Associated Press
Wednesday December 22 6:43 PM ET
By REBECCA SINDERBRAND Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - The U.S. Postal Service says 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 Wednesday as the agency announced it had awarded the single largest contract for electric vehicles in U.S. history to Ford Motor Company.
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, D.C., area, the Postal Service said.
Thanks to a combination of state and federal subsidies, the fleet of pricey $39,000 electric vehicles will cost the Postal Service only a bargain $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 the state of 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. Because of California state environmental laws, the Postal Service already uses the relatively clean-burning ethanol fuel in its vehicles there.
And it already has the nation's largest delivery fleet that runs on compressed natural gas - about 7,500 vehicles.
An added benefit to the new trucks, said Postal Service officials, is that they are generally quieter and easier to handle than their standard emission cousins. But they only travel about 50 miles before they need to be recharged.