Probably in the minority, but I actually like the look of them. I find so many modern car designs indistinguishable from each other. Cars such a narrow range of design that's considered "good aesthetics" that everything looks so uniform.

> I've read so much knocking their appearance, which is so confusing to me.

Especially since the old LLVs were pretty ugly in their own way. We've just gotten used to seeing them over the last 38 years.

> It's ultimately form over function in this case

Doesn't "form over function" mean the opposite of your usage?

Form = appearance

Function = usefulness

But it's okay to call them ugly. People get used to a certain look of things and then you introduce something that look like what an 8 year old would draw (this mail truck, Musk's cybertruck) and you'll get some flack. It's utterly meaningless in the end, and just bar talk. If these are reliable and make the postal workers' lives better I'm all for it, but they are imo ugly as sin.

The low hood is almost definitely to help prevent scraping mailboxes and other objects, but especially mailboxes. My dad was a rural USPS carrier that used his own vehicle, and despite him having been an excellent driver with no accidents on record in his life, he still ended up swapping minor paint with mailboxes a few times.

Can't imagine how often it happens across the country.

for utilitarian purposes, like the guy was quoted "it gets the job done", but for soccer moms and their SUV looks are important.

Subarus use a boxer engine that drastically increases the visibility. I have a short torso with long legs and finding a car where I felt comfortable with visibility was a priority for me. I settled on the Subaru Impreza 10 years ago. Still has the best visibility of all the cars I’ve driven. I’d expect EVs to also have better visibility - may be eventually - since they can drop the height of the hood as well.

Well, they're mostly not qualified to comment on the function, are they?

A few ideas:

1) it kinda resembles Le Car

2) the junk in the frunk

3) and plus that extra forward bumper looks a bit like a telemark ski binding clip, and those ski folk never really looked especially smooth

4) it came out during DeJoy’s tenure, so it’s easy to imagine this is actually a shaming design

5) there are some very cute and charming EV designs out for Amazon FedEx UPS right now, and this isn’t up to the standard of those more forward looking (and admittedly bulbous but “of our time”) designs.

6) we’ll have to live, culturally, with this identity for a while. Seems a bit “meh”. I can see it now.. Kevin James as a future sitcom postal carrier and he will have a whole extra stage set up so he can have scenes in the enormous front cab of this thing. A la Art Carney as Ed Norton from the Honeymooners. We’ll get to visit the monstrosity during future Universal Studio backlot tours.

[dead]

Would you wear the same cloths but in clown colours?

"While the all-aluminum body of the LLV has resisted corrosion exceptionally well over the years, the main powertrain components have been replaced multiple times and now must be sourced through aftermarket manufacturing. This has significantly increased repair costs while reducing performance and reliability.

In fact, the Postal Service had to contract an alternative supplier to reverse engineer and manufacture the chassis frame to keep the LLV operational. As a result, the average annual maintenance cost exceeds $5,000, with 7% of LLVs exceeding $10,000 annually. Additionally, they are less fuel-efficient and unsuitable for future delivery needs given projected changes in market demand, mail mix, and increasing delivery points.

The LLVs also lack modern safety features such as airbags, anti-lock brakes, air conditioning, back-up cameras, blind-spot warning systems, daytime running lights, and seatbelt reminders." https://uspsngdveis.com/documents/USPS+NGDV+FEIS_Dec+2021.pd...

Sort of a Ship of Theseus vehicle. Yes, some have lasted over 40 years, but that's with potentially multiple drivetrain replacements, at an annual maintenance cost of $5,000 - $10,000. That feels high, given how simple those vehicles are.

From my desk at home I see the lil LLV come down our private road every single day. With retrofitted LED lighting.

I'm pretty sure the enemy of vehicle longevity isn't design, but parts supply.

The crown victoria could have kept on supplying police departments for another decade or two if ford didn't discontinue it.

Constantly starting and stopping, too, in a variety of temperatures.

> every one of them you see on the road today is at least 30 years old, and some could be pushing 40.

Survivor bias: The ones you see are the ones that have survived. You don't see the junkyards full of failed trucks.

Tactile controls should be the default. I was actually interested in the Lincoln Corsair until I saw how much they rely on touch - even for things like the climate control, same as the Teslas. Instantly took it off the list.

I think you owe us some information to satisfy 'intellectual curiosity'! :)

I'll start: Why did they create a brand-new and why a dedicated ERP system? Didn't the manufacturer have an ERP system used for manufacturing other vehicles?

Can you provide some more information as to what the ERP system is built on? (i.e. open source software, "from scratch", etc?)

Frequently "improvements" come at the expense of compromising some key feature for lots of users.

This is particularly true in tall organizations where the people doing procurement are far from the users.

Cultural hostility among a subpopulation to electric vehicles as "woke"? Ordinary sentimentality and the natural human discomfort with change?

Direct Vision Standards[0] should implemented as a mandatory requirement everywhere for large vehicles traveling in cities or residential areas where there's "soft road users"[1] (pedestrians, cyclists). Should be able to see straight to the side and know you're not running someone over.

[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Vision_Standard [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-motorist

read other comments, so talk people can stand up in the back and short people and see over the hood.

They aren't/weren't all going to be EVs. Originally the USPS was looking at 10% EVs and 90% internal combustion but there were a bunch of challenges to that (including that ratio being based on incorrect environmental impact data). Now it's 75% EVs in the first order of 60,000 and future orders may be that high or higher (currently expected that it will be all EVs starting in 2026).

sources: article and wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oshkosh_NGDV)

One benefit of a low hood is that it scoops up pedestrians that might get hit instead of hitting their torsos with the vehicle. It'll probably break your legs, but you are more likely to survive.

This is one of the reasons that SUVs and large trucks are deadly: it's basically hitting you directly in the chest cavity.

According to Wikipedia[1]:

> 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.

So I expect the front hood is for the gas powered engine for those variants. Further down, it talks about only 10% will be EV at the start due to cost. Also, this is in partnership with Ford so the ICE power train is the from the Ford Transit van.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oshkosh_NGDV

To have easy side entry the front wheels need to be in front of the driver. So you need something to cover the front suspension and hold up lights. Try drawing a flat nose version of this vehicle that maintains the same ease of access.

A crumple zone?

i guess they could have made it flat nosed like a bus?? are they putting the batteries in the nose? it looks like the cargo part is too low for them to be placed under there. also, gotta put that ac somewhere. probably makes it easier to work on under the little hood than having to climb on top of the truck.

The seat height in the banner image looks too tall for the mailboxes.

The very first image in the article shows a driver putting mail in a mailbox. What more proof do you need?

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/11/20/multimedia/00xp-m...

I was just thinking they need a special green and yellow variant for the southern Willamette Valley...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oregon_Duck

> The upfitter AUX switches appear to be Ford, same for the AC controls.

Ford supplies the ICE engine, transmission, suspension, steering wheel, and instrument cluster, so that tracks. https://fordauthority.com/2024/10/new-usps-mail-carrier-uses...

The camera is positioned so that the side window is visible through the front windshield. I think the "black coating" you are seeing is just the interior of the van, and that the entire front windshield is usable.

The final photo in the article appears to show pretty good forward visiblity. Seems fine?

> On the bottom... there goes all the visibility gained by having the low hood. wtf?

That is a little weird, now that I look at it again. But the way you'd use the rest of that bottom space would be by lowering the driver, basically, and that would mean the driver's not as high up over the hood. So maybe getting the higher angle gains more visibility than having them sit lower just to maximize usable windshield area? (The only way you could have both is if the dashboard was transparent.)

My $5 it's the usual 'too late to change'. Compare with the 2021 version.

Also the if you trace LoS in the cabin pic in the article you would find what the driver wouldn't see more of the hood because he need to be sat quite a lot higher (up to 20cm I think) to gain the view you are thinking of. And this is incompatible with 'do the mailman thing without getting out of chair'.

https://www.nalc.org/news/the-postal-record/2021/may-2021/do...

How in the world is a mail carrier going to deliver mail in a huge esprinter, you going to have them open their door and climb out at every mailbox?

One key difference between USPS and UPS/Fedex is that USPS does not do freight, and they do a lot more lightweight items (i.e. letters), so cargo capacity is much less of a concern. The fact that junk mail is so common actually reduces the need for cargo capacity since their routes tend to be made long not because of physical volume/distance so much as dwell time (that is, if someone is using EDDM[0] to target a neighborhood, you have to stop at every mailbox in that neighborhood, even if it's just to deliver that one piece of junk mail which will immediately get thrown away, and this takes far more time than delivering a bundle of packages to a handful of houses).

I remember reading about the NGDV, and one of the reasons it looks so weird is because USPS wanted a vehicle that was low to the ground (to make it easier to climb in and out of) and easy to see over the hood, even for very short drivers[1]. Given that they are in residential areas (and thus, in proximity of kids playing outside) far more often than UPS/Fedex, I can't say I disagree with that requirement. (Also, if you have a tall truck like UPS and Fedex typically roll, good luck delivering to the average mailbox while staying in your seat.)

USPS has certainly evaluated more traditional designs; in fact, they are actively using ~20k Ram ProMasters (a rebadged Fiat Ducato), which are quite similar to the Mercedes Sprinter, alongside ~9k mini vans[2].

[0]: https://www.usps.com/business/every-door-direct-mail.htm

[1]: https://x.com/Nir_Kahn/status/1364465483911675905

[2]: https://www.uspsoig.gov/sites/default/files/reports/2023-01/... (PDF page 6)

Did you not read the article?

The NGDVs aren't Sprinter vans, they're purpose made mail delivery vehicles, with ergonomics and cargo space setup for that, which makes a massive difference for the drivers, especially when it comes to repetitive motion injuries, which is a huge cost for USPS.

Amazon went away from commercial vans to purpose made vehicles built by Rivian for many of the same reasons and they've been widely praised by the drivers.

As usual when you take a dismissive stance ("this is obviously a waste of money!") you are ignoring lots od details. The use case of a mail carrier is not well suited by a massive eSprinter. They have no need for something so large. They want to be seated at the height where most mailboxes are so they can make many deliveries without getting out of the car.

Whenever you find yourself going "why would they make THAT decision?" assume it is yourself that is ignorant and take it as an opportunity to learn, rather than dismiss the choices of people who specialize in the area you are puzzled by.

Having wrenched more extensively than I want to on the Transit, the Sprinter and the Promaster I would hand out the pork to a defense contractor ten times over before I bought Euro vans of ANY make because at least they tend to build things with margin in the places you need it even if it's not peak comfort and user experience. The engineering culture and default assumptions are completely different and it shows.

> I wondered why other delivery companies use commercial vehicles instead of NGDVs or LLVs, and the answer is that commercial vehicles are more capable while being significantly cheaper.

Commercial vehicles in fleets are leased - they last anywhere from 2-5 years then they're pushed off to the used vehicle market. After 10-15 years they're so done that they'll end up on the scrap yard or shipped off to Africa or Asia. On top of that they're designed to be aerodynamic at highway speeds because they'll spend a lot of their life time on such streets and speeds, whereas these postal trucks will spend most of their time moving like snails.

These USPS tanks in contrast are expected to last 30, 40 years like their predecessors, racking up insane mileage... and while no one cares if some underpaid gig worker runs over some child because the child happened to be in the dead spot of his vehicle, if the same happens to USPS the government itself is the target for a nice juicy lawsuit. So it makes sense for a custom order at that scale and expected life time, and it also makes sense to stray from what the market has to offer because the requirements are different.

Oh, and commercial delivery doesn't have to take care about its workers. They'll get burned out with their backs and joints ruined, but the companies don't have to pay a dime. In contrast, USPS is a government agency and has a massive financial incentive to keep healthcare costs low.