The U.S. Postal Service's push for an all-electric mail fleet is falling dramatically short of expectations despite more than $3 billion in taxpayer funding already spent, according to a letter sent to Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, and obtained by the New York Post.
The Biden administration championed the program as part of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), steering $3 billion toward a transition to battery-powered delivery trucks. Nearly all of that money went to Wisconsin-based defense contractor Oshkosh, tasked with building the new "green" Next Generation Delivery Vehicles (NGDV).
But progress on the NGDV has been sluggish. Ernst, who chairs the Senate's DOGE caucus, said in July that after $2.6 billion paid to Oshkosh, the Postal Service had produced only 250 trucks. She branded the effort a failure and said then that she was pushing to cancel the order entirely.
USPS confirmed that as of Nov. 10, only 612 battery-electric NGDV trucks are actually on the road, serving a mere 15 locations nationwide. That figure means Oshkosh produced just 362 vehicles in roughly 100 days — an average of three to four per day.
In the Nov. 17 letter, USPS Vice President of Government Relations Peter Pastre said the agency has also taken delivery of 2,010 Ford E-Transit vehicles currently in service and another 6,727 E-Transits delivered and awaiting deployment. However, those units are standard left-hand-drive vans, making them incompatible with most USPS routes that require right-hand-drive vehicles designed for curbside delivery.
Despite the limited NGDV rollout, USPS says it has already installed 6,651 charging ports at 75 sites — nearly triple the number of electric vehicles currently in use. The agency maintains that none of the $3 billion allocated under the IRA is "available for rescission."
Ernst told the Post that Americans deserve answers.
"Here is a fact-check for the USPS — spending $1.7 billion to produce only 612 EVs is a tremendous waste," Ernst said. "As if that was not bad enough, they purchased 6,727 additional EVs that aren't even being used."
"It's time to pull the plug on this boondoggle and return the money to the taxpayers."
The Biden administration pledged a fully electric USPS fleet beginning in 2026 as part of a broader $10 billion project to replace more than 100,000 aging mail trucks by 2028. About 35,000 of those were supposed to be battery-electric.
USPS insists delays are normal for a brand-new manufacturing line. But Oshkosh's rollout has been plagued by problems, including failed leak tests that left "water [pouring] out as if [the vehicles'] oversize windows had been left open in a storm," according to a December 2024 Washington Post report.
One person involved in the manufacturing process told the outlet, "We don't know how to make a damn truck." Production began at just one truck per day, far below projections of up to 80 per day.
Meanwhile, USPS continues to purchase internal combustion vehicles, with Pastre confirming plans to acquire 40,250 gas-powered delivery trucks. The agency has already taken in 26,341, including Mercedes Metris vans, Ram ProMasters, and gas-powered NGDVs.
USPS issued a press release on Monday claiming it remains "on track," touting plans to obtain 45,000 battery-electric NGDVs and 21,000 commercial battery-electric vehicles by 2028. The service also said "more than 35,000 new vehicles are on the road" — without clarifying that many still run on gasoline.
USPS Senior Public Relations Representative Kim Frum disputed the characterization that the Postal Service's EV rollout has stalled, telling Newsmax in an email that "more than 9,300 IRA-funded battery electric vehicles" have been delivered to the agency, including the NGDVs and the Ford E-Transit vehicles, and "were either delivering mail or in the process of being deployed as of November 10."
Of the more than 2,600 battery electric vehicles currently delivering mail across nearly 80 sites or in the process of deployment, the majority are Ford E-Transits, Frum said.
"And an additional 6,700 are in the process of being deployed," she added.
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