Here’s yet another one for the ‘Tell me this isn’t a government operation’ files (a body of work which would put the Great Library of Alexandria to shame): yet another cautionary tale of what happens when the press ops have long been forgotten and cold, hard reality has bitten. In a characteristically governmental move, Australia Post, with great fanfare, spent millions buying electric tricycles for its delivery fleet – only to see them gathering dust in warehouses for a year (and counting).
It all started so optimistically, too.
As part of its efforts to provide safer, more sustainable and efficient parcel deliveries, Australia Post is rolling out 500 new three-wheeled Rapide 3 electric delivery vehicles […]
The latest vehicle rollout is supported by purpose-built charging infrastructure at more than 37 sites nationwide.
They needn’t have bothered with the charging stations. After all, there’s no point in being able to recharge an electric trike you don’t actually have.
Ah, the intoxicating aroma of corporate virtue-signalling. Back in the heady days of last year, Australia Post chief executive Paul Graham stood before the flashbulbs, chest puffed out like a blowhard pigeon, spruiking these wondrous contraptions as the dawn of a clean, green, enlightened era. It was hailed as an ‘evolution in safety’ – an epochal step toward ‘future-proofing sustainable operations’.
Except, in the real world, a place seldom visited by senior bureaucrats, the glorious green revolution promptly capsized on the nearest suburban gutter.
Hundreds of Taiwanese electric tricycles purchased by Australia Post and worth at least $10m are sitting idle in warehouses after a string of safety incidents prompted the national mail carrier to withdraw them from service.
Australia Post says it is now conducting testing on the 500 vehicles – which it previously dubbed as an ‘evolution in safety’ – to determine if they can be reintroduced, yet there are no guarantees they will be returned at all.
Less than five months into their magnificent journey, the entire fleet was unceremoniously yanked off the asphalt. The Communications Workers Union stepped in with some rather unhelpful observations about how the wretched things were uncomfortable, hazardous, and thoroughly unfit for human navigation. When the posties themselves refuse to climb aboard your state-of-the-art electric eco-trike because they value their spinal columns, the PR narrative begins to curdle somewhat.
So what does the national mail carrier do when cornered? Why, break out the industrial-grade bureaucratic waffle, naturally. In answers to parliamentary questions, Australia Post solemnised that a post-rollout review had identified ‘limitations’ regarding the tricycles’ ‘fitness for purpose for certain delivery environments’. Translation: they bought 500 oversized golf carts that couldn’t handle an average Australian kerb.
And naturally, we aren't permitted to know just how lavishly our money was incinerated.
Australia Post declined to disclose how much it spent on the vehicles or ancillary expenses, such as driver training, citing commercial confidentiality agreements. Yet the fleet’s total cost is likely to have exceeded $10m. Gaius lists its base Smart Edition model at about $19,000, excluding transport to Australia and specialised modifications. Industry insiders told the Australian the on-road cost was about $25,500 per vehicle.
Ten million dollars of public wealth dumped into foreign-made, three-wheeled paperweights currently oxidising inside industrial storage sheds, while posties go back to their trusty old petrol-powered Hondas. When asked how many hapless posties had been injured trying to steer these Taiwanese wonders, AusPost serenely replied that such data ‘was not captured in a single dataset’. How convenient. If you don’t collate the bruises, the bruises didnt’t happen.
To rub salt into the wound, Australia Post didn’t even buy local. A homegrown Aussie firm, Stealth Electric Bikes, had spent over seven years and millions of their own dollars crafting an electric trike specifically tailored to domestic conditions. But, of course, why back Aussie ingenuity when you can send eight-figure cheques off to Taiwan for a fleet of lemons?
They could at least save on storage costs by simply dumping them at the bottom of Yarra and Sydney Harbour, along with all the e-bikes.
