https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/4awqqw/the-new-usps-trucks-would-probably-be-illegal-if-they-weighed-one-pound-less

The USPS has defended the purchase of up to 165,000 new trucks from increasing criticism—for being years late, oddly expensive, strangely inefficient, and only about 10 percent of them being electric—on the grounds that the current fleet is so old they’re bursting into flames and urgently need to be replaced. It further argues at least 5,000 of the vehicles will be electric, but the agency is too broke to buy more than that. Still, the USPS says, the gas models have a fuel efficiency of 14 mpg as long as the air conditioning isn’t running (8.6 mpg if it is) better than the current fleet—manufactured in the 1980s—that gets 8 mpg. And, the USPS points out, gas models can be converted to electric at a future date.

To critics of the purchase, these don’t sound like defenses at all, but further indictments of the decision making that led to it. Katherine Garcia, director of the Sierra Club’s Clean Transportation for All Campaign, told Motherboard, “I think their statement is misleading by suggesting that they’re going to convert these vehicles because that would be even more expensive than moving forward with an electric fleet to begin with.” She cited a study by the Atlas Public Policy research group that EVs would actually save the agency billions of dollars, especially if the alternative is vehicles that get such poor gas mileage.