Bill Would Grant Postal Service $2 Billion to Electrify 20,000 Delivery Vehicles
By John O'Dell January 26, 2010Backers of Measure Launch Special Website to Promote Its Passage
By Danny King, Contributor
"The check is in the mail" could take a whole new meaning if a New York congressman and two electric-vehicle advocates have anything to say about it.
A bill introduced last month would direct as much as $2 billion toward converting about 15% of the U.S. Postal Service's highly inefficient fleet of 142,000 local-delivery vehicles to electric drive over a three-year period.
Those vans today average just 9 miles per gallon, so electric postal vans could represent a significant savings on fuel and overall operating coasts, as electric motors have few moving parts and require no maintenance while EVs' regenerative braking systems greatly reduce the need for replacing brake pads and shoes.
We won't make book on its chances for passage, but it has received additional support from former Tesla Motors executive Erik Toomre and attorney Joy Leong, who this week launched the advocacy Web site Edrive.org.
The EDrive site will publicize official speaking engagements related to the bill - H.R. 4399 - as well as providing news and legislative updates and arguments supporting passage of the measure, which was proposed by Rep. Jose E. Serrano (D-Bronx).
Serrano, chairman of the House Appropriations Financial Services and General Government subcommittee, submitted the bill, otherwise known as the American Electric Vehicle Manufacturing Act, on Dec. 16.
"Besides the environmental benefits and vast fuel savings the program would achieve, the bill's passage would also position the postal service fleet as a key energy storage asset for the nation's power grid," the e-Drive site founders wrote this week.
"Through Smart Grid technologies, new and converted electric postal vehicles would serve as power storage devices for the grid, helping ease peak loads and storing energy from intermittent or fluctuating sources, like wind power systems."
Whether that $2 billion check - or any part of it - arrives anytime soon is another story.
While the government may get the biggest bang for its EV bucks by committing funds to a fleet system like the Postal Service's, where many vehicles would be able to be recharged each night at a single facility, the economic realities are likely to prevent the Serrano bill from being passed any time soon, said Dr. Charles Ebinger, director of the energy security initiative at the Washington-based Brookings Institution.
"I would doubt sincerely that it would come close to passing at this point," said Ebinger. "If I were a congressman with access to $2 billion, I'd be more concerned about saving someone's house" from bank foreclosures.
Regardless of public funds availability, the post office and private shipping companies such as UPS and FedEx have been looking to adopt alternative-fuel vehicles to cut costs.
The Postal Service last June spent $210 million to buy about 6,500 vehicles that either are ethanol-capable, have gas-electric hybrid powertrains or use smaller gas engines. Additionally, last week, electric bus developer AC Propulsion and automotive modification company AutoPort said they have been hired to convert a conventional postal van to electric drive for a postal service test program.
Meanwhile, about 1,700 of UPS' approximately 95,000 trucks, cars, motorcycles and tractors now use "alternative" fuel powertrains, while FedEx has 325 hybrid and electric vehicles and more than 1,800 alternative-fuel vehicles among its worldwide fleet of about 80,000 vehicles.
A spending bill such as Serrano's would be necessary to electrify much of the cash-strapped Postal Service's fleet. For the nine months ended June 30, 2009, the Postal Service's loss quadrupled from a year earlier to $4.69 billion as the economic downturn caused revenue to fall faster than costs, leaving no money for upgrading the fleet.
Whether a big investment in electric postal vans would trigger enough economies of scale to substantially cut the production costs of electric cars and trucks for the consumer market remains to be seen.
The $2 billion proposed in Serrano's bill pencils out to about $100,000 per converted or replaced vehicle and would nearly match the $2.4 billion invested in U.S. battery and electric-vehicle component production last year, according to the e-Drive site.
"Directionally, it's going in the right way. Is it directly transferable (to private cars)? No. But, indirectly, it is transferable," said Jim Hossack, a Tustin, Calif.-based consultant with AutoPacific. "$2 billion is significant money."
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