
parked in the same place every night
well known daily mileage
many starts and stops


This is something governments can and should be doing to lead the way to reduced emissions.

Thoughts? Links for policy or statistics?
 
Rhea said:
The letter carrier fleet is ideal for electric vehicles;
parked in the same place every night
well known daily mileage
many starts and stops
Click to expand...
This is exactly why I consider EV postal vehicles such a complete no brainer.

Those vehicles are never expected to go very fast. They aren't expected to go long distances. They have an extremely limited job to do, one which returns them to a charging station every day. Reliability and efficiency are the only important considerations.

Totally a no brainer. USPS might have a few uses for fossil fuel powered vehicles, but not many.
Tom
 
Rhea said:
There’s discussion going on about replace the USA postal delivery fleet. I heard on the radio that they are planning to make only 20% of those replacements be electric. And that is after a battle to increase from 5%

The letter carrier fleet is ideal for electric vehicles;
parked in the same place every night
well known daily mileage
many starts and stops


This is something governments can and should be doing to lead the way to reduced emissions.

Thoughts? Links for policy or statistics?
Click to expand...
Ordinarily I totally agree. However, our power grid's are failing. We don't have enough base load power. Even if we brought back nuclear power, it would take 10 years to bring the plants back. We're screwed...
 
USPS also delivers to small towns and rural areas, including some very rural areas where charging stations are currently non-existent or sufficiently far apart to make it problematic to have a totally EV vehicle. Mail routes can be well over 100 miles/day with the longest route I could find being something over 182 miles. When outside weather temperatures dip to 20F or lower, such as those which exist in northern regions, EV battery life is decreased by as much as 40%. This is very significant when one is talking about more rural areas in northern parts of the US. EV vehicles will have much less range and there exist fewer opportunities for them to recharge during their routes.

I understand that city folk, especially those living in less northern climates will think 'so what? They can just get mail once or twice a week?' although they would find such a decrease in mail service to be totally unacceptable. It is worth noting that the rural poverty level is significantly higher than the urban poverty level, rural areas are less likely to have access to internet services and FedEx and UPS often do not deliver to rural areas, particularly more isolated urban areas. It is worth noting that currently, 88% of the land area served by the USPS is rural.

Converting to 100% EV vehicles is simply not practical, however desirable it might be from a fossil fuel perspective.

What I'm saying is that we are not there yet--and perhaps we won't be 'there' for a long time.
 
Harry Bosch said:
Ordinarily I totally agree. However, our power grid's are failing. We don't have enough base load power. Even if we brought back nuclear power, it would take 10 years to bring the plants back. We're screwed...
Click to expand...

I kinda agree. Glad I'm old.

Nevertheless, that's not much of an argument for keeping, much less replacing, the dumb vehicles currently the norm.

I'm pretty sure that the impact of a government agency buying fleets of EVs will do a lot more for EVs as a concept than Elon Musk making them sexy and super expensive.

Tom
 
skepticalbip said:
Why is it that plug-in hybrids are always ignored, as if that technology does not exist, in the gas vs. EV debates?
Click to expand...
I suspect that in the eyes of the more extreme "greenies", the hybrids are not pure enough. They still use fossil fuels.

Why not expand use of natural gas powered vehicles for govt use? Pretty clean by comparison to gasoline, widely available fuel source and keeps the electrical grid from getting overloaded.

The other thing I worry about an EV mandate is that some areas of the country do not have electricity that comes from clean, green sources. So, you'd have EVs ultimately powered by, say, coal. Not so green.
 
skepticalbip said:
Why is it that plug-in hybrids are always ignored, as if that technology does not exist, in the gas vs. EV debates?
Click to expand...
Speaking for myself, it's because we were talking about a very specific usage, postal delivery vehicles.

In a broader scope, I'm good with hybrids. Given current technology, they combine the efficiency of EV with the flexibility of fossil fuels.

They're efficient in stop and go driving, especially with regenerative braking systems. But capable of longer ranges because you can fill up the gas tank in a few seconds from readily available sources.

For as long as we're stuck with socialist highways for convenient distance travel, range will remain a big issue.

Cut off funding for the "freeway", and replace it with light rail and that problem will be solved.
Tom

ETA ~This is already how other countries handle transportation. In Japan, highways have a toll of about $.10/ mile. Gas costs around $10/gallon. People are free to drive personal vehicles all they want. But for distance driving, they have the option of cheap and convenient public transportation, like light rail. Most people choose that option.~
 
TomC said:
skepticalbip said:
Why is it that plug-in hybrids are always ignored, as if that technology does not exist, in the gas vs. EV debates?
Click to expand...
Speaking for myself, it's because we were talking about a very specific usage, postal delivery vehicles.

In a broader scope, I'm good with hybrids. Given current technology, they combine the efficiency of EV with the flexibility of fossil fuels.

They're efficient in stop and go driving, especially with regenerative braking systems. But capable of longer ranges because you can fill up the gas tank in a few seconds from readily available sources.

For as long as we're stuck with socialist highways for convenient distance travel, range will remain a big issue.

Cut off funding for the "freeway", and replace it with light rail and that problem will be solved.
Tom
Click to expand...
That particular "problem" will be solved as long as people only want to go where the rails go. But it would create many other problems that the interstate highway system solved such as broad distribution of food, consumables, etc. made in one place but needing to be distributed across the nation, even to remote rural areas which most of the U.S. is.
 
Toni said:
Converting to 100% EV vehicles is simply not practical, however desirable it might be from a fossil fuel perspective.
Click to expand...
Did anyone suggest 100% EV vehicles?
I don't recall that.
Tom
 
skepticalbip said:
That particular "problem" will be solved as long as people only want to go where the rails go.
Click to expand...
I don't see that as a problem as big as "You can't use our USA transportation system until you've bought a car."
Tom
 
skepticalbip said:
But it would create many other problems that the interstate highway system solved such as broad distribution of food, consumables, etc. made in one place but needing to be distributed across the nation, even to remote rural areas which most of the U.S. is.
Click to expand...
What problems would be created for the consumable goods distribution?

I'm not suggesting that we eliminate highways. Just stop subsidizing them.
At the expense of other, far more efficient methods of transportation.
Tom
 
Sixteen States Sue USPS for not doing a proper environmental review. In the Environmental Impact Statement, even the USPS admits that 95% of their routes can be covered by EVs so why is their current order of 50k vehicles only ordering 10k EVs? Further, they assume a cost of gasoline of $2.50 a gallon twenty years out.
 
If all government vehicles were electric an EMP weapon or a solar flare could stop them all instantly.
 
Elixir said:
If all government vehicles were electric an EMP weapon or a solar flare could stop them all instantly.
Click to expand...
My aging Pontiac would probably also be stopped by such things, given it's dependence on the computerized wizardry that runs the motor.
Tom
 
My tractor would probably still work.
I know my old tractor (Ford 8N ca 1949) probably wouldn’t even notice it.
 
Elixir said:
My tractor would probably still work.
I know my old tractor (Ford 8N ca 1949) probably wouldn’t even notice it.
Click to expand...
My first car was 1968 Ford station wagon. It wouldn't have noticed a nuclear explosion in the neighbor's yard.
Tom
 
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