Irony is the best way to describe this story. Postal service, which is known for being inefficient and a financial drain on the economy, has a scandal involving EVs. The US Postal Service, thanks to Joe Biden’s much-praised, but not very successful, infrastructure spending plan was going to retrofit their entire fleet. Most of them would be electric delivery vehicles.
This project between Biden and USPS is a total and utter failure.
The Biden administration’s aggressive green energy policy has been applauded by the left over the years, but little attention has been given to the results, or, rather, their lack. It is not surprising that there have been no follow-up stories on “successful” stories. However, the lack of accurate measurements in the media is what really concerns me. We have seen that they try to hide the issues with these energy proposals.
There has been little coverage in the media when a heavily subsidized EV Bus manufacturer went wheels up and down in the ditch. As we’ve covered, Biden & Pete Buttigieg received a lot of praise when they suggested spending an amount equal to the GDP of a country in the second world for a nationwide network of EV chargers. This led to the installation of all eight chargers. EIGHT!
Politifact recently tried to save Secretary Pete’s image by correcting a congressman who had brought this number up. Truth sayers have rushed to tell us that, after $7.5 billion was spent on this disaster, the number of chargers installed is actually 38! Politifact’s viscounts are unable to grasp that declaring that it was good news that almost $200,000,000 had been spent on each charger station would be a slight. We have another shameful EV tale.
Joe Biden, in 2022 as part of his spending spree, insultingly called the “Inflation Reduction Act”, uncorked a plot to overhaul the USPS vehicle and fleet with an estimated 60,000 new electric postal trucks. Oshkosh is a defense contractor that makes heavy industrial vehicles, which are commonly used by the military. The project would cost $10 billion, and the initial outlay for manufacturing would be $3 billion. Expectedly, the results were dismal.
The Washington Post has stunned us with its journalism in exploring this project. WaPo, after digging through 21,000 pages from government and Oshkosh sources as well as talking to almost two dozen sources within the company, has revealed that this project was a total bust. It was anticipated that the USPS would receive upwards of 3,500 vehicles by this date. The USPS has received less than 100 vehicles to date. It was expected that the factory would be producing approximately 80 trucks per day by now. Instead, it has barely been able to produce one truck a day.
What is the USPS getting for a few dozen trucks that have a sticker price of around $32,000,000? Internal estimates put the cost per vehicle at around $78,000.
According to company records and to four sources with first-hand knowledge, significant manufacturing problems that were not reported to the Postal Service until more than a full year ago have slowed down production. According to two people who are familiar with the manufacturing processes, engineers have had difficulty calibrating the airbags of the vehicles. Three people reported that when workers tested the leaks on vehicles’ internal and external components, they saw water pouring out like their large windows were left open during a storm.
The partner company, which is manufacturing the bodies for these EVs, was the cause of one of the first delays. USPS said that the first NGDVs should be on the roads by early 2023. The first working truck bodies were sent to Oshkosh only this summer. Some USPS leadership have advised moving away from Oshkosh due to the delays and setbacks. They suggest trying out EVs made by other manufacturers.
The Biden administration, despite these failures praised the USPS during an event at the White House that celebrated entities with a Federal Sustainability Award. The USPS was included in this group: “In December of 2022, USPS made its bold commitment.” USPS is installing charging infrastructure for electric vehicles across the country, with 14,000 ports currently in progress. This was Joe Biden’s celebration of how they spent the money Joe Biden had given them. This was not a celebration for spending the money in a productive way.
Oshkosh, despite these failures in abundance, hasn’t been honest with the USPS. Some people the Post spoke with said that they wanted to alert USPS of the problems, but executives kept them quiet. Oshkosh did not communicate with its investors.
John Pfeifer told investors that Oshkosh was “really pleased with where we are.” He called the NGDV “a revolutionary vehicle.”
According to a source within the company,
One person in production said, “This is what the bottom line is: we don’t even know how to build a truck.”
This is why the incoming Trump Administration has already stated that they are likely to pull the plug on this entire venture. Leftists are expected to be against this decision, claiming that it would lead to the loss of manufacturing jobs. These are the blind people who have no problem snowshoveling billions of dollars in federal funds into projects that do not produce the products they claim to. Calling out DOGE – If this is not on your Kill List now, you should add it.
