While Amazon delivery looks to the future with all-electric delivery vans in partnership with Rivian, the new USPS van – formally known as ‘Next Generation Delivery Vehicle’ – will adopt a fifty per cent all-electric fleet and is manufactured by Oshkosh Corporation, which spends most of its time building U.S. military vehicles.
How strict are these regulations then? Well, bidding for the contract included a set of tight design rules, the likes of which were outlined by Nir Khan, a bidder from Plasan. Requirements dictated “step-in height, the glass height (including the low side glass), the vision angles, the internal height, and the maximum roof height,” he wrote in a Tweet. A full list of requirements were explained in the thread below.
I was involved in an early proposal for the USPS truck so I know the requirements well. They pretty much dictated the proportions – this package sketch shows that to meet the ergonomic and size requirements, there wasn’t much freedom 1/2 #USPS pic.twitter.com/Fk35g98Z83
— Nir Kahn (@Nir_Kahn) February 24, 2021
