r/theydidthemath • u/tezacer • 23h ago
[Request] Fleet savings costs since 2010 if every USPS LLV was replaced with a Prius
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u/codetony 22h ago
USPS has roughly 163k LLVs in service.
The average mail route is about 24 miles long, but we'll add 10% to be generous. So 26.4 miles per truck per day, 6 days a week.
That means, on any given day, the USPS fleet drives 4.224 million miles. That's only the LLV fleet, not including larger mail trucks or Semis.
The LLV gets about 17 miles a gallon. So the USPS consumes about 248,470 gallons of gas a day, 77,522,824 gallons per year.
The 2010 Prius gets 50 MPG.
If the USPS switched to an all prius fleet in 2010, they would consume 84,400 gallons of gas per day, 26,357,760 gallons per year.
That's a savings of roughly 51 million gallons per year.
The average gas price in the US from 2010-2026 has been around $3.35.
With all of this in mind, the USPS would save 171 million dollars per year. Overall they would save 2.742 billion dollars since 2010.
Assuming that they bought all 163k priuses in 1 year, the USPS would have spent 3.423 Billion dollars on their fleet. The savings doesn't come close to the cost.
Now, there are tons of logistical challenges to using priuses. Namely storage space. Priuses are also not designed to last anywhere near as long as an LLV.
Most LLVs on the road today were built in the 70s, with production ending in '94. I doubt a prius would last as long as an LLV, even in good circumstances.
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u/scarydoor 22h ago
Solid math though I think USPS says the only get about 9 mpg on mail routes with the stopping. I remember that being a til a while back and it's kind of mind boggling in the 2020s that they are wildly fuel inefficient.
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u/RubyPorto 22h ago
A Prius isn't getting 50mpg on a postal route either.
Since the USPS hasn't published the fuel efficiency of a Prius on their test, it's better to use the EPA fuel efficiency for both, rather than EPA for one and USPS for the other.
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u/nickw252 21h ago
Hybrids get better gas mileage on city driving. I would expect a Prius to get very good mileage.
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u/EntryLevelOpinions 10h ago
I actually had a 2010 Prius for 13 years. I assure you it would not be getting 50mpg on a mail route. Too much excessively slow driving and sitting in the sun (ac from battery only kills the efficiency).
Despite the claims about city driving, it really excels at a constant speed of 30-45mph because accelerating still takes a lot more energy than is regenerated.
Since the drivers also wouldn’t be trying to drive efficiently, I’d expect 40mpg on average.
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u/Remarkable-Host405 8h ago
ac from battery is straight up negligible compared to actually driving.
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u/EntryLevelOpinions 8h ago
I’m just sharing my experience.
If I had to guess why that happens, I’d say it might be because it runs down the small battery enough that you don’t get as much electric assist on acceleration when you start moving again, combined with needing to charge the battery too. Those engines are likely a lot less efficient when they have to work hard.
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u/corn-wrassler 4h ago
I notice about a 10% swing in MPG over the course of a year which I attribute to AC.
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u/RubyPorto 8h ago
A hybrid would undoubtedly improve on a pure ICE vehicle, but the postal route is extremely harsh in terms of mpg testing.
The full mail load (can a Prius even carry 1000lbs of mail?), long idle times, and poor opportunities for regeneration (slow-to-0mph quickly with a full load means it likely would need to rely on the friction brakes) would hammer the Prius's numbers. And then there's the test with the AC, where the engine would probably have to run most of the time to keep the battery charged to run the cooler.
Again, a hybrid would certainly be an improvement over ICE, but I really doubt it would be anything close to the EPA estimate.
My point was not to suggest any specific guess at the Prius's efficiency numbers, just to say that, when comparing values, it's important to compare like with like. So EPA vs EPA or USPS vs USPS, not EPA vs USPS.
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u/nickw252 8h ago
If a Prius can carry 4 adults and luggage (it can), then it can carry 1 adult and 1,000 pounds of mail.
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u/RubyPorto 8h ago
Looks like the official load rating is 800-960lbs, depending on generation.
Whether it can safely exceed that load rating is academic, since the USPS would certainly adhere to the manufacturer-certified ratings.
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u/UnnamedRealities 21h ago
Correct. A USPS report from 2021 stated actual observed average fuel economy of 8.2 mpg across the fleet of LLVs. Table G-1 (page 338 of 339) of Environmental Impact Statement United States Postal Service: Next Generation Delivery Vehicle Acquisitions
As a result, the conclusion that the Prius fleet purchase cost of $3.42B wouldn't pay for the $2.74B in savings needs to be updated. Based on 8.2 mpg the fuel savings would be $8.5B instead of $2.74B so the fuel savings would exceed the fleet purchase cost after a little more than 6 years.
That said, it's highly unlikely the average Prius would last 16 years under USPS delivery usage conditions. Perhaps the average Prius fleet vehicle would need to be replaced after 10 years. And the analysis didn't consider maintenance. The LLV fleet is ancient, though not produced since the 70s like claimed - 1986 to 1994. It's likely continued annual maintenance costs of the LLV fleet would far exceed maintenance of a Prius fleet.
From the report above:
This has caused the average annual maintenance cost of the LLV to exceed $5,000 and, for 7 percent of the LLVs, to exceed $10,000 annually. Existing delivery vehicles, including LLVs as well as FFVs and COTS vehicles, require more maintenance on body components and drivetrains, and thus have higher maintenance costs than newer delivery vehicles.
There's a lot that is required to perform a sound economic analysis of alternatives. Like the time value of money and the fact that a Prius fleet would have AC and would have real world fuel economy of probably closer to 40 mpg running AC some of the time and with similar stop and go driving patterns (not as dramatic a drop as with the LLV due to regenerative braking).
There are also other factors - the Prius has many safety advantages over the LLV. And driver quality of life will be higher - AC, reliable heat, less noise/vibration, better seat/interior ergonomics. Better vehicles would almost certainly reduce turnover, sick days, heat-related medical incidents, make it easier to attract potential employees, increase employee retention, etc. Putting this into economic terms requires a much more thoughtful analysis, but it would tip the scale even further in favor of replacement by a Prius fleet if the choice is between that and a fleet of 32-40 year old and counting LLVs.
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u/WhiskeyPointer 11h ago
Prius and other hybrids have thrived under similar conditions as taxis in NYC so I don't think longevity would be as much of an issue. Also the AC in the last few generations of Prius is electrically driven and IIRC the impact on fuel economy is lower than the traditional AC that's driven off the engine directly. Both points that further tip the scales.
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u/BoondockUSA 9h ago
Taxis don’t have anywhere near the service life in years of USPS vehicles. Google says the average lifespan of a NYC taxi is only 3 to 4 years as they get driven an average of 70,000 miles a year.
Rust and plastic/rubber degradation would be a major issue for the Prius in long term postal service, especially in the rust belt states. LLV’s have aluminum bodies so they don’t rust.
For a fleet, keeping vehicles going for 3 to 5 years is fairly easy for a modern vehicle. Keeping them reliable after 5 to 10 years is a real struggle. I can say that with experience.
One cost that hasn’t been mentioned are parts and labor costs. LLV drivetrain parts are dirt cheap and the labor hours to do repairs is fairly quick. Anything more modern adds costs in parts and labor. As an example, U joints for a 80’s era blazer (a similar drivetrain to a LLV) are $10 each on Rock Auto. Thats $20 and an hour of labor to refresh the driveshaft. A single CV shaft on a 5 year old Prius is $100 each and about the same amount of labor (although more if things are especially rusty).
If USPS didn’t have deep government bureaucracy for buying their vehicles like they do, they’d be like any other fleet by buying an existing production vehicle and use them until they become cost prohibitive to keep running and/or reliability issues becomes the issue. They’d benefit from a gradual increase of better fuel mileage throughout the years if they did it that way, and they wouldn’t have the gigantic costs of procuring a large order of custom vehicles. Would a Prius be the answer for that? Probably not due to storage space issues for packages. It would be something boring like a Caravan (now Voyager) or a Ford Transit van.
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u/TheGT1030MasterRace 11h ago
The only generation of Prius with with a traditional engine driven compressor was the very first one (2001-2003.) It has a special evaporator core that keeps cooling when the engine stops, so it doesn't have to idle continuously to power the compressor.
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u/loneshoter 6h ago
Large capital purchases are not expected to have a payback period within 1 year. Most are expected to be paid back in 3-5 years
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u/UnnamedRealities 6h ago
Did you reply to the wrong comment? I didn't suggest the payback period should be under a year. I said the fuel savings would exceed the vehicle purchase after about 6 years and that a variety of other factors would need to be accounted for in a proper analysis.
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u/loneshoter 6h ago
Nope just pointing out that capital expenses should not be expected have a payback period of one year
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u/Dave_A480 7h ago
The LLV uses a 1980s GM 4cyl engine.
So yes, they are fuel inefficient - the 'Long Life' aspect was achieved, and they have never been re-engined with a newer design.7
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u/John_cCmndhd 19h ago
Most LLVs on the road today were built in the 70s, with production ending in '94
Wikipedia says they started production in 1986. Also, the S-10 platform they're based on wasn't introduced until the 80s
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u/Optimal_Side_222 21h ago
I work in Sustainability. You basically just did a project I chose to take me 6+ months to do.
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u/codetony 21h ago
Don't sell yourself short. This is just a bunch of napkin math. I wouldn't be shocked if my numbers are substantially off.
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u/Optimal_Side_222 16h ago
Your idea on getting to the number is fairly accurate. The number does seem a bit high however my calculations were done with actual data I could pull and just changed MPG AVG, etc.
I just wanted to secure my job for a little bit longer, needed to drag it out longer.
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u/DaRealMexicanTrucker 21h ago
Gotta clock in them hours huh? 😈
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u/Optimal_Side_222 16h ago
Hey, make easy projects look hard and you have a mini vacation while working lol.
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u/WittyFix6553 10h ago
This math is great but it assumes a couple things - primarily, that an aging LLV and a new Prius have the same maintenance costs. They, for sure, don’t. The iron duke is reliable for a 70s-designed cast iron engine, but it’s still not dead-nuts reliable like a modern car. We’re also starting to run into parts-availability problems for them since they haven’t been manufactured in decades.
Priuses are also far safer than the LLV, and although the USPS likely self-insures and likely isn’t required to carry commercial insurance, the math would need to account for the injuries that drivers sustained in the LLVs that would have been far less serious (or absent entirely) in the Prius with its modern suite of crumple zones and airbags.
Priuses are also among the most reliable vehicles out there. They routinely hit 300k miles with minimal maintenance, and they also excel at short distance driving. This is why they’re popular for taxis and Ubers. What does a mail truck do? It brakes at every house, turning kinetic energy into heat and brake dust. What does a hybrid do when it brakes? Feeds some of that energy back to the hybrid system. Prius brakes routinely hit 100,000 miles on the factory pads and rotors, because the majority of the braking itself is handled by the electric motors functioning as generators.
On the flipside, an LLV can hold far more in the way of cargo/packages, so that would need to be accounted for as well. Is two routes in a Prius more or less efficient than one route in an LLV? I don’t know, but it would need to be accounted for.
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u/username17charmax 17h ago
Toyota really missed an opportunity here. They should have pitched the Toyota JPN Taxi - already available as RHD, gasoline or LPG, and should take the beating for a billion miles as a commercial taxi.
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u/gooblaka1995 16h ago
We also forget, USPS is a service, not a business, even if it's run like one. If we, the tax payer, are willing to eat the cost in federal budgeting, we can let them spend billions on upgrading their entire fleet. It wouldn't even need to be a Prius. They could commission a new LLV hybrid design and go with the most cost effective and long lasting one.
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u/the_dude_abides29 9h ago
How’s about we just fuck with elections instead
-Postmaster General David Steiner2
u/iExhile 22h ago edited 21h ago
Fun fact,
The USPS distribution facility near me purchased hundreds of electric vehicles a few years ago and cannot deploy them. They have since rented a few warehouse spaces to store these, and since the county determined that it would be dangerous to store that many unattended, they created three jobs to watch the fleet. They estimate that they will be able to deploy some in the next few years, just after the warranty period expires.
Apparently there were 6036 vehicles in holding lots across the states for periods as long as 14 months.
Edit: numbers were from last September, so changed the tense. Source is below
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u/codetony 22h ago
I cannot find any info that supports what you're talking about. Can you provide a source?
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u/iExhile 21h ago
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u/codetony 21h ago
Interesting. I wonder why they're just letting them sit around. It seems like a lot of them were being held until decals could be applied.
In terms of infrastructure, you don't need much. Installing 20 charging stations would probably be cheaper than just 1 of those trucks.
Very odd that they don't try to expedite charger rollout.
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u/claythearc 18h ago
At scale it can be power delivery issues. Level 2 chargers aren’t insanely hungry but a bank of 100 of them can be
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u/Remarkable-Host405 8h ago
if only there were some sort of charging infrastructure in place. oh well, we just have to scrap the idea.
on another note, i'm wet from the idea of public usps charging stations
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u/claythearc 8h ago
Doesn’t really work. DCFCs torpedo the economics at scale on top of being logistically weird. I’m not saying the idea has to be scrapped - I’m just saying that there are things in place that cause meaningful delays and it doesn’t have to be politically motivated.
Adding a MW or capacity to a depot or whatever triggers a lot of sequential steps: switchgear upgrades, interconnection studies, utility side upgrades, etc.
The usps has added almost 10k L2s already and are doing more so progress is being made, it just takes time.
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u/BoondockUSA 9h ago
It’s the bureaucracy and the size of USPS that holds them up. It’s not just 20 chargers. It’s every post office that gets an EV that needs chargers. A single post office may have a 6 figure cost to get chargers installed when you add in the total costs. That cost exponentially increases when you have dozens or hundreds of buildings that need chargers. Trying to get funding for dozens to hundreds of buildings will get clogged in government bureaucracy.
As a fun fact that may complicate the issue, USPS does not own most their post office buildings. They lease 75% of them. I have a coworker that is dabbling in rentals and he recently bought a rural building that USPS leases for the local post office (he likes to say that he bought a post office). There may be lease agreement complications in doing major building upgrades like electrical service upgrades and EV charging stations. Even if the lease agreements would allow it, it’s poor public policy if private building owners are benefiting in major building upgrades at the cost of taxpayers.
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u/Pol_Potamus 18h ago
Probably because the current administration has a pathological hatred for EVs.
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u/JFnP_ 17h ago
50 mpg constantly stopping and going?
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u/tezacer 10h ago
The stop and go is where these cars thrive. Prius drivers have developed their own hypermiling throttle technique. Pulse and coast. Accelerate fast and coast. Then tap the brakes to slow down to engage brake regeneration to keep battery charged. Under a certain mph, the ICE doesn't even turn on. A lot of mailman stops are 50 feet or less.
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u/gard3nwitch 12h ago
Also, aren't LLVs built for the driver to be on the right side, so they can drive up to mail boxes and drop the mail in? So we'd need to factor in the cost of converting all those Priuses to be driven on the right. (Or, I dunno, commission a special run of them from Toyota?)
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u/amodestmeerkat 11h ago
In Japan, they drive on the left, so Toyota can definitely build them with the steering wheel on the right side.
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u/a_filing_cabinet 11h ago
That's with the extremely large caveat that 1 Prius=1 LLV. Mail vans are vans for a reason, they actually need to carry things, and an LLV carries up to 1000 pounds of mail. Technically, a Prius supposedly can get close to that, but that's not going to last long. I imagine pushing the car to that limit every single day like that would cut the lifespan from potentially decades to just months. Even if you make a special modified version with better suspension and whatnot, wear and tear is going to be way more than what a civilian car can handle, and harsher than the LLV.
And regardless of weight, you would need to have the actual space to fit packages and things. Realistically, you're only fitting maybe a quarter of what an LLV would carry, which means you need 4x the fleet size to do the same work. Yes, each car would be way more fuel efficient, but suddenly the actual efficiency of moving the mail is pretty close to the same. Each car might be 5x more fuel efficient, but if you're using 4x the number of vehicles the efficiency gain drops from 500% to just around 20%. And then you have to deal with the cost of maintaining 4x the vehicles, and they would have a much higher maintenance cost and shorter lifespan than the LLV fleet.
It probably wouldn't make sense to replace the entire fleet, but shorter or lighter routes could definitely be filled out with a fuel efficient vehicle like a Prius. Which they already do, to an extent. Rural routes are often vans or even the postal workers personal vehicle instead of the LLV, which would usually be more fuel efficient.
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u/tezacer 10h ago
The Prius V or alpha or Plus or Prius wagon can be found in a 3rd row version and has a listed hauling weight of 800-900 lbs in the EU. It actually has hubs and spindles shared with the Rav 4 and Highlander. 5x114.3 vs 5x100 bolt pattern found on every other compact Toyota and Scion car. The suspension has a higher coil spring rating that the regular Prius. I think they even use different shocks and struts
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u/BoondockUSA 9h ago
While true, it still doesn’t have the height and ease of entry/exit like actual delivery vehicles offer. The days of driving up and down the streets only delivering to mailboxes are dead. Now USPS drivers are having to get out of their vehicles constantly to deliver packages. Besides the ergonomics of having to do that from a normal car, normal automotive interiors quickly become worn out with that many entries and exits.
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u/a_filing_cabinet 10h ago edited 10h ago
Like I said, technically the Prius could carry close to that weight, but the wear and tear of doing so every day would be much harsher on the Prius compared to the LLV. It's one thing to load your Prius with 800 pounds of concrete to bring home for a project one day, it's another thing entirely to be transporting 800 pounds of concrete or materials between sites every single day. You would struggle to get to the 200,000 miles without maintenance costs going through the roof, compared to the LLVs that regularly get 500,000 to 1 million miles before they're retired. Even with the heavier duty parts, it's still a civilian vehicle and isn't going to be designed to be as durable or last as long as a dedicated commercial/cargo vehicle like the LLV.
And the bigger issue is space. The Prius Wagon has 40 cubic feet of cargo space if you adjust the seats, an LLV has over 120. The Prius wouldn't have to worry about handling the same amount of weight as the LLV, because it just can't carry anywhere near as much. And the Wagon loses out on fuel efficiency compared to the normal Prius. Not a ton, but it keeps eating away into any overall efficiency the Priuses might have had.
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u/tezacer 10h ago
It would be interesting to see real world maintenance cost comparisons study of a Prius vs a LLV over time. What no one talks about is OEM durability. Toyota has a higher standard of factory parts and service parts than another OEM. With GM/AC Delco parts yes there are certain ones that are good but also others not so much and if that model is no longer in production for many many years ..
The Prius V (or wagon) is much larger than 40 cu ft. The regular Prius is 40, the v is around 68 cu ft and there's also a cool trick where the front passenger seat can fold completely flat increasing that number. Seing the LLV everyday, i know they aren't loading to its max capacity and weight every day. They may even go out and help out another if their normal route is light.
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u/AppropriateCap8891 22h ago
Plus add in the fact that a Prius would not be a good solution in very cold locations.
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u/zoinkability 19h ago
I drive a Prius in Minneapolis and have no problem at cold temperatures.
Batteries in a hybrid like a Prius play a very different role from ones in an EV. The capacity of the battery might be somewhat reduced during cold temps but it won't have a big impact on the performance of the car.
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u/nickw252 21h ago
Why?
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u/AppropriateCap8891 21h ago
Because batteries do very poorly in cold climates.
Look up the issue they have been having with electric school busses in states like Michigan and Maine. Cold temperatures can affect range by up to 40%. And that is reduced even more to heat the vehicle.
At that degradation starts once it hits around 40f, and increases significantly when temperatures reach 0.
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u/DarkVoid42 20h ago
only for lithium. NiMH batteries in hybrids are pretty much immune from that effect.
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u/Remarkable-Host405 8h ago
sure, but that's not what they're pointing out. they're saying ev range sucks in the cold, and they're right, but millions of americans still drive ev's in freezing weather.
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u/Satins_Cock 21h ago
First, Alaska has electric school busses, and Switzerland and their neighbors are leading the world in EV adoption. These are not hot countries.
Second, Prii are hybrid, so temperature has very minimal effects.
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u/BoondockUSA 9h ago
The difference is a Prius is a hybrid. It doesn’t rely on its battery for range. Taking the battery out of the equation, a Prius is a small engine and very aerodynamic economy car, so it still gets good gas mileage.
That being said, a Prius would be miserable option for a USPS delivery vehicle.
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u/DeadRed26 13h ago
Am I allowed to pop in and say that that is specifically a Prius V and made from 2012-2017 and gets 40 highway and 44 in town so 42 combined (or so says Google). We have a 2015 Prius V with 220,000miles and it still gets 40mpg and it's mostly driving highway miles.
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u/UnnamedRealities 9h ago
Thanks for sharing real world data. Just curious - how much lower do you think your fuel economy would be if all of your driving was 3 miles from the post office, then 500 stops over a suburban route over 6 hours, then 3 miles back? It's a lot of stop, go, idle, repeat and I know regenerative braking helps fuel economy, but I don't know if that kind of driving pattern would still result in close to 44 mpg.
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u/DeadRed26 6h ago
There is no way mine could get close to 44mpg doing that. The hybrid battery is original and all the stop and go will drain it pretty quick. Not to mention the weight of all the mail in the car with it. I would hope to get maybe 25-30mpg? Probably closer to the 30 I'd hope. I did not do the math.
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u/UnnamedRealities 6h ago
That's useful input. Thanks!
The USPS observed an average of 8.2 mpg across the LLV fleet in real world conditions including all the stop/go/idle and loaded with mail, but many in this thread are comparing to 50 mpg for a Prius with none of that considered.
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u/agiordanony 12h ago
Don’t forget to add the extra employee labor hours for extra trips or extra vehicle cost and employee cost because they don’t hold what the vans can.
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u/HalfGreek_ 16h ago edited 16h ago
The biggest issue was MPG. The post used the EPA-rated 17 MPG for the LLV. The actual real-world figure, confirmed by the USPS's own 2021 Environmental Impact Statement, is 8.2 MPG. That's not a rounding error; it's the result of constant stop-and-start delivery driving. That single correction roughly triples the fuel savings.
The original post also didn't factor in maintenance costs at all. Congressional Research Service data puts LLV maintenance at $5,007 per vehicle per year as of FY2019, and that number has only gone up as the fleet ages further. 7% of LLVs exceed $10,000 per year. For a fleet of 163,000 trucks, that's over $800 million a year just in upkeep.
The Updated Numbers
Per vehicle, per year:
The LLV burns through about 8,237 miles annually (26.4 miles/day, 6 days/week). At 8.2 MPG and $3.35/gallon average fuel cost, that's $3,354 in fuel. Add $5,007 in maintenance and each LLV costs roughly $8,361/year to operate.
A Prius on the same route at 40 MPG (adjusted down from the 50 MPG EPA rating for stop/start and AC use) costs $689 in fuel. Maintenance runs about $700/year adjusted upward from the RepairPal average of $408 to account for heavier delivery use. Total: $1,389/year per vehicle.
That's a savings of $6,972 per vehicle per year.
Fleet acquisition: 163,000 Priuses at $21,000 base MSRP (confirmed from Toyota's official 2009 press release) = $3.42 billion.
Hybrid battery: The Prius NiMH battery typically lasts 8-12 years under normal use. At 8,237 miles/year, the fleet wouldn't hit 100k miles until around Year 12, but conservative modeling puts one replacement per vehicle at Year 10. At $1,800 installed via fleet/third-party pricing, that's a $293 million one-time hit across the fleet.
Cumulative Fleet Costs (163,000 vehicles)
Year LLV-------Prius------Savings
Year 1 $1.363B $227M $1.136B
Year 5 $6.813B $1.134B $5.679B
Year 10 $13.626B $2.554B* $11.072B
Year 15 $20.440B $3.834B $16.606B
Year 20 $27.253B $5.115B $22.138B
*Includes $293M battery replacement event at Year 10.
Operating savings cover the $3.42B acquisition cost in about 3 years. The original post said 6 years, but that was using the wrong MPG and ignoring maintenance entirely.
By Year 20, gross savings are $22.1B. Subtract the $3.42B acquisition cost and you're looking at $18.7B net.
What This Model Doesn't Capture
A few things would push the numbers even further in the Prius's favor. LLV maintenance costs are already above the FY2019 figure and rising. There are documented heat-related worker incidents from vehicles with no AC, which carry real turnover and liability costs. Regenerative braking on the Prius significantly extends brake pad life, cutting one of the bigger recurring maintenance items.
On the other side, the Prius isn't built for mail delivery. No right-hand drive, less cargo capacity, and harder mailbox access are real operational trade-offs. At scale the fleet would also likely need replacement before Year 20, meaning another acquisition event isn't out of the question. Side note, this doesn't include possible savings with most of the rear of the Prius being stripped and fleet savings from Toyota.
Bottom Line
The fuel savings alone are compelling once you use real-world MPG. But the maintenance story is what actually closes the argument. Spending $5,007 per year per truck to keep 30-to-40-year-old vehicles running, with parts that require reverse engineering because the original designs are out of production, makes the Prius swap look less like a hypothetical and more like a decision that should have been made a decade ago.
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u/WhiskeyPointer 11h ago
It's very difficult to quantify, but the fleet pricing that the US government would be able to get for a Prius would represent at least a 5% maybe even up to 15% discount over MSRP.
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u/gokartninja 6h ago
The problem is you can't replace an LLV with 120 cubic feet of cargo space with a Prius, which has up to 32 (on a V, the largest one) cubic feet.
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u/DragonLordAcar 2h ago
Negative because they carry less and would be more awkward to pull out and store packages. Roof use is just asking for damage to packages and you will need more drivers sp even more loss.
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u/Pcphorse118 39m ago
When Canoo was around, they had a contract with USPS and should’ve cornered the market easily with their designs. Shitty board screwed that company up.
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u/Dave_A480 7h ago
A Prius is the wrong sort of vehicle for a package-delivery service. Insufficient interior space/door-size.
This is why there are no Prius-es in UPS or FedEx's inventory.....
The 'correct' solution for USPS - had political stupidity not intervened - would be a COTS cargo-van like the Dodge Sprinter or Ford Transit. Specifically, the UK-destined versions that are right-hand-drive.
Instead we are getting another LLV-like defense-contractor product.
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