Background mail trucks at a post office in
South Dakota. The USPS has operated the LLV since 1987. The USPS purchased a fleet of purpose-built
Grumman LLV mail delivery vehicles in the late 1980s. The similar
Ford-Utilimaster FFV was introduced in the late 1990s in smaller numbers. The LLV fleet lacks safety features that became common after their introduction, including
airbags,
anti-lock brakes, and
backup cameras. As of 2013, the USPS local delivery fleet consisted of approximately 212,000 vehicles, 142,000 of which were LLVs. On January 20, 2015, the USPS issued a
Request for Information (RFI) notice for a Next Generation Delivery Vehicle. On February 13, 2015, it was announced that
General Motors would be bidding on the contract, which would include the construction of 180,000 new vehicles at a cost of at least $5 billion. The stated goal of the contract was to have the first vehicles on the road by 2018. Potential bidders had until March 5, 2015, to submit comments and pre-qualification responses. The USPS issued a
Request for Proposal (RFP) to 15 prequalified companies on April 14, 2015; General Motors was not on the prequalified list.
Design specification Under the draft design specification issued in January 2015, the NGDV was to have a minimum lifespan of 12 years and a target lifespan of 20 years. The cargo area was required to enclose a minimum volume of with a minimum payload capacity of . The minimum sustained road speed was with a grade of up to 1% at an altitude of or less, The prototypes were delivered to the USPS in late September 2017. Examples from AM General, Karsan, Mahindra, Oshkosh, and VT Hackney/Workhorse were spotted while undergoing testing in 2017 and 2018. Vehicle testing took place at the
Transportation Research Center (East Liberty, Ohio), supplemented by component testing in Bohemia, New York and field testing in Flint and Utica, Michigan; Alexandria and Manassas, Virginia; and Tempe, Tucson, and Apache Junction, Arizona. and the USPS returned all the prototypes to the Transportation Research Center for rework in November 2017; testing resumed in April 2018 and was completed in March 2019. The Oshkosh prototype was derived from the
Ford Transit commercial van, while the Karsan prototype combined a purpose-built tall body by
Morgan Olson, allowing mail carriers to stand upright in the cargo area, with a
plug-in hybrid gasoline-electric drivetrain. The Mahindra prototype also used a boxy, bespoke body with a short hood, similar in appearance to the VT Hackney/Workhorse prototype, which was equipped with a battery-electric powertrain and a gasoline-powered
range extender. According to Emerald Automotive officials, the AM General/Emerald and Oshkosh/Ford vehicles were leading the candidates, as the other vehicles required constant repair and towing from the test track. Numerous candidates resigned from the NGDV prototype competition before the USPS selected the winner, as competition results and selection of a winning prototype had been expected in late 2016, but these were not announced until 2021, and
London Electric Vehicle Company, which was supplying powertrain technology to AM General, announced in December 2018 they would not participate past the prototype stage. Workhorse bought out VT Hackney in December 2019 after the latter company withdrew from the competition. Final bids from the vendors to the revised specification were delivered in July 2020, delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic. By December 2020, just Karsan, Oshkosh, and Workhorse were left. Final technical and financial reviews were completed in January 2021. The competitively awarded
indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract allows for the delivery of between 50,000 and 165,000 vehicles over a period of 10 years. Under the initial contract USPS has committed to pay Oshkosh Defense $482 million to initiate engineering efforts to finalize the production vehicle design, and for tooling and factory build-out activities that are necessary prior to vehicle production. The Workhorse Group, an electric truck builder based in
Loveland, Ohio and one of the losing bidders, initially protested the award to Oshkosh by filing a lawsuit, but dropped the case in September 2021, one day before the case would be heard in court. USPS placed its first order in March 2022, at a contract value of $2.98 billion, for 50,000 NGDVs, of which at least 10,019 will be the battery-electric variant; the average per-unit cost of an NGDV is about $. The first deliveries of NGDVs were expected in 2023. The exact number of electric NGDVs is flexible and can be adjusted in the future. After the USPS was sued by multiple groups in April 2022 to block the procurement, Later that December, the USPS announced the addition of $3 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act would allow the procurement of 45,000 battery-electric NGDVs out of at least 60,000 NGDVs in total, to be delivered by 2028. Mail delivery using the first NGDVs was still expected to start in late 2023.
Production In June 2021, Oshkosh stated that after a long search, the company will assemble the new mail truck at a new, dedicated factory in
Spartanburg, South Carolina, and will employ more than 1,000 local non-union workers. In Spartanburg, Oshkosh Defense is refitting a large warehouse at the Flatwood Industrial Park that previously was used by
Rite Aid as a distribution center; when complete, the building will be used for NGDV production. Oshkosh expects to spend $155 million to retool the facility. South Carolina provided a $9 million grant and a 40% discount on property taxes for 40 years.The announcement that production would take place in South Carolina using non-union labor was criticized as a
bait-and-switch scheme by multiple politicians who had expected the vehicles to be built by unionized workers in Oshkosh's home state of Wisconsin. Senator
Ron Johnson (R-WI) declined to challenge the company to relocate production to his home state: "It's not like we don't have enough jobs here in Wisconsin. The biggest problem we have in Wisconsin right now is employers not being able to find enough workers." According to Johnson, Oshkosh had approached
Foxconn to inquire if Oshkosh could lease space at the
nascent Foxconn facility in
Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin for NGDV production, but the two companies were unable to reach an agreement. The
House Committee on Oversight and Reform sent letters to Oshkosh officials in March 2022, seeking insight into the company's reasons to build the NGDV factory in Spartanburg rather than retooling existing factories in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. The president of Oshkosh Defense, John Bryant, had stated previously the minimum size for the NGDV factory was , and it did not own any buildings in Wisconsin that were large enough to accommodate NGDV production. State Representative
Gordon Hintz (D-Oshkosh) noted that Foxconn's Mount Pleasant facility was sufficiently large, and speculated that negotiations between Oshkosh and Foxconn may have broken down over who would assume responsibility for manufacturing: "I don't think Foxconn originally wanted to be a landlord". Hintz concluded that "if two years pass and there's nothing in [Foxconn's] million-square-foot facility when we could have been producing postal trucks, you know, under this contract, we'll look back at it as a missed opportunity." In response to an enquiry from Representative
Jackie Speier asking why the new fleet was not 90% BEV instead of 10% BEV, DeJoy stated that 90% BEV target would require "3 or 4 extra billion [dollars]" to implement. In fact, an order of 75,000 BEV trucks was estimated to cost an extra $2.3 billion compared to a 10% BEV fleet. concluded the preferred alternative was "to purchase and deploy up to 90 percent ICE
[internal combustion engine] NGDV with at least 10 percent BEV NGDV." At approximately the same time, President
Joe Biden issued
Executive Order 14057 in December 2021, which mandated that all light-duty vehicles purchased for U.S. government fleets must be BEVs starting in fiscal year 2027, and by 2035, all new federal fleet vehicle procurements, including heavy-duty trucks, must be BEVs. One critic noted the incremental amount to implement an all-BEV NGDV fleet, while onerous, was relatively small in relation to other government projects and would reduce carbon emissions by in tailpipe emissions. Researchers at the
University of Michigan's
School for Environment and Sustainability found the EIS underestimated lifetime emissions associated with the split 10/90 NGDV scenario, and overestimated lifetime emissions associated with the all-BEV NGDV scenario, providing even greater benefits for pursuing the all-electric procurement. In February 2022, the EPA criticized the preferred alternative, stating the EIS "fails to consider more environmentally protective feasible alternatives and inadequately considers impacts on communities with environmental justice concerns." In addition, although analyses demonstrated that 95% of its routes could be electrified, considering the nominal range of the BEV NGDVs, just 10% of NGDVs would be procured as BEVs. The USPS and Oshkosh defended the NGDV procurement plan, noting that ICE-powered versions have been designed to be converted to BEV powertrains if required. criticizing USPS and Oshkosh following the implementation of the preferred alternative, singling out the vehicles' inefficiency and the use of incorrect data in their environmental impact statement. Other groups joining the criticism included the EPA, the Biden Administration, Zero Emission Transportation Association, climate activists, and the
Congressional Progressive Caucus of the Democratic Party, The proportion of BEV NGDVs in the initial order of 50,000 was increased to 20% in March 2022. Lawsuits were filed in April 2022 against the USPS by 16 states, six non-profit groups, the
Bay Area Air Quality Management District, the
District of Columbia, and the
city of New York, demanding a more stringent environmental review or changing the proportion of BEV NGDVs to 100%. During the May 2022 National Post Forum, the USPS confirmed that it will increase the number of BEV NGDVs in the initial order. This means that at least 10,019 NGDV vehicles will be manufactured as BEVs. In July 2022, USPS revised the initial order to now have at least 50% of the NGDV vehicles to be manufactured as BEVs. The
Inflation Reduction Act allocated an additional $3 billion for the electrification of the NGDV fleet. In March 2023, Florida-based EV charger manufacturer Blink Charging Co. announced it was awarded an
IDIQ (indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity) contract for up to 41,500 chargers.
Delayed delivery Preproduction versions were shown at the
Consumer Electronics Show in
Las Vegas for 2022 where attendees could participate in "Operation On-The-Move", a three-player competitive video game to deliver packages. As reported by
Reuters in May 2023, initial deliveries were delayed from 2023 to June 2024. USPS has committed to acquire 66,000 electric vehicles through 2028, of which 45,000 are NGDVs and 9,250 are
Ford E-Transit vans. The E-Transit vans were scheduled to arrive by the end of 2023. In August 2024, the first NGDV vehicles were delivered and began operating delivery routes in
Athens, Georgia. ==Design==