And you thought you had gas mileage problems…
The United States Postal Service (USPS) utilizes approximately 260,000 vehicles. Granted, about 43,000 of those vehicles run on E85 fuel, but those vehicles average about 9 mpg. What?? Didn’t they hear about the Cash for Clunkers program?
The ethanol vehicles were purchased to meet alternative-fuel requirements. However, according to the Department of Energy, it takes 1.33 gallons of E85 (85 percent ethanol) and 1.03 gallons of E10 (10 percent ethanol) to travel the same distance as with one gallon of pure gasoline. In a nutshell, the USPS has to use more fuel and fork over more money to fuel its fleet of vehicles. Think maybe this could be contributing to the USPS’ cash flow problem?
But there may be a change on the horizon. The government is considering granting the USPS $2 billion to electrify 20,000 delivery vehicles. Too bad that’s only about 15% of their vehicle fleet. And if you do the math, you’ll find that’s a cost of about $100,000 per vehicle. Yikes! Umm…isn’t there a way to do that for less? Say maybe ¼ to ½ of that $100,000 price? I’m no automotive genius, but seriously folks.
Other options the USPS has considered include electric scooters, hydrogen vehicles and hybrid trucks. Or I could loan them my car. It gets 17 mpg and has a great stereo. And it wouldn’t cost $100,000.
