Men or mice: will VW grow a pair & have diesel in '19 lineup ?

KubVan morphed into the LLV postal van...

Speaking as a fugitive from a Postal Service Vehicle Maintainece Facility, IIRC after Grumman Olson built a couple hundred of the VW diesel powered KubVans, they won a Postal Service contract for over 100,000 LLVs (the baby step van that bears a not accidental resemblance to the KubVan. The Postal Service wanted a way bigger box and a lot more weight capacity, so the KubVan was expanded and plopped down on a GM compact pickup chassis with a GM 4cylinder engine. The Post Office wanted even more capacity, so a full size pickup rear axle was kluged on. Three decades later they still soldier on, and with no replacement yet decided on, the Postal Service is even expensively replacing rusted out frames under those eternal aluminum bodies.

The ones Oilhammer commented on with the V6 engine on a 2WD Australian Explorer chassis were a later kluge, They got the overkill V6 because the Fed Fleet demands E85 compatibility and Ford's 4 wasn't rated for E85.

It (maybe) gets worse... The Postal Service is shopping for a replacement for the LLVs, and they want something even bigger, think UPS step van. And while the Postal Service has fantasies about electrification, It'll probably end up with another big gasser engine.

The larger USPS step vans here use mostly GM 8.1L gasoline V8s. There are a few holdout diesels running around, but when they get phased out, they get replaced with the V8 gassers.

UPS has gone the same route.

Much of this is due to cost. Purchase cost, and PM cost. So I guess the EPA has gotten to some extent what they are after. Fewer diesels... they've just been replaced with much thirstier gas engines. Funny thing, I found out (because I asked) our UPS guy says his current gas truck cannot cover two days on his route without needing to be refueled. His old diesel (which not only had 1.3 million miles on it, was also a manual transmission) could go three whole days and still have fuel left. And it had a smaller tank.

It must be difficult for USPS to make these decisions since they don't know what business they're in. Are the letter carriers, Amazon contractors, UPS final delivery drivers? Without knowing it's difficult to determine what size vehicle they need.

You would think an EV or Hybrid would work well for these postal carriers since it's all local stop and go driving.

DieselMann99 said:

You would think an EV or Hybrid would work well for these postal carriers since it's all local stop and go driving.

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Yep, and they had those back in the '70s. The Jeep DJ-5E "Electruck". But, as you might imagine, once the oil embargos went away, and air quality in the cities in general improved, they were phased out.

kjclow said:

The tax credit has never been an enticement for me to consider an EV.

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The Greenies in Washington need to bribe people with a tax credit to get them to buy an EV, huh?

I wish the govt would not use tax credits and deductions to bulldoze you into doing, or not doing, something. That's why I'd love to see Congress get rid of nearly ALL deductions and credits and just lower tax rates to two simple brackets of 15% and 30%. Only a standard deduction of $10,000 per person or dependent, that's it. Let people make decisions on what makes sense for them, not on what the tax incentives are.

But I digress.

Not enough miles to pay for an EV or hybrid...

DieselMann99 said:

You would think an EV or Hybrid would work well for these postal carriers since it's all local stop and go driving.

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Typical Postal LLV covers less than 5k miles a year, so it tales longer than an LLV lasts (25+ years) to payback the cost of electrification, hybrids, even diesels.

gearheadgrrrl said:

Typical Postal LLV covers less than 5k miles a year, so it tales longer than an LLV lasts (25+ years) to payback the cost of electrification, hybrids, even diesels.

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I was thinking more along the lines of an enhanced, enclosed golf cart, costing maybe $10k. They really don't need a full-fledged vehicle.

DieselMann99 said:

The Greenies in Washington need to bribe people with a tax credit to get them to buy an EV, huh?

I wish the govt would not use tax credits and deductions to bulldoze you into doing, or not doing, something. That's why I'd love to see Congress get rid of nearly ALL deductions and credits and just lower tax rates to two simple brackets of 15% and 30%. Only a standard deduction of $10,000 per person or dependent, that's it. Let people make decisions on what makes sense for them, not on what the tax incentives are.

But I digress.

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We (I) digress also

10% -- 15% -- 25%

personal deduction 15,000

good bye to interest deduction.

One time zero corp tax to bring $$$$$s back to USA ~~ Hello jobs for US workers !!!!!

DieselMann99 said:

I was thinking more along the lines of an enhanced, enclosed golf cart, costing maybe $10k. They really don't need a full-fledged vehicle.

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An interesting point of Constitutional Law, because the post office is a Federal Agency, it is only subject to State regulation to the extent that it does so voluntarily.

As a result, the vehicles used by the post office on the road do not have to meet State standards of roadworthy motor vehicles that would apply to private parties.

Postal Service has policy to comply with state laws...

Even though they don't have to. For example, the Postal Service is relocating a lot of older diesel trucks that don't comply with CARB's edicts to outside of California and leasing compliant trucks to replace them in California.

2015vwgolfdiesel said:

10% -- 15% -- 25%

personal deduction 15,000

good bye to interest deduction.

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Sounds good, but that's going to be trillions away from revenue neutral. A 25% top rate would be a massive tax cut for the wealthy. I'm not a "soak the rich" guy, but I also don't want to give a massive tax cut to them either.

Looks like everybody gets a huge tax cut under your plan. That's gonna cost trillions.

One time zero corp tax to bring $$$$$s back to USA ~~ Hello jobs for US workers !!!!!

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I'm definitely in favor of a low, maybe 7.5% tax rate on repatriated earnings. And then, let's shift to a territorial system like the rest of the world does.

But I digress.

We're waaay off topic here with the tax talk. Also unless we talk about the payroll tax vs folks that don't draw a salary, we're ignoring plenty.