WASHINGTON — The U.S. Postal Service is expected in coming days to reaffirm its plan to pay Oshkosh Corp. as much as $6 billion over 10 years to replace an aging fleet of red-white-and blue delivery vans with mostly gasoline-powered models instead of climate-friendly electric vehicles.
The service insists it’s the cheapest alternative. But its analysis is based on assumptions that critics and even other government agencies say are unrealistic, such as gasoline at $2.19 a gallon and charging stations that cost roughly $20,000 per facility. And those assumptions will form the bulls-eye of expected legal challenges that could stop Oshkosh’s assembly lines before they even start.
“The USPS is running some risk,” said Ted Boling, a partner at the law firm Perkins Coie who previously was associate director of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
