Reprinted from hartmannreport.com
Following a 16-year bet Republicans laid down in 2006 to block Postal EVs, DeJoy just told Biden to go screw himself: he's going to buy fossil-fuel vehicles for 90% of the fleet instead of electric
The Republicans are about to win a major battle in their war on electric vehicles, this time with the second largest vehicle fleet in America owned by the US Postal Service. It's an outrageous story that most Americans don't know a thing about.
To understand what's going on with the Post Office right now, you first must know the backstory that, it seems, most media outlets aren't interested in discussing. It's an issue that's hitting millions of Americans right now.
One of our kids, for example, recently became the first member of our family to buy a fully 100% electric car. She was so excited and has loved it driving around Portland"until she had to drive to another state for a conference, when she discovered what a problem America not having an electric charging infrastructure causes.
The way to solve this problem, of course, is to have a substantial and massive increase in electric vehicles and that's exactly what the Post Office set out to jump-start back in 2006.
Transportation, after all, is the single largest source of global warming emissions from the United States. And the Post Office once thought they could do something about it.
Things were going well for the Post Office in 2006.
They were making money and had a surplus. They were therefore seriously considering replacing a large part of their fleet - the largest fleet of civilian vehicles in the nation - with electric and hybrid vehicles.
It would be a mighty boost for the electric car, and a huge slap in the face of the fossil fuel barons who had an outsized say in the Republican Party.
On May 17, 2006 Walter O'Tormey, the Post Office's Vice President, Engineering, unveiled a new hybrid gas/electric mail delivery vehicle in Boston to an audience of "nearly 100 industry representatives, environmentalists, and Postal Service employees," saying:
"As an agency that delivers mail to 145 million businesses and households six days a week, drives approximately 1.1 billion miles a year, and consumes more than 125 million gallons of motor fuel annually, we are in a unique position to demonstrate to the public and other businesses the growing viability and positive environmental and energy-savings benefits of alternate-fuel technologies."
In their 2006 annual report the Postal Service openly bragged about their ambition to move away from relying entirely on fossil fuels:
"With more than 216,000 vehicles, the Postal Service has the largest civilian fleet in the United States. We continue to evaluate various fuel types and alternative fuel vehicles including hybrid trucks, hydrogen fuel cell vans, electric step vans and liquid natural gas delivery vehicles."
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