The U.S. Postal Service will buy six electrical vans from startup Canoo, to be delivered later this quarter.
The vans shall be right-hand-drive variations of the Canoo LDV 190 van, in line with a press launch from the startup. Canoo’s web site lists the LDV 190 has having a 79-kwh battery pack yielding an estimated 200 miles of vary. The van has 200 hp, a 1,624-pound payload capability, and 172 cubic toes of cargo area behind its rear bulkhead in its inventory configuration, the web site says.
USPS Ford E-Transit
Earlier this previous week the Postal Service additionally gave an replace on a $40 billion plan to impress its fleet, together with rolling out charging infrastructure for greater than 66,000 electrical supply autos. That whole will embody 21,000 “business off-the-shelf” autos from producers like Canoo, plus at the very least 45,000 purpose-built supply autos, the latter due by 2028.
The “off-the-shelf” purchases will embody as much as 9,250 Ford E-Transit vans. The Postal Service introduced that deal in Mar. 2023 as a hedge in opposition to the custom-designed vans—formally known as Subsequent Technology Supply Autos (NGDV) and meant to get each electrical and internal-combustion powertrains—as a result of they’re nonetheless years away.
Canoo LDV 130 van in Kingbee livery
The NGDV challenge was the middle of a scandal wherein, regardless of a push from the Biden administration to go electrical when doable, the USPS solely ordered 10% electrical mail vans—and the electrical model hadn’t but been engineered. In a revised technique, the Postal Service agreed to solely purchase electrical supply autos from 2026 on—so there could also be extra Canoos sooner or later.
In the meantime, Canoo stated final week that it had delivered a few of its first buyer autos to van rental agency Kingbee, which has a binding order for 9,300 autos, in line with the startup. And in Nov. 2023 it confirmed a revised pickup variant spun off from a U.S. Military challenge—though Canoo hasn’t lately clarified when it would ramp up personal-use gross sales.