Postmaster General Louis DeJoy defended the decision, stressing that the fleet replacement is urgent while reiterating the agency will buy additional battery-electric vehicles as more funding becomes available.
“Our commitment to an electric fleet remains ambitious given the pressing vehicle and safety needs of our aging fleet as well as our fragile financial condition,” DeJoy said in a news release. “The process needs to keep moving forward. The men and women of the U.S. Postal Service have waited long enough for safer, cleaner vehicles.”
Environmental groups are preparing to immediately challenge the move in federal court, arguing the Postal Service is illegally justifying its move with a fundamentally flawed analysis of the purchase plan that underestimates greenhouse gas emissions, relies on faulty economic assumptions and fails to consider alternatives.
Although the Biden administration has limited authority over the Postal Service because it is an independent agency, federal courts have found the USPS is still bound by the National Environmental Policy Act that requires analysis of major policy decisions. And federal courts have previously invalidated government leases sold to private companies after finding that analysis lacking.