The US Postal Service’s new EV chargers are here

By wazup on January 22, 2024 Comments Closed / 77 views

The US Postal Service showed off its first batch of new chargers and electric vehicles at an event in Atlanta.

By Justine Calma, a senior science reporter covering climate change, clean energy, and environmental justice with more than a decade of experience. She is also the host of Hell or High Water: When Disaster Hits Home, a podcast from Vox Media and Audible Originals.

An electric delivery truck is plugged into a charging station in a parking lot. — a:hover]:text-gray-63 [&>a:hover]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&>a:hover]:text-gray-bd dark:[&>a:hover]:shadow-underline-gray [&>a]:shadow-underline-gray-63 dark:[&>a]:text-gray-bd dark:[&>a]:shadow-underline-gray”>Image: Christian Lilakos

The US Postal Service debuted its first EV charging stations in Atlanta, Georgia, today, the first of many expected to be deployed at “hundreds” of new sorting and delivery centers this year. It’s a key step in the Postal Service’s plan to put together one of the nation’s biggest EV fleets, made up of more than 66,000 delivery vehicles.

“The work USPS is doing to electrify those vehicles is making EVs commonplace on every road and street in our country,” John Podesta, senior advisor to the president for clean energy innovation and implementation, said in a press release.

USPS is working on converting around 400 sites into sorting and delivery centers that will become “hubs to deploy EVs along local carrier routes.” The centers will serve larger geographic areas than the old-school postal offices they replace. Three different companies — Siemens, Rexel / ChargePoint, and Blink — will manufacture the Postal Service’s first 14,000 EV chargers.

USPS also showed off its first batch of Ford E-Transit battery-electric vehicles at the event today. Last year, USPS agreed to purchase 9,250 of the vehicles from Ford. It also plans to buy another 11,750 commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) vehicles from other manufacturers.

By 2028, USPS says it’ll deploy another 45,000 battery-electric “Next Generation Delivery Vehicles” (NGDVs) made by the company Oshkosh. Altogether, it’ll add up to a 66,000 electric vehicle fleet.

Many of the Postal Service’s 217,000 trucks are more than three decades old, so the fleet is in sore need of an upgrade. USPS says it’s still exploring “the feasibility of achieving 100-percent electrification” as part of a $40 billion strategy to update its operations.