The agency plans to purchase up to 165,000 new vehicles in the next decade.
California's attorney general said it is important to stop the procurement process before it's too late. Otherwise, the country will be stuck with more than 100,000 pollution-emitting vehicles. "There won’t be a reset button", Rob Bonta said. Of course the agency is defending its review process. All the legal requirements of the National Environnmental Policy Act (NEPA) were complied with according to an agency spokesperson. An Earthjustice attorney said the review was "so rickety" that it failed to meet the basic requirements of the Act. California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington are the states initiating litigation.
Right now the USPS vehicle fleet includes 190,000 local delivery vehicles, a task well suited to electric vehicles that would emit zero carbon into the atmosphere. In contract, a gas fleet would get only 14.7 mpg, an improvement over the current 8.4mpg, but would still dump hundres of tons of carbon into the air every year,contributing to more global warming. In response to the public outcry over the lack of commitment to EVs, the agency doubled to 20% the number of electric vehicles in its initial $2.98 billion purchase order.