Postal delivery is one of the better uses for electric vehicles. The routes are predictable, and the amount of stop and start driving and the amount of idle time means that going electric actually saves energy.
I’m not a big fan of electric vehicles in general, but for certain specialty applications, they make sense, and this is one of them.
The adoption of battery-electric vehicles in ANY venue should be a purely economic decision. Is it cost-effective, and is the cost/benefit ratio fully worked out?
Plug-in electric vehicles running on a storage battery of some kind are very much a niche product, suitable for limited passenger or light material transport use over relatively level terrain, in the absence of any extreme conditions. It is not at all conscionable to mandate their complete substitution for other powered land vehicles.
Personally I favor a steam-powered vehicle fueled with compressed natural gas or propane, with a completely closed water reclamation condenser unit for the spent steam.
Face it, the world is going to be using some form of hydrocarbon-based fuel as a power source for decades or perhaps centuries to come.
In rural areas-—electric won’t work.
I do NOT know how many miles MY mail carrier drives each day, but she has 482 customers.
There are many areas FAR MORE RURAL than mine.
When I was in Wyoming in 2001, rancher told me that they get mail only 3 days a week—M-W-F & their carrier had a differnt route the other 3 days.
That rancher went over 98 miles ONE way to shop in Laramie. Her kids rode the school bus over 80 miles round trip to attend school.