Workhorse said the Postal Service unfairly blamed its truck for a mishap that injured a worker evaluating the prototype. This was especially puzzling given that Oshkosh has never previously produced a last-mile delivery vehicle, much less an electric one,” according to the complaint. “Even though ‘prototype performance’ was specifically identified as an evaluation subfactor, the USPS had selected a vehicle from Oshkosh that skipped the prototype phase altogether. In its complaint, Workhorse said the rendering of the Oshkosh mail truck depicts a vehicle that is entirely different than what the company had provided for testing during the competition. That percentage would allow the agency to test the technology and limit the cost of installing chargers at postal facilities. Although the Postal Service has considered using electric vehicles for its new fleet, just 10 percent of the vehicles in the Oshkosh contract would be electric, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said at a Congressional hearing earlier this year. Workhorse’s proposal would have provided a fleet of electric vehicles. They are also prone to fires, with several hundred burning up in recent years. A 2014 audit from the USPS inspector’s office found that the current fleet could only meet the agency’s delivery needs through the 2017 fiscal year. Manufactured from 1987 through 1994, they need to be replaced. The post office wants to replace a fleet of about 140,000 Grumman Long Life Vehicles that it uses for its main delivery service. ![]() as a major supplier in the program, will assemble the new mail truck at a dedicated factory in Spartanburg, S.C.Ī series of contracts are expected to approach $6 billion. It engaged in discussions with Workhorse that improperly failed to meaningfully notify Workhorse of perceived deficiencies in its proposal and that misled Workhorse as to the areas Workhorse needed to address in its updated proposal,” the company said in its filing. “It falsely blamed Workhorse’s prototype vehicle for a “safety incident” that was clearly the result of the USPS driver’s error. The filing said Workhorse spent more than $6 million designing electric prototypes of a replacement mail truck as part of a formal bidding process but that that agency didn’t take its offering seriously following a mishap with a truck. The agreement also provides Oshkosh funds to pay for tooling and factory configuration needed before launching production. Under the terms of the initial deal, Oshkosh, Wisc.,-based Oshkosh will get a $482 million contract to complete the production design of its mail truck offering. The Postal Service announced Oshkosh Defense as the winner of the competition to build the mail truck in February.
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