In a twist of irony, the United States Postal Service (USPS), a long-standing symbol of inefficiency and financial drain, finds itself embroiled in a scandal involving electric vehicles (EVs).
The USPS, under President Joe Biden's much-lauded but underperforming infrastructure spending plan, was poised to overhaul its entire fleet with a majority of electric delivery vehicles. However, this venture, a collaboration between Biden and the USPS, has taken a turn for the worse, proving to be a total failure.
According to RedState, the Biden administration has been lauded by the left for its aggressive green energy policies for years. However, little focus has been placed on the outcomesor more precisely, the lack thereof. The absence of follow-up reports on the "success" stories is telling, but the real issue lies in the lack of honest assessments in the media. Indeed, the media seems to go to great lengths to conceal the problems associated with these energy proposals.
The media has largely ignored the failure of a highly subsidized EV bus manufacturer. As previously reported, Biden and Pete Buttigieg were praised when they proposed spending an amount equivalent to the GDP of a developing nation to establish a network of EV charging stations across the country. This resulted in a mere eight chargers being installed.
In a recent attempt to salvage Secretary Pete's reputation, Politifact rushed to correct a Congressman who mentioned this figure. The fact-checkers were quick to inform us that after $7.5 billion spent on this debacle, the actual number of installed chargers is 38! It's hard to convince the truth arbiters at Politifact that announcing nearly $200,000,000 spent on each charging station as good news is hardly a compliment. And now, we have the latest embarrassing EV story.
In 2022, as part of Biden's spending spree mockingly termed the "Inflation Reduction Act," Biden unveiled his plan to revamp the USPS vehicle fleet with an estimated 60,000 new EV postal trucks. The "Next Generation Delivery Vehicles" (NGDVs) would be manufactured by defense contractor Oshkosh, known for producing heavy-duty industrial vehicles for the military. This was a $10 billion project, with an initial expenditure of $3 billion to start manufacturing. As expected, the results have been disappointing.
The Washington Post, in a rare act of journalism, delved into this project. After sifting through some 21,000 pages of documents from both the government and Oshkosh internal sources, and speaking with nearly two dozen insiders, the Post has revealed a complete project failure. By now, the USPS was expected to have received over 3,000 of the vehicles. It has received fewer than 100 to date. The factory was projected to be producing approximately 80 trucks daily by now; it is barely managing to produce one a day.
So, what is the USPS getting for the few dozen trucks that have arrived, each with a roughly $32,000,000 price tag? (Internal estimates put the actual per vehicle cost at around $78,000.)
One of the initial delays was with the partner company manufacturing the bodies of these EVs. The USPS expected to see the first new NGDVs on the road in early 2023. The first functional truck bodies from that manufacturer were not sent to Oshkosh until this summer. Due to these setbacks and delays, some USPS leaders have suggested moving away from Oshkosh and trying EVs produced by other manufacturers.
Despite these failures, the Biden administration praised the USPS at a White House event honoring entities with a Federal Sustainability Award. The USPS was included in the group: "." This was essentially a celebration by Biden for spending the money he had given them. It's worth noting that this was not a celebration of spending the money productively.
In the midst of these rampant failures, Oshkosh has not been transparent with the USPS about the issues. Some of those the Post spoke to said they wanted to alert the Service of the problems, but executives silenced them. Similarly, Oshkosh was not forthcoming with its own investors.
However, one of the insiders at the company stated: "."
For this reason, the incoming Trump administration has already indicated that they will likely pull the plug on this entire venture. This potential decision has met with expected resistance from the left, who argue that it would eliminate manufacturing jobs. But these are the same individuals who see no issue with pouring billions of federal dollars into projects where the slated products are not actually manufactured. It's time to call out DOGE: If this isn't on your Kill List, it should be.
Login