… you are right. Hence “deemed” and not “actually” adorable.
Practical until those windshields start chipping.
Yes. This design really reminded me of my Japanese car. I loved the high windshield visibility. The tall roof let me store things in the roof, too.
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Agree that a lot of difference in cost is the hardening for encounters with morons. I think the 50X versions are the DC fast charger versions (which these do not need).
If you look at places like the Port of Long Beach Container Terminal or the thousands of warehouses that run EV forklifts the charging infrastructure required is rather basic.
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It sounds like this actually is based in the Transit platform. It was developed in partnership with Ford. They need extensive modifications regardless- no straight off the shelf vehicle will work. Needs left hand drive, special windows, cargo racks to USPS bin specs, for starters. But it’s not a totally designed-from-scratch vehicle.
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I was thinking the same thing, but reading the link closer, it says it’s a Level 2 charger, and the personal example was also a Level 2 charger. I did find two references to Level 2 power output, so they still may not be the same. My guess is that there are things in the public example that aren’t in the personal one that drive up the cost, beyond just the hardening of the charger. For instance, the personal one was likely in a home, near an electrical panel, or at least not that far from one. In the city’s garage, getting enough power to the location could require substantially more effort, even if they pick the spot based on the easiest access. Along with other parking space enhancements, maybe curbing or protection poles, and the impact of them on the garage. It still sounds like a big difference at first, but it might not be as bad as it sounds when all the things are taken into account.
Having said that, if the USPS was installing outdoor chargers, it would likely be somewhere in between the two. Depending on the parking structure and capabilities, but not needed for general public use.
It wouldn’t add any public EV infrastructure, but would increase EV vehicles in use in general.
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I’ve just procrastinated at work by looking on Bing Maps at the electrical meter housings for all my nearest post office locations.
Even assuming that 16 hours to full charge is acceptable, none of the older ones will be supporting very many EV’s without substantial upgrade.
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I’ve never gotten any useful information from it. Packages are never included. And, inexplicably, it seems to process before the change of address filings—so as someone who just moved to a new house, ours is littered with images of mail for the prior owners that never actually shows up in our mailbox.
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Right hand drive and left hand drive refer to the driving position inside the vehicle. The term for which side of the road you drive on is left/right hand traffic.
The Ford Transit is a European design, so it is engineered for both left hand drive and right hand drive.
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I get the feeling there are many differences regionally and even perhaps micro-locally that make the service widely divergent in its usefulness. I will say, the couple of times I’ve reported missing mail, it’s led to a call with the woman who runs my local office, and I think that ended up being useful.
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Ren & Stimpy would not look out of place behind the wheel.
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Yes! But I’m biased because I drive one of these. I love the tall greenhouse. And Toyota reliability.
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snort
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That would give it the cheerfully ingenuous side-kick car look. Hero car to come later.
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Osh Kosh Bigosh. I still wouldn’t pet it.
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I’ll see if I can find a suitable swamp and some hungry alligators. 
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Can we do requests? How about a nice big patch of poison ivy/oak/sumac?
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That, and the Transit’s chassis was also intended for fleet usage, and for companies that do the ‘I want a rolling chassis and we will put our own body on it’ treatment (think moving vans, RVs, ambulances, handicap conversions, etc.)
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Agree. I’d assume it would be done with adding a separate transformer and running exposed conduit to a pole mounted drop at each parking space. Looks like the City of Columbus added 300 charging points at a cost of $900,000 - or $3,000 each. (source)
The data is a bit old, but in 2015, “more than 212,000 postal vehicles drove nearly 1.4 billion miles. Our vehicles used more than 171 million gasoline gallon equivalents (GGE),” (source)
Also “in FY 2019, the Postal Service spent about $706.2 million in maintenance costs for 141,057 LLVs. … with average maintenance costs per vehicle were about $5,000, and nearly 10,000 LLVs averaged more than $12,000 in annual maintenance costs.” (source)
So at an efficiency of 8.1 MPG and a fuel cost of ~$500M per year, there is a LOT of cost that could be offset to pay for electrification of postal yards. Just the savings on routine maintenance would appear to offset the cost to electrify the yard.
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Louie “the Weasel” DeJoy is the organized-crime nickname I give him
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