Canoo announced on Thursday that it will sell six electric delivery vans to the US Postal Service.
The vans will be delivered to the Postal Service later this quarter and will be right-hand drive versions of the Canoo LDV 190 model, according to a news release from the startup. The LDV 190 has a 79 kWh battery pack, which offers an estimated range of 200 miles. According to Canoo’s website, it also has 200 horsepower, a cargo area of 172 cubic feet, and a payload capacity of 1,624 pounds.
Canoo structural battery pack
The Postal Service is embarking on a $40 billion effort to electrify its fleet. It plans to buy 21,000 electric vehicles based on existing designs – including 9,250 Ford E-Transit vans – plus at least 45,000 electric versions of the custom-designed Next Generation Delivery Vehicles (NGDV).
Intended as a replacement for the aptly named Grumman Long Life Vehicle (LLV) mail trucks that have been in use for decades, the NGDV can also be built with internal combustion engines. The Postal Service has pledged to buy more electric versions in response to widespread criticism of an initial plan to make just 10% of vehicles electric, but the first electric vehicles are not expected to arrive until 2028.
Canoo LDV 130 van in Kingbee livery
The postal service is not the first government agency to which Canoo has offered its vehicles. The startup delivered a prototype pickup truck to the U.S. military for evaluation in 2022, and built three vans for NASA to transport astronauts to launch pads at the Kennedy Space Center.
In the private sector, Canoo recently announced that it had delivered the first vehicles in an order of 9,300 units to van rental company Kingbee. In 2022, Walmart announced plans to purchase thousands of electric Canoo vans. Production takes place in Oklahoma.