Oshkosh NGDV
The Oshkosh 'Next Generation Delivery Vehicle' is a mail truck for the United States Postal Service. The contract, which is valued at $6 billion, was awarded to Oshkosh Defense of the Oshkosh Corporation in February 2021. Up to 160,000 vehicles will be built in a new South Carolina factory. Four variants of the NGDV are expected to be in fleet use: both gasoline-powered and battery-electric, in either front-wheel drive or all-wheel drive. The USPS was scheduled to start receiving the vehicles October 2023, but repeated delays meant that only 2,500 vehicles had been delivered by November 2025.
History
On January 20, 2015, the USPS issued a Request for Information notice for a Next Generation Delivery Vehicle. On February 13, 2015, it was announced that General Motors would be bidding on the contract, which would include the construction of 180,000 new vehicles at a cost of at least $5 billion. The stated goal of the contract was to have the first vehicles on the road by 2018. Potential bidders had until March 5, 2015, to submit comments and pre-qualification responses. The USPS issued a Request for Proposal to 15 prequalified companies on April 14, 2015; General Motors was not on the prequalified list. The prototype RFP was issued on October 20, 2015, and updated on December 1, including a Statement of Objectives providing preliminary vehicle specifications, vehicle performance targets, and a Statement of Work providing a sample driving cycle.Design specification
Under the draft design specification issued in January 2015, the NGDV was to have a minimum lifespan of 12 years and a target lifespan of 20 years. The cargo area was required to enclose a minimum volume of with a minimum payload capacity of. Vehicles were required to be able to maintain a speed of on level roads, accelerating to that speed within 35 seconds. In addition, vehicles were required to maintain on a 2.5% grade and be capable of stopping on such a grade, and then ascend a 20% grade in both forward and reverse.In the prototype RFP, these requirements were updated to include the delivery of six prototype examples in two sizes: a "standard" vehicle accommodating of cargo and a "small" vehicle with, with both sizes not to exceed of height. The minimum sustained road speed was with a grade of up to 1% at an altitude of or less, with a minimum operating range of including 600 stops and starts while using the heating and air conditioning systems and accessories at their maximum settings, to maintain cabin temperatures of when ambient temperatures are. The cargo area was required to accommodate heights ranging up to the 95th percentile male without stooping while setting the maximum exterior height at. The maximum target unit price was US$35,000.
Prototype competition
On September 22, 2016, the United States Postal Service awarded the NGDV Prototype Contract to six selected suppliers: AM General, Karsan, Mahindra, Oshkosh, Utilimaster, and a joint-venture bid involving Workhorse and VT Hackney. Half of the prototypes were to feature hybrid and new technologies, including alternative fuel capabilities. The prototypes represented a variety of vehicle sizes and drive configurations, in addition to advanced power trains and a range of hybrid technologies.The prototypes were delivered to the USPS in late September 2017. Examples from AM General, Karsan, Mahindra, Oshkosh, and VT Hackney/Workhorse were spotted while undergoing testing in 2017 and 2018. Vehicle testing took place at the Transportation Research Center, supplemented by component testing in Bohemia, New York and field testing in Flint and Utica, Michigan; Alexandria and Manassas, Virginia; and Tempe, Tucson, and Apache Junction, Arizona. However, many of the prototypes exhibited "critical safety failures during the prototype testing phase, including brake failures and leaking fuel tanks", and the USPS returned all the prototypes to the Transportation Research Center for rework in November 2017; testing resumed in April 2018 and was completed in March 2019.
The Oshkosh prototype was derived from the Ford Transit commercial van, while the Karsan prototype combined a purpose-built tall body by Morgan Olson, allowing mail carriers to stand upright in the cargo area, with a plug-in hybrid gasoline-electric drivetrain. The Mahindra prototype also used a boxy, bespoke body with a short hood, similar in appearance to the VT Hackney/Workhorse prototype, which was equipped with a battery-electric powertrain and a gasoline-powered range extender. The AM General prototype used switchgear from Geely/Volvo and a start-stop system to reduce fuel consumption rates. According to Emerald Automotive officials, the AM General/Emerald and Oshkosh/Ford vehicles were leading the candidates, as the other vehicles required constant repair and towing from the test track.
Numerous candidates resigned from the NGDV prototype competition before the USPS selected the winner, as competition results and selection of a winning prototype had been expected in late 2016, but these were not announced until 2021, in part due to delays in assembling the prototypes; because the candidate suppliers only had 18 weeks to assemble and perform internal testing before shipping the prototypes to USPS, many vehicles were faulty and the USPS returned the entire initial batch. In addition, testing was extended by three to eight months because USPS added durability and simulated field tests during the competition; testing was not completed until March 2019. With testing complete, USPS met with the manufacturers and the National Association of Letter Carriers to finalize the specifications, which were issued in June 2019.
Utilimaster withdrew from the competition in February 2017, and London Electric Vehicle Company, which was supplying powertrain technology to AM General, announced in December 2018 they would not participate past the prototype stage. Workhorse bought out VT Hackney in December 2019 after the latter company withdrew from the competition. Final bids from the vendors to the revised specification were delivered in July 2020, delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, Mahindra pulled out in August 2020, citing financial issues. By December 2020, just Karsan, Oshkosh, and Workhorse were left. Final technical and financial reviews were completed in January 2021.
Award
In February 2021, the contract was awarded to Oshkosh Defense, a wholly owned subsidiary of Oshkosh Corporation in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. The competitively awarded indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract allows for the delivery of between 50,000 and 165,000 vehicles over a period of 10 years. Under the initial contract USPS has committed to pay Oshkosh Defense $482 million to initiate engineering efforts to finalize the production vehicle design, and for tooling and factory build-out activities that are necessary prior to vehicle production.The Workhorse Group, an electric truck builder based in Loveland, Ohio and one of the losing bidders, initially protested the award to Oshkosh by filing a lawsuit, but dropped the case in September 2021, one day before the case would be heard in court.
USPS placed its first order in March 2022, at a contract value of $2.98 billion, for 50,000 NGDVs, of which at least 10,019 will be the battery-electric variant; the average per-unit cost of an NGDV is about $. The first deliveries of NGDVs were expected in 2023. The exact number of electric NGDVs is flexible and can be adjusted in the future. After the USPS was sued by multiple groups in April 2022 to block the procurement, the USPS announced plans in July to increase the proportion of electric NGDVs in the initial procurement to 50% and add 34,500 more commercially available battery-electric vehicles. Later that December, the USPS announced the addition of $3 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act would allow the procurement of 45,000 battery-electric NGDVs out of at least 60,000 NGDVs in total, to be delivered by 2028. Mail delivery using the first NGDVs was still expected to start in late 2023.
Production
In June 2021, Oshkosh stated that after a long search, the company will assemble the new mail truck at a new, dedicated factory in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and will employ more than 1,000 local non-union workers. In Spartanburg, Oshkosh Defense is refitting a large warehouse at the Flatwood Industrial Park that previously was used by Rite Aid as a distribution center; when complete, the building will be used for NGDV production. Oshkosh expects to spend $155 million to retool the facility. South Carolina provided a $9 million grant and a 40% discount on property taxes for 40 years.The announcement that production would take place in South Carolina using non-union labor was criticized as a bait-and-switch scheme by multiple politicians who had expected the vehicles to be built by unionized workers in Oshkosh's home state of Wisconsin. Senator Ron Johnson declined to challenge the company to relocate production to his home state: "It's not like we don't have enough jobs here in Wisconsin. The biggest problem we have in Wisconsin right now is employers not being able to find enough workers." According to Johnson, Oshkosh had approached Foxconn to inquire if Oshkosh could lease space at the nascent Foxconn facility in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin for NGDV production, but the two companies were unable to reach an agreement.The House Committee on Oversight and Reform sent letters to Oshkosh officials in March 2022, seeking insight into the company's reasons to build the NGDV factory in Spartanburg rather than retooling existing factories in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. The president of Oshkosh Defense, John Bryant, had stated previously the minimum size for the NGDV factory was, and it did not own any buildings in Wisconsin that were large enough to accommodate NGDV production. State Representative Gordon Hintz noted that Foxconn's Mount Pleasant facility was sufficiently large, and speculated that negotiations between Oshkosh and Foxconn may have broken down over who would assume responsibility for manufacturing: "I don't think Foxconn originally wanted to be a landlord". Hintz concluded that "if two years pass and there's nothing in million-square-foot facility when we could have been producing postal trucks, you know, under this contract, we'll look back at it as a missed opportunity." A NGDV technical center will be established in the buildings owned by the company in its eponymous Oshkosh, Wisconsin location for engineering and technical support, employing approximately 100.