ElectricMotorcycleForum.com
General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: DonTom on January 29, 2021, 11:14:04 AM
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Did I really beat Richard with this news here?
"President Biden will make entire 645k federal vehicle fleet electric"
See here. (https://electrek.co/2021/01/25/president-biden-will-make-entire-645k-vehicle-federal-fleet-electric/)
-Don- Reno, NV
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It's a good start.
They probably won't buy Tesla, tho they'll be the only one capable of filling the order.
-Crissa
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It's a good start.
They probably won't buy Tesla, tho they'll be the only one capable of filling the order.
-Crissa
The last I heard, Tesla sells every vehicle they can make. That is why Tesla does NOT advertise anywhere at all.
Has something changed with Tesla with their ability to manufacture more cars?
It could be the opposite of what you expect. Perhaps Tesla is the only one who is not capable of filling the order.
-Don- Reno, NV
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Has something changed with Tesla with their ability to manufacture more cars?
...They're more than doubling their manufacturing capability (They made 50 GWh last year, they're aiming for over 200 GWh next) by building new factories?
-Crissa
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That isn't a particularly good link for this topic.
What do you think Don?
Form exploratory commission, zero emission not limited to electric, union workers no telling how far down the supply chain. State, local, and tribal.
How did the tco work out for those electric Chevy's?
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That was a new one on me. But then I get most of my news from my morning newspaper and it hasn't arrived yet. ;)
Good luck with that plan. I don't thing the federal government is ready to have all of their vehicles powered by batteries. They don't have the infrastructure and likely need more range than can be provided at this time for most of their needs. Plus, you had better believe that the drivers of these EVs are going to need retraining to deal with range anxiety and other issues. And then there are the government vehicle maintenance shops. Talk about retraining. That is going to be a lot more difficult than just buying the new vehicles, especially for military vehicles. :o I recommend baby steps first before jumping into the EV ocean.
If Biden is going to toss EV money around, lets start first with the U.S. Postal Service to replace their Jeep-like local delivery vehicles and see how that goes? That would be a perfect usage for electric vehicles considering the current state of the technology. And it is about time that those long-suffering Jeeps finally are retired to a rest home. ::)
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G I don't thing the federal government is ready to have all of their vehicles powered by batteries. They don't have the infrastructure and likely need more range than can be provided at this time for most of their needs.
If Biden is going to toss EV money around, lets start first with the U.S. Postal Service to replace their Jeep-like local delivery vehicles and see how that goes? That would be a perfect usage for electric vehicles considering the current state of the technology. And it is about time that those long-suffering Jeeps finally are retired to a rest home. ::)
In most cases, I doubt they will need any infrastructure. I assume they will start with the vehicles that don't need much range and can charge where they are usually parked. The post office vehicles were mentioned there, and that is a good place to start.
Also, Biden says there will soon be many more charge stations.
-Don- Reno, NV
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That was a new one on me. But then I get most of my news from my morning newspaper and it hasn't arrived yet. ;)
Good luck with that plan. I don't thing the federal government is ready to have all of their vehicles powered by batteries. They don't have the infrastructure and likely need more range than can be provided at this time for most of their needs. Plus, you had better believe that the drivers of these EVs are going to need retraining to deal with range anxiety and other issues. And then there are the government vehicle maintenance shops. Talk about retraining. That is going to be a lot more difficult than just buying the new vehicles, especially for military vehicles. :o I recommend baby steps first before jumping into the EV ocean.
If Biden is going to toss EV money around, lets start first with the U.S. Postal Service to replace their Jeep-like local delivery vehicles and see how that goes? That would be a perfect usage for electric vehicles considering the current state of the technology. And it is about time that those long-suffering Jeeps finally are retired to a rest home. ::)
Honestly, going slow is not really an option anymore. The time to slowly start replacing govt transportation with EVs slowly was several years ago. Now that basically everything that happens is too little, too late, fast electrification is the only option. There are plenty of vehicles outside Tesla that can fill more than 50% of govt needs right now (Chevy Bolt, Hyundai Kona, Nissan Leaf Base Model). I’m sure Tesla, as an American based company will enjoy filling some of these gaps as well with a standard range plus M3. This isn’t a change that has to happen tomorrow, but will probably end up being carried out over the next 3-4 years, which politically speaking, is quick for this change. A significant boost to the EV market in America. I doubt this will be limited by production and even if it is, there isn’t just one manufacturer to look to with this problem. GM will probably be a huge player in the next three years, Tesla could be building 3 million cars a year by 2024. I don’t know if Tesla will always be in a position of barely filling orders soon.
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To me Chevy would make the most sense from a political perspective given both the previous GM bailouts and the fact that they still use union labor, unlike tesla. Buying tesla's luxury ev's for gov workers would have terrible optics as well.
Acting like this is going to happen overnight is naïve. It doesn't matter how fast it needs to happen, our gov. simply does not work that quickly, and replacing 654k vehicles is going to take time. Like a lot of Biden's executive actions this is more of a signal to show the direction his administration wants to steer the ship. It's still a long journey.
I agree that USPS is a great place to invest this way, but that will take even more time especially considering USPS has bought a large number of ICE van's fairly recently to replace the old Grumman LLV's. They aren't going to replace a fleet of vehicles they just bought a few years ago.
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I think this could be a great opportunity for a company to really try to roll out a plug and play EV conversion kit for things like the mail Jeeps.
As the engine wears out pull them in and swap it out. All those bodies won't be good for anything else anyway.
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Unfortunately even though conversion kits are the greenest way to transition to electric, I don't see them growing much.
Good kits + the labor to install them typically cost more than an entire new replacement vehicle with all the modern bells and whistles, and they can't be warrantied and serviced in a straightforward accessible way.
The economics of the situation make it so it's a better choice to either drive the vehicle as an ICE car until the end of its life or just replace it with a brand new electric car.
I expect conversions to stay extremely niche for this reason.
The Grumman LLV's already have 30 year lifespans. There's not a huge reason to extend their lives further at this point, and more importantly the needs of mail carriers have changed. The LLV was designed and sized for mostly envelope mail and minimal packages, but the internet, amazon, and covid have both changed the game and now packages are a huge part of the delivery work. Those LLV's are just not up to the task or the volume, which is part of why they've already replaced so many of them with modern vans.
It doesn't help that it doesn't have air conditioning, and the fusebox is right under the wipers which causes alarmingly frequent fires.
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Those mail 'vehicles' aren't really worth saving. They weren't built with aerodynamics or repairability or even 'will the windows bake the driver' as considerations.
-Crissa
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Those mail 'vehicles' aren't really worth saving. They weren't built with aerodynamics or repairability or even 'will the windows bake the driver' as considerations.
-Crissa
Still they are better than the tip-over three-wheel Cushman scooters that were being used when I had a summer job delivering mail in 1963. There were some streets in my town that the things wouldn't climb and the mail carrier would have to park the scooter at the bottom of the hill and lug the mail up the street to deliver it. What really wasn't appreciated was that they would tip over if you made a sharp turn at too high a speed (say 20 mph) That was a USPS experiment that didn't quite work out. ::)
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Well aerodynamics don't matter at 15mph from one mailbox to the next. A big sprinter van would be harder to pass on a two lane road.
Also the bad dirt roads in rural areas are one of the reasons they went with the Jeep platform in the first place.
The guys on the Zero EV channel talk about their Mazda and Porsche crate kits that will have everything an owner will need to do a full EV conversion. They aren't cheap by any means but all the connections and mounting brackets are included so a good mechanic should be able to swap it out with no issue. This is a very small market of course but at the scale of hundreds of thousands of units the price would drop dramatically.
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Scale won't drop the price dramatically. Most of the price is still the battery, significant amount is the labor, and neither one of those are going to change the price much with scale. You might get some savings on the motor controller and wire, but not enough to make up the difference. The brackets and adapter plates will go down with scale, but these are such small parts of the cost that it's pretty much irrelevant.
But again, the biggest issue is simply that the Grumman LLV is not worth saving at this point.
You keep saying Jeep, does your area use actual jeeps or the Grumman's most common to USPS?
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We have a mix of Jeep and Grumman with Jeeps in the more rural and mountainous areas. Although I have some regular Jeep Wrangler green or brown civilian models that do some deliveries but that's mostly just in my area.
I see your point with packages but Amazon has it's own fleet of big sprinter vans here and so I very rarely get a package by USPS.
The shipping rates for any package of size is just too high with the USPS. UPS or FedEx gives a much better price for bigger heavy packages.
One thing I have to disagree on would be the labor issue. They have big maintenance centers that do major overhauls removing the whole engine and transmission on a regular basis. If when the time comes to overhaul the engine they just drop in an EV unit it's no worse time or labor wise. No need to try to convert them all at once.
It doesn't really matter though they will buy all new vehicles and just raise taxes to cover it no biggie.
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Most rural carriers no longer even use the USPS vehicle, opting for private vehicles or light trucks and vans for their greater capabilities.
The Arcimoto Deliverator would be perfect for most of the short-route uses, maybe swap the front seat with something that rotates on command and a wider roof panel for rain protection.
Still need something enclosed for the really rural routes and inclement climate crowd.
-Crissa
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USPS has 231,000 vehicles. If 200,000 of them became electric, that's 3x more than GM has sold in Chevy Bolts since 2017, and could be considered high volume.
Being a high volume vehicle, it would make sense they were purpose-built for competing with UPS and Fedex. They'd have efficient stop/in/out/go driver ergonomics, totally keyless with automatic parking brake, large LCD panel screen with tactical delivery information, easy package storage/retrieval/scanning, etc.
The average postal route is 25 miles with 500-700 stops. The vehicle should easily get >= 2.5 mi/kWh, so the entire battery pack could be just 30 kWh ($4000). All vehicles plugged in at the end of the day with computerized round-robin EVSE sharing. Then natural gas vehicles for anything longer range.
Unfortunately the USPS is a bureaucratic dinosaur with little regards to efficiency or customer service, so forget the whole thing. Maybe in 2040.
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USPS delivers primarily envelope sized things and makes more stops per mile than anyone else. That's why they use smaller vehicles.
It's not that the USPS is a bureaucratic dinosaur (although it is) it's that Republicans in Congress have put onerous requirements on everything they do.
Even the shoes that USPS employees use must be of certified and approved US manufacture. They're not bad shoes, but you're not allowed to mail order them, nor does the Post Offices have their own supply. And that's just a small sample of the bizarre things Congress has required of them.
-Crissa
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USPS delivers primarily envelope sized things and makes more stops per mile than anyone else. That's why they use smaller vehicles.
It's not that the USPS is a bureaucratic dinosaur (although it is) it's that Republicans in Congress have put onerous requirements on everything they do.
Even the shoes that USPS employees use must be of certified and approved US manufacture. They're not bad shoes, but you're not allowed to mail order them, nor does the Post Offices have their own supply. And that's just a small sample of the bizarre things Congress has required of them.
-Crissa
BTW, the USPS does seem to be delivering more packages now than they used to do. It used to be that you got a delivery slip in the mail and had to drive down to your local PO office to pick it up. Now packages are hand-delivered right to your front door. (Much more convenient and the lack of a trip to the PO likely helps out global warming a little bit.) As an package delivery example, I recently ordered a gallon of expensive Swiss motorcycle oil (kind of bulky and heavy) from Amazon and it was delivered in a beat-up box by my mail carrier - however my credit card bill was delivered to a neighbor who brought it over to me the next day. So it would appear that package delivery is more important now than first class letter delivery. :o
Speaking of uniforms: When I worked for the USPS back in the 1960's I was given a voucher for something like $150 (a lot of money in those days) to buy a uniform. I bought my clothing from a uniform store located across from city hall in my town. I bought a pair of shoes, spiffy wool grey pants with stripes, a trim wool jacket and a pith helmet. The quality of the clothing was really amazing and I still have the shoes, which remain in great condition with the original soles and leather that has not cracked or split. American made for sure. ;) But that clothing was a lot more expensive than what I had been buying at J. C. Penny and Sears Roebuck.
One other interesting fact was that I had to take a written test to get the P.O. job. The test consisted of reading a complicated train schedule and picking out the trains that would get the mail from one destination to another in the shortest amount of time by shifting the mail from one train to another at various cities across the country. As it turned out, I was familiar with trains having had plenty of practice solving train math problems in my high school algebra classes. ;) My guess is that the current job application USPS test is different now. ::)
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To be sure the electric drive train is ideal for this use case. No idling, regen braking, short trips and long down time for charging.
That one pedal driving feature is great for those guys.
Just seems wasteful to scrap thousands of functioning chassis. When the rapid advancement in technology is factored in then even brand new vehicles with current batteries will likely be obsolete in ten years.
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We're debating whether the chassis are functional.
It would probably cost more to try to upgrade them in both up front, maintenance, not to mention function. A cab that actually understood how air moves would be a basic advancement that a 1980 Accord had that the USPS vehicle does not.
-Crissa
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Every time I see one of those P.O. delivery vehicles go up and down the street, starting and stopping at every house to deliver the mail I am amazed how well they seem to hang in there and keep running. I am sure that that sort of usage is considered "severe service" by the manufacturer and I kind of doubt that they get the sort of maintenance they deserve. From what I can see while passing by the little trucks they sure look well used and don't exactly meet current safety standards. I really doubt that they would be worth converting to battery power except as an experiment to see how it works. I think an entirely new vehicle, epitomized for USPS delivery service, would be the way to go - especially if the government is paying for it. ;)
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The vehicle is called the LLV, which stands for long life vehicle. They were specifically designed to have an incredibly long service life of 30 years, with very few other considerations or priorities.
I definitely agree that a newly designed EV build with USPS's needs in mind is the best path forward. Similar to how Arrival is working with UPS (http://"https://www.engadget.com/2020-01-29-ups-arrival-electric-trucks-order-investment.html") for their electric trucks.