USPS Electric Vehicle Project Far Behind Schedule

A program to buy electric vehicles for the United States Postal Service remains far behind schedule, with only 93 of the 3,000 trucks expected by now having been delivered.

The Postal Service planned to purchase 60,000 of the "Next Generation Delivery Vehicles" from defense contractor Oshkosh, The Washington Post reported. Congress approved $3 billion of the $10 billion project through the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.

The delays reportedly have been caused by manufacturing difficulties by Oshkosh, a company that has for years produced military and heavy industrial vehicles, but had not made postal trucks.

The issues were not disclosed to the Postal Service for more than a year, according to internal company records and four sources with knowledge of the issue.

Two people familiar with the manufacturing process said Oshkosh's engineers had difficulty calibrating the vehicles' airbags. Further, when workers ran leak tests on the vehicles' internal components and bodies, water poured out of them, the sources said.

Internal records and other sources with knowledge of Oshkosh's production process show that the company had originally planned to be making more than 80 of the vehicles a day at this point, but is only producing one truck a day at its factory in South Carolina.

However, the production problems were not reported previously, including during an inspector general audit in October.

The Post's sources said that a senior executive tried to alert the postal service in 2022, but ended up being blocked by superiors.

"This is the bottom line: We don't know how to make a damn truck," a person involved in production said.

The electric postal vehicle project, once said to be a key part of President Joe Biden's industrial and climate program, won't now happen until after he leaves office in January, if at all.

Congressional Republicans have vowed to repeal key funding sources for Biden's climate agenda, and officials aligned with President-elect Donald Trump on cutting spending have tagged the Postal Service's project.

"The days of bailouts and handouts are over," House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., told Postmaster General Louis DeJoy this week during a hearing. "The American people spoke loud and clear. I worry about that EV money sitting around, that it may be clawed back. I think there are lots of areas where there's going to be significant reform over the next four years."

An Oshkosh spokesman in a statement said the company remains "fully committed to being a strong and reliable partner" for the USPS and remains on track "to meet all delivery deadlines."

Oshkosh chief executive John Pfeifer told investors in October that the company is "happy with where we are" and said the NGDV is "revolutionary."

"We're today ramping up production," he said. “When you go through — you take a brand-new vehicle to market, we believe, together with the Postal Service, that a prudent production schedule is better than trying to start by sprinting. So we're ramping up today. We'll be at full production throughout 2025."

Meanwhile, the USPS spokesperson said in the statement that the service expects to get 6,484 NDGVs in the current fiscal year, and intends to hold Oshkosh to its obligations.

"We're moving forward in modernizing our vehicle fleet — which will bring tremendous benefits to our organization," DeJoy said in a separate statement. "Under our plan, letter carriers in every state will be able to deliver mail and packages using new and modern vehicles within the next five years."

Meanwhile, the USPS is also buying tens of thousands of other vehicles, EVs included, from other automakers.

Officials in the Biden administration declined to comment.