The U.S. Postal Service today unveiled its first electric vehicle charging stations in Atlanta, Georgia, the first of many expected to be installed in “hundreds” of new sorting and delivery centers this year. This is an important step in the Postal Service's plan to build one of the largest electric vehicle fleets in the country, consisting of more than 66,000 delivery vehicles.
“The work USPS is doing to electrify these vehicles will make electric vehicles commonplace on every road in our country,” said John Podesta, senior adviser to the president for clean energy innovation and implementation, in a press release.
“The work USPS is doing to electrify these vehicles will make electric vehicles commonplace on every road in our country.”
USPS is working to convert about 400 locations into sortation and delivery centers that will become “hubs for electric vehicle deployment along local transportation routes.” The centers will serve larger geographic areas than the legacy post offices they replace. Three different companies – Siemens, Rexel/ChargePoint and Blink – will produce the Postal Service's first 14,000 electric vehicle chargers.
USPS also introduced its first batch of battery-electric Ford E-Transit vehicles at the event today. Last year, USPS agreed to purchase 9,250 vehicles from Ford. In addition, it plans to purchase an additional 11,750 commercial standard vehicles (COTS) from other manufacturers.
By 2028, USPS plans to deploy an additional 45,000 battery-electric “Next Generation Delivery Vehicles” (NGDVs) from Oshkosh. In total, there is a fleet of 66,000 electric vehicles.
Many of the Postal Service's 217,000 trucks are more than three decades old, leaving the fleet in dire need of modernization. USPS says it is still “evaluating the feasibility of 100 percent electrification” as part of a $40 billion strategy to modernize its operations.