Electric van manufacturer Canoo announced a highly visible deal with the United States Postal Service (USPS), which will see the USPS acquire a handful of right-hand drive versions of the company’s LDV 190 delivery van.
Canoo announced that the USPS will purchase six (6) battery-electric Canoo vehicles. In its official press release, the company said that it was “honored” to participate in the post office’s evaluation of potential suppliers as the USPS moves towards the “groundbreaking electrification and modernization” of its national delivery fleet.
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I like how these look futuristic, but also ugly and not at all cool. Like something out of a 1990s movie about a cop who was cryogenically frozen and then awoken decades later to stop Wesley Snipes from Wesley Sniping all over the place.
I think that makes it kinda perfect for a government vehicle lol
I agree in that I wouldn’t think someone was cool if they had one, but I think that I would feel cool if I was driving one. For real slow routes like the mail, or for delivering on a large campus though, this looks way nicer than most of the on site vehicles we’ve had.
That cockpit is super funky and for a work vehicle, I think it is definitely cool looking in that cheap semi-distopian future way like Total Recall or Demolition Man.
Their other van is better looking, same front end, and a nearly identical rear end, but less capacity. It’s kinda odd that USPS are going with these as I think the standard van is big enough.
I’ve read that in many countries, postal services are looking for larger vehicles due to how much more packages they are delivering these days.
Indeed, but the odd part is that I think the capacity on these is half way between a full sized van and a step van, which is a big jump for USPS, the current LLVs are on the high side of a minivan IIRC, making me wonder what’s up.
That’s because the future has always been based on the Pontiac Trans Sport and the Toyota Previa minivans
Wait—is this really an article about the purchase of 6 vans? Six.
While I’d prefer more like 10 or 20, when they are doing a trial, people tend to get upset if the government spends more than they think is appropriate. If these work as well as the company claims they do, they’ll buy more, for the next hundred years if history is any indication.
They have every right to be upset when you consider that the government already paid $500 million to defense contractor Oshkosh Defense to build new electrified/ICE USPS vans 3 years ago. These were supposed to be on the road last year but surprise surprise, they aren’t. I’m sure the government payments are still clearing though.
https://www.businessinsider.com/post-office-new-electric-mail-truck-oshkosh-contract-2021-2
I swear people have the memory of goldfish when it comes to stuff like this and then wonder why the state of things is so terrible in the US.
Didn’t they just upgrade a bunch of USPS with Mercedes made ICE vans too?
Edit: those are apparently stopgap vehicles to get them through until their able to adopt whatever new standard the settle on.
Knowing Canoo, six is all they can come up with for the test. I like their smaller van, and even have some money invested in them, but they’re not looking like a real company at this point, they’re years behind on production, not transparent at all about how many vehicles they’ve made, but they love to announce the deals they’ve made with WalMart, NASA, USPS, OK and more. This van is actually one of their newer designs, I think they created it on request by WalMart.
It’s an article about a new pilot program that may lead to sweeping changes
I realize others have kinda alluded to it, but you don’t go all in on an untested product.
Imagine if they bought 10k of them, deployed them across the country, scrapped all of the current vehicles, only to find out that they have a fatal flaw, or explode, or [insert thing here].
They won’t get the same density of data with six, and I admit a dozen or two would be better, but this is going to allow them to gather good data and give good feedback on what needs to change before they go all in.
Edit: I forgot to mention, they may not even move forward with these.
This one looks pretty cool. It definitely looks like something that could hold a lot of mail lmao. Hope it works out
Imagine going from this:
https://i.imgur.com/UoeQvdT.jpg
To this:
https://i.imgur.com/5HFjiNV.jpg
From a rattly iron duke with 90hp and a three-speed to an electric space ship with 200 (up to 350) hp.
Although I’d wager that going from no air conditioning to air conditioning is the one improvement that would be most appreciated. That and not dying in a an accident involving anything more formidable than a watermelon.
The LLV is all chunky aluminum panels, chunky switches, overbuilt engine, beefy drivetrain (especially when it only needs to handle 90hp), etc. They’re far from efficient or well packaged but they’re basically indestructible and if something does break it’s a piece of cake to swap it out.
The Canoo is pretty much the opposite. It makes way better use of materials and packaging but as a result it’s not overbuilt to the same degree. It’s almost certainly designed around being a passenger car which only need to survive ~100k miles before things are allowed to start falling apart. With everything being so tightly integrated you can’t be as granular in replacing components. Whole assemblies/modules will need to be replaced in one expensive swoop.
I’m really curious what the longevity of these things will be. There’s fewer moving parts and regenerative braking to help with the mechanical side of things but electrochemically there’s way more going on. I hope they work out but even if they don’t Canoo should get some really good real world test info they can use to learn and improve.
By “Canoo” do you mean the LDV190?
but they’re basically indestructible and if something does break it’s a piece of cake to swap it out
Nope. These vehicles are extremely unreliable, break all the time and require excessive and costly maintenance. The average LLV costs more than five grand per year in maintenance alone.
but electrochemically there’s way more going on
The good news is that electric car batteries are far more reliable and long-lasting than initially anticipated. They usually outlast the car they are built into.
The average LLV is also over 30 years old with hundreds of thousands of stop and go miles on them, given that they stopped making them in 1994.
Of course they’re unreliable now. There hasn’t been a new one built in 30 years.
Oooo I love it!
I’d glad to see it with a nice boxy rear end. I’m a hatchback fan, and what few that are still available have such a raked rear it cuts way down on visibility and actual cargo space, which is kinda the whole point. I’d love if my work got us one of these!
They do have a rounded rear as well, but it’s not as neat to me.
They’re even coming out with a nifty not-a-CyberTruck that looks useful:
I dont think I’ve seen any of the OshKosh trucks the gov was buying yet. Not a fan of the look of these…
Why do EV manufacturers feel the need to redesign basic controls for a vehicle? Why does the steering wheel look like it’s out of an aircraft? How am I supposed to do the proper hand over hand technique when turning on bad roads if the steering wheel is a fucking square.
The Canoo is using steer-by-wire with an adjustable steering ratio. At 0:30 in the linked video, it shows taking a 180 turn with about half a turn of the wheel. If you dont need to rotate 360+ degrees to get to the wheel stops, the shape of the steering wheel shouldn’t be an issue.
Tesla is still mechanical steering linkage, so it’s as much work to turn as a typical vehicle, and you lose the easy 2 hand spinning you’d want for that system. In that case, I totally agree with you.
Oh so now not only is the steering wheel a weird shape, it also won’t always turn the car at a certain rate.
This seems like it could be helpful for people with shoulder injuries or other arm disabilities, but I also could see it leading to a lot of collisions where people who just made a U-turn suddenly swing around wildly on the street due to a hyper sensitive steering wheel.
Maybe I’m just getting old, but all I want out of a car is for it to take me from one place to another, pair to my phone for entertainment, and have physical buttons for critical tasks like climate control, cruise control, and the wipers. Having stuff like this is nice as an add-on, but a basic car should just be a basic car that does what the driver expects.
How is this any different than break and gas pedals having different sensitivities from car to car?
Because we’re not talking about car to car, we’re talking about the same control behaving differently on the same vehicle.
If you tap the gas on your Honda civic, you don’t expect it to go flying like a formula 1 car. If you hit the brakes on a Toyota Camry, you know it’ll take a certain distance to stop. If your Honda suddenly flew forward when you tapped the gas, or accelerated like an 18 wheeler when you floored it, that’s something that can cause an accident because the vehicle doesn’t behave predictably.
The steering wheel being able to turn the car 180 degrees with a quarter turn of the wheel one minute, and then take a full rotation to do the same thing the next minute, won’t allow drivers to build good muscle memory for how the car handles. When you have a second or less to react to something like a potential collision, muscle memory matters.
But this would be something that can be seen and corrected immediately, not something you’re going to suddenly notice in the middle of downtown Chicago going 90mph. In fact it would be damn near impossible to not notice before you’re even out of the parking lot.
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The current model is an oversized buggy with zero off-road capability.
The canoos look pretty cool. I think the retail van is supposed to be out this year.
I think the expected MSRP was going to be like 38k? Which is very reasonable for a new vehicle.
Detroit based (I think), all American manufacturing? Not sure if union.
Manufacturing looks to be in Texas, with a Oklahoma plant and a smaller, seemingly specialized plant in Arkansas.
R&D in Michigan (Livonia), Corp HQ in Arkansas.
Manufacturing looks to be in Texas, with a Oklahoma plant and a smaller, seemingly specialized plant in Arkansas
So almost certainly non-union, then?
Between seeing what states they’re in and that they’re a tech company, not a car company according to them, the general consensus in what I’ve read is that a union is not in the near future…
Send Fain an email and that might change.
Hell, it would be a good gesture from the Biden admin to put “is union made?” on the consideration list for the usps purchase. These will be goverment vehicles after all. They should be made by people who have good wages and safety nets.
Union made was originally a requirement for the Build Back Better EV subsidies, but non-union manufacturers complained.
With no Republican support in the Senate, it needed every Dem vote to pass. Joe Manchin had the requirement removed.
Between Dejoy’s stalling the union Oshkosh purchase and a razor thin margin in Congress, getting it passed seems impossible, though it was actually one of the original initiatives.
Well that’s good, I was convinced that fucker Dejoy ruined everything with a previous vehicle deal
Yeah, but he’s still there so dont…uhhh…stop worrying. 😑
He tried to buy like 10% electric vehicles, but suddenly shifted course one day to 75% electric, with a commitment to go electric only after 2028.
With all the public pressure, I think some conversations occurred off the books from the biden admin that “corrected” that 90% ICE choice.
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Most of the Amazon delivery trucks that I see around me are the Rivian vans.
Amazon has basically bought the entire production of these vans. I don’t think anyone else has access to them yet.
I wonder what, if any, impact switching to a bigger vehicle like this will have on those areas where postal workers drive to stop points in their area and walk their route.
Looks vaguely coffin-like.
I can’t wait to see one of these on Aging Wheels in fifteen years.
He does cover the occasional new car as well. And by occasional I think this happened once, when he bought a Polestar. Still, this thing is right up his wheelhouse.
SIX? Who the fuck cares?
It’s a trial. That’s how this works. When the USPS started out with the LLV, they also only bought a small number initially and tested them. If the Canoo performs well in initial testing, they might end up purchasing more.
That makes much more sense. I should have guessed. Well, thanks for the explanation!
5 years later: USPS abandons EVs due to the high cost of repairs and replacement batteries and goes go hybrids/ice engines
Yeah… EVs have been out for a while now. They’re generally holding up ok still. The one exception being the Nissan Leaf and some really early ones, neither of which had a battery management system to keep the battery at a decent temperature in extreme hot/cold weather.
And it turns out that EVs don’t have as many parts, and many things are easier to design because they don’t have to run off an engine’s accessory belt (fewer moving parts). No muffler, catalytic converter, oxygen sensors, or pollution control valves. No head gasket, timing belt, fuel injectors or spark plugs. The alternator is replaced with a solid-state DC-DC converter. The transmission is a set of gears that don’t need to shift. Even the brake pads hardly get used because regenerative braking is the first thing to slow your car down, putting energy back into your battery.
Cool, huh?
