GOP omnibus bill would sell off USPS's EVs

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/06/21/trump-usps-trucks-taxes/

by dabinat • 1 year ago

169 106 1 year ago

i80and6• 1 year ago

Obviously this is extremely bad and dumb and performative, but putting that aside: who is going to buy them at the needed scale? They're custom purpose-built vehicles for mail delivery, not exactly something I see the marketplace absorbing.

vesinisa• 1 year ago

If these are legal to drive on Europe I think they have a good market offshore.

BartjeD• 1 year ago

Except for tarif war

NewJazz10• 1 year ago

You're putting way too much thought into this. The purpose of this provision is to appease donors. If these get sold for scrap, that is a feature. Did someone say there is no quid pro quo?

https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/23/politics/trump-senate-democra...

cosmic_cheese• 1 year ago

Maybe they’d be bought as last-mile vehicles for FedEx contractors or similar?

Selling them off really doesn’t make sense, though. I understand that the USPS operates in many areas that aren’t conducive to EVs and that ICE models are needed there, but these electric models would be extremely well-suited for urban areas where drivers are making frequent stops given how poorly ICEs perform in constant-stop-and-go scenarios.

NewJazz10• 1 year ago

FedEx has a supplier for EVs already. So does Amazon. They probably don't want some oddball trucks in their fleet. Although it would be a nice favor for FedEx or someone to keep the batteries warm until a more sane administration offers to buy them back.

deepsquirrelnet• 1 year ago

The skeptic in me thinks the provision was added at the behest of the future purchaser. Amazon? FedEx? UPS?

There’s a good chance this ends up as outright thievery.

i80and6• 1 year ago

I would be a little surprised -- Amazon already has their own custom electric delivery trucks, and FedEx and UPS could probably order these from Oshkosh directly if they wanted. These vehicles are also optimized for mail, less for parcels. None of these players need to play backroom shenanigans.

That said, blatant corruption is just the name of the game at this point in America, so who knows.

throwawaymaths7• 1 year ago

no. if you look at Oshkosh's behaviour according to the article you would immediately know this isn't going to be the case. the thievery has already happened.

tart-lemonade• 1 year ago

Scrappers? UPS and Fedex would need bigger vehicles than this. Maybe some other country's postal service would take advantage of it and buy them up, but that's about it as far as I can see.

It's all part of a much larger plan to cripple the USPS so republicans can justify outsourcing mail delivery to the private sector. Take a great investment the USPS made that would decrease health premiums (because it's so much better ergonomically for drivers) and lower operating costs, and throw it into a fire. Now USPS has to continue to maintain the LLVs, even as they continue to fall apart and the drivers suffer.

spike0212• 1 year ago

UPS and Fedex would need bigger vehicles than this.

I live in the SF Bay Area and i've definitely seen small vans and such used for delivery by the major shippers. they don't always use the standard trucks.

adastra22• 1 year ago

Amazon would take them at fire-sale prices.

s0rce• 1 year ago

I could see Amazon buying them.

tlogan6• 1 year ago

Amazon has ~ 70,000 delivery vehicles. USPS has 93 EV vehicles.

monocasa2• 1 year ago

Amazon already has custom Rivian vans that were designed for them.

jrockway• 1 year ago

I don't think there is any desire to find a legitimate buyer. The bill wants to say "throw them into a landfill" but the architects are trying to sound thrifty. Stated reasoning: "Stop wasting the government's money on useless initiatives. Sell these white elephants and ask employees to use their own car!" Actual reasoning: "We need to burn more oil. There are campaign donations on the line and the midterms are going to be very tough for us. Big Electricity does not donate to campaigns and we can't take the money we save on fuel and use it for ads."

6SixTy• 1 year ago

If most other last mile delivery companies (e.g. UPS) weren't already commissioning their own delivery vans, then I would say that any one of them could pick up the slack.`

toast06• 1 year ago

If there's only 93 of them as posted elsewhere in the thread, there's no scale needed, just two randos per state.

Plenty of people driving old usps mail jeeps, you can always find someone who wants to drive something weird.

extraduder_ire• 1 year ago

If they're auctioned off somewhere like govdeals, I could see them selling for above their reserve price.

burnt-resistor• 1 year ago

They'll rust in surplus lots until Burners buy them one at a time.

siilats• 1 year ago

I think they only made 93 for the $10bn so it doesnt matter who guys them

NewJazz10• 1 year ago

Alternative, non-paywalled story

https://electrek.co/2025/06/22/republicans-cant-stop-wasting...

SoftTalker2• 1 year ago

But hardly unbiased.

NewJazz10• 1 year ago

There's no such thing as an unbiased news source.

Case in point: Washpo is owned by Bezos, who owns a huge stake in amazon, who could be a potential buyer for these vehicles.

Does electrek have that kind of conflict of interest?

hbarka• 1 year ago

Appropriately salty

xnx• 1 year ago

I hope the spite is worth it for all the wasted money for anyone who voted for this.

atoav• 1 year ago

Those who voted for this will think whatever their extremely distorted media diet will tell them. After all Trump/God works in mysterious ways, so they might ask: who knows what the grander plan behind it all is? The notion of Trump playing 4D chess is basically the same concept.

throwawaymaths7• 1 year ago

at least in the case of canoo the money was already wasted (see the history of canoo). the oshkosh vehicles are incredibly sensible, but very (irrationally?) unpopular and already beset with cost overruns. If you look at it, its not hard to guess why theyre unpopular. the success of the usmail ev program was by no means guaranteed; and if the us mail goes with a COTS unit (ev or otherwise), it's probably going to be more cost effective in any case.

faraggi• 1 year ago

What a bunch of corrupt, useless idiots.

NewJazz10• 1 year ago

waves hands "there is no quid pro quo"

https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/23/politics/trump-senate-democra...

candiddevmike• 1 year ago

Wisconsin folks should be seething about this. These vehicles were created by Oshkosh Corporation and are one of the more successful public/private "redesigns" in recent memory.

tlogan6• 1 year ago

Oshkosh Corporation will get a new military contract :) No worries there.

Let’s be honest - Oshkosh Corporation is really strange choice for making EVs. Very strange choice.

toast06• 1 year ago

What's strange about them? They're a major contract vehicle builder and familiar with building vehicles for government (defense) contracts.

Like most contract vehicle builders, they put together parts from major suppliers. Bosch makes the EV motor and most likely supplies the control module and what not too.

esseph3• 1 year ago

Not sure why, they're making a fair amount across different platforms

https://www.oshkoshcorp.com/brands-innovations/electric-vehi...

dyauspitr• 1 year ago

The postmen and women love this design. Plus they’re cheaper to run and clean. I hate this administration and group of people like nothing I’ve hated before.

CoastalCoder4• 1 year ago

I hate this administration and group of people like nothing I’ve hated before.

I'm in the same boat. Politically / culturally I'm pretty centrist, and historically I've found things to like and dislike about both parties' governance. (G.W. Bush was the first administration I ever hated. But I'm mostly willing to write GW Bush off as a moron, and his fellow Republicans as inept.)

With Trump 2, for the first time I actually loath the entire Republican party, and the voters who support him. I'm having a very difficult time believing anything praiseworthy behind their motives.

It's the first time I truly fear for the immediate future of the country. I'm sure this says as much about me as it does about the Republicans. But if there are many others like me, this can't be a good sign of what's to come.

squigz5• 1 year ago

One is almost forced to wonder if "hating" half of your country is part of the issue.

yoyohello13• 1 year ago

Same. I’ve generally been a little left but I’ve always been able to at least understand the conservative viewpoint even if I didn’t agree. With this admin though, I can’t for the life of me comprehend how anybody can think this is ok. For fucks sake there are basically secret police arresting people on the streets with no due process. The rhetoric that comes out of Trump and his admins mouths genuinely disgust me. I’ve disagreed with other administrations, but have never felt straight up fear for the future like l do now. I hate this admin and I hate the voters that put him in power, people that still want him in power even now with the blatant corruption on display daily. I know it’s not right to feel this way, I hate feeling this way, but here we are.

i80and6• 1 year ago

Checking the news every day and seeing whole new categories of open corruption, inane sabre-rattling, and petty shattering of anything that works well is just exhausting.

Not sure how to fix this, but it's gotta happen somehow.

throwawaymaths7• 1 year ago

anything that works well

did we read the same article?

spike0212• 1 year ago

Over the past few years i've become friends with my neighborhood's USPS mailman.

While it doesn't get as hot here as other parts of the country, it's pretty awful what he needs to deal with once temps reach 80+. his truck is like sitting in a metal can. he does what he can to park in shady areas but otherwise he's basically being cooked when he needs to go inside to get mail or drive it from stop to stop.

these vehicles would've been a huge improvement.

NewJazz10• 1 year ago

FWIW there are ICE and EV versions of the new trucks... There are a lot of benefits for the EV version, but I think both have AC. Not sure idling the engine to run the AC would be feasible, though. "Idling" an EV to run the AC would have much less "fuel" impact.

mindslight6• 1 year ago

Anybody who considers themselves an American needs to be calling for a full stop to all activities of this administration, including impeachment and conviction. It's clear that our country and our government have many problems. They have festered over years, causing the frustration and pan-society feelings of disenfranchisement that drove Trumpism. But at this point it's clear that regardless of all the "4d chess", there is no reforming going on here - just a wholesale destruction and fire sale of our country at the behest of the same entrenched interests that have been pulling the strings the entire time. This is like going to the hospital for a broken bone, and they start calling surgeons to salvage your organs.

Analemma_• 1 year ago

Great. I'm "calling for a full stop", and nothing is happening. Now what?

NewJazz10• 1 year ago

Whatever you do don't start drinking again!

IncreasePosts• 1 year ago

Well. That's what Americans voted for. What right do you have to demand them to stop?

i80and6• 1 year ago

We don't have a strategic referendum every four years and shut up otherwise.

mindslight6• 1 year ago

Based on Trump's shotgun approach of contradictory positions and statements that promised everything to everyone, plus the completely uninspiring alternative option, it's not clear what Americans actually voted for. I have talked to many people that sheepishly admit they voted for Trump, yet lament that what he is doing is not at all what they thought he would do.

So my point is that the opposition here is not just the usual partisan squabbling. People should not think that waiting for 2/4 years is going to passively solve the problem like the regular changing of the buntings. Rather people need to realize the speed and brazenness these societal arsonists are moving, and demand their congresspeople stand up (versus the stochastic death threats from the social media addled nutsos, bots, etc) and put a stop to this. Congress shouldn't be voting on a big ugly omnibus spending bill written by special interests, rather they should be browbeaten into focusing on impeachment.

throwawaymaths7• 1 year ago

can you stop and read the full article and maybe give some attention to the possibility that this one thing is maybe not a bad idea?

mindslight6• 1 year ago

Okay, done. All I saw in the article is the usual hypocritical invocation of austerity to justify destruction and looting. Is there a substantive argument you would like to put forward why this action would be a good thing? Or is this just the same tired projection-based trend of implying that the people opposing the open fire sale of our country are the misinformed ones?

CoastalCoder4• 1 year ago

Does anyone know the Republicans' steel-man argument in favor of this idea? (It wasn't clear if the article presented it.)

I'm ready to believe the absolute worst about their conduct, but experience tells me to always hear both sides of a story before judging.

dmd• 1 year ago

“EVs bad, oil good.”

NewJazz10• 1 year ago

I imagine their argument is that these are a waste of money and EVs are completely impractical. But that doesn't really square with big players in delivery voluntarily adopting EVs, and the physics around delivery driving patterns that really really benefits EVs.

const_cast• 1 year ago

I would imagine the real waste of money would be selling the vehicles you just got and breaking a contract for, presumably, a huge loss.

I mean, there's no way these vehicles are going to sell for even 20% of what USPS bought them for.

smadge• 1 year ago

3 republicans are quoted in the article defending the proposal. Is there a better argument that the article didn’t quote?

throwawaymaths7• 1 year ago

i dont know what the republicans are saying but FTA:

Oshkosh encountered delays and engineering problems during early manufacturing runs, and disagreements — and accusations of corporate dishonesty — among executives plagued the production process, The Washington Post reported in December.
Oshkosh was supposed to have delivered about 3,000 vehicles by the end of 2024. Instead it had provided roughly 100 and raised its prices as the Postal Service ordered additional EVs.

sounds like cancelling should be agreed upon bipartisanly; partisan divide maybe on whether or not it's worthwhile to restart the procurement process.

noobermin• 1 year ago

How can I steelman the argument for the guy with the knife about to stab me?

jbombadil• 1 year ago

https://archive.is/4iBzE

SoftTalker2• 1 year ago

At first impression this does seem pretty silly to cancel the project so late after most of the costs have already been incurred. Auctioning the vehicles will certainly not recover anything close to their cost, to say nothing of the other infrastructure that has been built out and will essentially have to be scrapped.

On the other hand, that could be a "sunk cost" fallacy, if the future costs of these bespoke EVs is higher than the cost of just using a standard commercial utility vehicle. Not saying that it is, and the article really doesn't explore this other than to quote Rand Paul as saying that the provision “aims to cut unnecessary costs and focus USPS on delivering mail and not achieving the environmental initiatives pushed by the Biden Administration.”

tastyface• 1 year ago

There's no careful reasoning here, just spite and cruelty.

tlogan6• 1 year ago

Apparently, only 93 electric vehicles have been delivered. And the 3,000 originally expected. [1]

I suppose the headline could’ve been: “GOP tax bill compels USPS to sell its 93 delivery EVs”. But let’s be honest, that wouldn’t get many clicks nor be on the first page of HN.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/12/11/biden-usp...

monocasa2• 1 year ago

What's the story with the rest of the contract? You don't normally get a vehicle manufacturer to start up a custom line without some contract in place wrt minimum orders (or paying out the wazoo).

AlotOfReading• 1 year ago

The NGDV program was issued under IDIQ terms, which in this case means the government promised to order at least 10,019 vehicles over 10 years. There will have been a clause about termination for convenience that the government will invoke here. Oshkosh will then take them to court to ask for the remainder and the court will find that they're owed somewhere between 0-100% of it.

mcphage2• 1 year ago

that wouldn’t get many clicks nor be on the first page of HN.

It probably would. Knowing the small number of vehicles involved makes the bill seem more capricious and stupid, not less.

tlogan6• 1 year ago

Depends on the audience. You could write an article with the same facts but different subject and get a ton of clicks on Truth Social.

(Just to clarify: I’m speaking here from the perspective of a hacker or hustler. No politic or opinion on the actual subject.)

dang2• 1 year ago

Proposed bills generally don't make good HN submissions, since usually nothing much comes of them:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

(I'm not commenting on this bill, about which I don't know anything.)

i80and6• 1 year ago

This is The Omnibus Bill (tm) of the administration -- this provision could be stricken during reconciliation, but respectfully I think it's close enough to passing that it's a valid topic of discussion.

dang2• 1 year ago

Ok, we'll make an exception in this case. Thanks!

mannyv• 1 year ago

All 100 of them?

FTA: "Instead it had provided roughly 100 and raised its prices as the Postal Service ordered additional EVs."

xtiansimon• 1 year ago

“Biden administration officials hoped that postal procurement would bolster the small-but-growing domestic EV market, both for commercial fleets and individual consumers.”

Ho-Ho-Ho!

“The Senate’s version of Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill […] aims to cut unnecessary costs […] and … the environmental initiatives pushed by the Biden Administration.”

Undermining investment in American companies! This agendas of this administration are a cancer.

GOP omnibus bill would sell off USPS's EVs

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