Lawmakers urge Biden to halt USPS contract. As you may or may not know, a 6 billion dollar contract was given to build electric postal trucks. But the company that got the bid is only going to make 10% of the trucks electric. Another bidder was going to use all electric trucks.
Only group that I could find that was opposed to a company called Workhorse was a small dissident West Coast group that has in the past made racist comments against a company associated with Workhorse. The groups issues were that the company was located in a area with a large community that was mostly minorities. Lordstown Motors ( a partner with Workhorse ) is close to Warren and Youngstown, Ohio. Both with large minorities.
Workhorse is a minority partner with Lordstown Motors, which is using some of Workhorse’s intellectual property in the Endurance, Lordstown Motors’ battery-powered pickup truck expected to launch in September.
Lordstown Motors’ factory in Lordstown, the former General Motors assembly plant, was likely the site to make the postal service vehicles had Workhorse been given the contract. The company’s business plan, however, was never reliant on Workhorse getting the contract.
Today, Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur (D-OH-9), Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), and epresentative Tim Ryan (D-OH-13) wrote to President Biden urging him to halt a federal postal truck contract until a review can be conducted on whether inappropriate political influence was involved in the decision and whether the contract award is consistent with Biden’s calls for an electrification of federal vehicles. Late last week, Postmaster Louis DeJoy announced the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) would be awarding a contract worth up to $6 billion to Wisconsin company OshKosh Corp., while also telling a House Committee that the new postal truck fleet would only be 10% electric under the proposed contract. Ohio-based Workhorse Group, an electric vehicle manufacturer, was passed over for the contract.
This contract award stands in stark contrast to Biden’s Executive Order on Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad and his public calls to transform the federal vehicular fleet to electric vehicles. Kaptur, Brown, and Ryan and are asking Biden to review the contract award.
