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“And once this leaves the headlines, and the USPS “compromises” and buys 50% instead of 10% replacements with EV, over the years, the maintenance, unreliability, increased expense of repairs “

Thanks for noting that EV’s are more reliable and have lower maintenance costs.

Wasn’t my point, though I think you know that.

I am not anti-EV.

I am anti-government subsidized boondoggle EV.

"Thanks for noting that EV’s are more reliable and have lower maintenance costs."

I guess the first question is: how many miles does a mail car drive each day, at least on average? Obviously the EV mail car wouldn't need as large of a battery as the F-150 Lightning (a pickup) I'm thinking about getting, because mail cars won't carry that much weight. But it has to carry a lot more than, say, the Ford Mach-e is meant to regularly carry and thus needs a higher capacity battery.

So if the average route is 100 miles and the weight carried is 100 pounds, that's sounds do-able for an EV to be cost-effective. But if we're talking about 200 miles per day carrying 500 pounds of mail, 6 days per week (read: lots of large discharges and recharges each day, not just a normal consumer driving an EV like that only a few times per year) then we're probably talking about wearing out the battery and probably the electric motors faster than is cost-effective.

I'm not anti-EV. I said I'm interested in getting one myself. I'm just skeptical in seeing the EV as the ultimate solution in all situations -- especially when the gubment gets involved. And that's not even getting into the yuge demand on power grids if all mail carriers all over the country charged their cars in the evening at the same time.

Maybe EV's would be do-able in zip codes with routes no longer than 50 or 60 miles and in the south so that the home station would have solar panels to charge up solar batteries to put into the cars (at least 75% of the time or so, it doesn't have to be an all or none decision to be effective).

If I was on the USPS' engineering team I'd have to answer those types of questions before I gave the EV idea my thumbs up, and even then only for the post offices EV's would be efficient at. But then, I'm just a dumb programmer, not a smart politician.

Thanks for noting that EV’s are more reliable and have lower maintenance costs.

Of course, replacing the battery after 3 or 4 years kind of eats those savings up, doesn't it.