Postal Service to Purchase 500 EVs From Ford

The U.S. Postal Service on Wednesday said it will take a major step for the environment in using hundreds of electric vehicles to deliver the mail in California and the Washington, D.C., area.

“We deliver clean air along with the nation’s mail,” Postmaster General William Henderson said as the agency announced it had awarded the single largest contract for electric vehicles in U.S. history to Ford Motor Co.

Under the contract, the post office will buy 500 new right-hand-drive vehicles based on the Ford Ranger pickup for about $12 million. The first ones should be delivered late next year.

The Postal Service has about 200,000 vehicles in its fleet nationwide, but only 25 are electric, said Bill Dowling, a Postal Service vice president.

T.J. Glauthier, deputy Energy secretary, said only about 500 electric vehicles are now being used in the entire U.S. government.

“This doubles the number of electric vehicles in use in the whole federal government in one swoop,” Glauthier said.

The bulk of the electric postal vehicles--480--will be used for mail delivery in California, with the remaining 20 going to the Washington area, the Postal Service said.

Thanks to a combination of state and federal subsidies, the fleet of $39,000 electric vehicles will cost the Postal Service just $23,000 apiece.

New York is offering Ford business incentives because the vehicles’ body will be connected to its Ranger chassis at an existing Ford plant in Rome, N.Y.

And California and the Energy Department are offering the Postal Service special subsidies for using electric, rather than standard emission, vehicles.

Electric cars are virtually pollution-free, and officials say the vehicles will eliminate thousands of pounds of carbon monoxide and smog-causing gases from the atmosphere each year.

The post office recently purchased about 21,000 so-called “flexible fuel vehicles” that can run on either gasoline or ethanol.