California Electric Vehicle Firm Vies for USPS Truck Fleet Contract

ZAP, a Santa Rosa, Calif.-based Electric Vehicle (EV) automotive company has received a pre-qualification notice from the United States Postal Service for its next generation of energy efficient delivery trucks.

Earlier this month, USPS selected ZAP as a pre-qualifier for the development of its Next Generation Delivery Vehicle (NGDV). The selection was a result of a Request for Information sought by USPS for its delivery trucks that was issued in January. The purpose of the request was to inform prospective suppliers about the Postal Service’s preliminary draft specifications and plans for the acquisition of the NGDV fleet replacements.

The Postal Service operates a fleet of more than 200,000 vehicles in all areas of the United States and its territories. The contract — when awarded to a single supplier — calls for delivery of an initial minimum of 3,000 vehicles by January of 2018.

ZAP had been working with USPS since 2009 on the initial proposal for clean energy vehicles. After several years of trial, USPS decided last year that this program to adopt clean energy vehicles should be done with completely new trucks or vans more suitably designed to be powered by clean energy. This latest Request for Information pre-qualified ZAP to participate in the formal response for proposal and to begin a trial with the new product in first quarter 2016.

ZAP Jonway is working with several large truck manufacturers and is in the process of finalizing its partnerships to support the repurposing of the truck’s body to meet the specifications for this USPS opportunity. ZAP Jonway hopes to utilize this repurposed clean energy truck, which will have models in both electric as well as Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) to expand into the U.S. clean energy delivery fleet market.

After receiving approval for the products for the USPS, ZAP hopes to target potentially other similar delivery companies interested in the same kind of products for their fleets.