Blink Charging was awarded an indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) contract with the USA Postal Service (USPS) to supply as much as 41,500 EV chargers because it transitions its supply fleet to electrical automobiles.
The announcement comes solely three months after the USPS declared that it’s going to section out shopping for new inside combustion supply vans in 4 years and buy solely electrical automobiles after 2026.
The U.S. Postal Service Will Start To Transition To An Electrical Car Supply Fleet
Final 12 months, the USPS introduced it was doubling its preliminary order for electrical supply vans with Oshkosh Protection costing $2.98 billion for a complete of fifty,000 models.
Then, only a few weeks in the past, we discovered that Ford had additionally secured a contract to supply the USPS with 9,250 E-Transit Vans.
Nevertheless, the company will even buy 9,250 Ram ProMaster vans within the subsequent two years to fill the pressing want for brand spanking new automobiles now. It’s going to then purchase at the very least 66,000 absolutely electrical automobiles by means of 2028.
The Blink Sequence 7 charger might be used to recharge the USPS electrical supply fleet.
The Blink contract is a gigantic win for the community but it surely will not be the unique provider of charging tools to the USPS. The US Postal Service introduced that it will likely be shopping for tools from two extra suppliers: Rexel Vitality Options and Siemens, and the entire price of the contracts is $260 million.
Blink has quite a lot of totally different EV charging choices and for the USPS it will likely be offering its Sequence 7 dual-port charger that may provide as much as 80 amps (19.2 kW) of energy from every port.
Blink Cellular Charger
Practically three years in the past we reported that Blink was launching a cellular charging answer aimed primarily at roadside help corporations. The freestanding charger was mainly a gasoline-powered generator with an built-in Blink stage 2 charger connected. The unit may ship 40-amps and cost an EV at as much as 9.6 kW.
Final week, Blink launched its second-generation gasoline-powered cellular charger that’s smaller and significantly lighter (230 lbs in comparison with 354 lbs), which makes it simpler to maneuver round when wanted. It’s, nonetheless, much less highly effective than the earlier mannequin and may now ship solely 32-amps, which is 7.7 kW. Pricing hasn’t been revealed as of but.
Blink Cellular Charger Gen 1 (Left) in comparison with Gen 2 (Proper)
Blink advertises: “The mobile charger can deliver up to 1 mile of charge per minute”, however at 7.7 kW, the car would wish to realize almost 8 miles per kWh so as to add a mile a minute, which isn’t even near what any manufacturing automotive can declare. Nevertheless, electrical bikes can obtain that, and even higher, so maybe Blink was referring to electrical bike charging.
The charger can run for five hours constantly with out filling its 6.1-gallon fuel tank at its peak supply output of 32-amps. It comes with a 23-foot cable and J1772 connector so it might cost any electrical car offered in North America together with Tesla automobiles with a J1772 to Tesla adapter.
The unit can both stay non-networked or be networked by way of Wi-Fi. The non-networked configuration permits roadside help corporations with out authorization and the networked configuration permits EV drivers to pay to cost from it by means of their Blink account and pay for the electrical energy obtained.
Whereas utilizing a gasoline generator is not the perfect setup for cellular EV charging, there’s undoubtedly a necessity for this kind of tools. Personally, I might want to see battery-powered cellular chargers and I consider that would be the way forward for cellular charging. Nevertheless, I can undoubtedly perceive why roadside help automobiles would possibly want this answer, at the very least till battery-powered models like these are smaller, lighter, and cheaper.
Ideas? Depart them within the remark part under for dialogue.
