“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the completion of their appointed rounds” goes the U.S. Postal Service creed — but not with electric vehicles, if some Republican lawmakers have their way.
A year after climate change advocates praised a plan to replace thousands of gas-powered mail vehicles with a mostly electric fleet, an effort is underway in Congress to strip billions in federal EV funding, according to a report by the Associated Press.
The AP pointed to a major tax-and-spending bill in June where the Senate parliamentarian blocked a Republican move to sell off the agency’s new electric vehicles and pull back the remaining federal money.
But that didn’t mean an end to the effort.
The AP reported:
Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, said “it didn’t make sense for the Postal Service to invest so heavily in an all-electric force.” She said she will pursue legislation to rescind what is left of the $3 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act allocated to help cover the $10 billion cost of new postal vehicles.
Calling it a “boondoggle,” Ernst has labeled the EV initiative “a textbook example of waste” and pointed to high costs, manufacturing delays, and concerns over frigid-weather EV performance.
At a recent appearance at the Iowa State Fair covered by the wire service, she cited federal vehicle manufacturer Oshkosh Defense. In 2021, the company “was awarded a contract for up to 165,000 battery electric and internal combustion engine Next Generation vehicles over 10 years,” according to the report.
U.S. Senator Joni Ernst eating at Cattlemen’s Beef Quarters at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines, Iowa. (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
“You always evaluate the programs, see if they are working,” she said. “But the rate at which the company that’s providing those vehicles is able to produce them, they are so far behind schedule, they will never be able to fulfill that contract.”
Rep. Michael Cloud (R-TX) has said the EV order should be canceled because the project “has delivered nothing but delays, defective trucks, and skyrocketing costs.”
Donald Maston, president of the National Rural Letter Carriers’ Association, told AP that canceling the program now would have the opposite effect, squandering millions of dollars.
“I think it would be shortsighted for Congress to now suddenly decide they’re going to try to go backwards and take the money away for the EVs or stop that process because that’s just going to be a bunch of money on infrastructure that’s been wasted,” he said.
As part of the ongoing climate change debate, most anything running on carbon-based fuel is in the crosshairs of climate advocates and academics churning out studies on the issue.
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According to the AP report:
A 2022 University of Michigan study found the new electric postal vehicles could cut total greenhouse gas emissions by up to 20 million tons over the predicted, cumulative 20-year lifetime of the trucks.
That’s a fraction of the more than 6,000 million metric tons emitted annually in the United States, said professor Gregory A. Keoleian, co-director of the University’s Center for Sustainable Systems. But he said the push toward electric vehicles is critical and needs to accelerate, given the intensifying impacts of climate change.
The EV effort had the strong backing of President Joe Biden, who called for an all-electric federal fleet of cars and trucks.
The government so far has ordered 51,500 Next Generation Delivery Vehicles, including 35,000 battery-powered vehicles from various builders, according to AP.
To date, it has received 300 battery vehicles and 1,000 gas-powered ones, the wire service reported.
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