Spain's postal service rejects electric vans due to rapid battery degradation

Correos goes back to diesel: electric vans can't handle the workday

It is three in the afternoon and an electric Kangoo van belonging to Correos, Spain's state-owned postal service, has stopped halfway through its route, with the postman pushing it symbolically. This is not a joke: the electric fleet purchased a year ago has turned out to be a fiasco. The public company is now seeking 289 diesel vans because, it claims, there are no suitable electric vehicles for delivery operations. The underlying reason is more prosaic: the batteries, subjected to daily full charge-discharge cycles, degrade until they become unusable in less than twelve months.

The problem of depth of discharge

Anyone who has driven an electric vehicle knows that real-world range depends as much on driving style as on usage patterns. But in delivery fleets, where nearly 100% of the battery is used every day, degradation is severe. A common calculation in the industry suggests that a fully discharged battery does not reach 300 cycles before losing capacity. Conversely, using only 15% of the depth of discharge multiplies the cycle life by ten. The issue is that a delivery van cannot stop every two hours to recharge; it needs to run for eight hours without interruption. Correos has verified this on the ground: the Kangoo vans bought last year already have "broken" batteries, according to informed sources, with a range far below factory specifications.

The emissions debate: who pays the price?

The technical discussion quickly turns political. On one hand, proponents of electrification argue that the fault lies with poor planning: electric vans work well in cities with fast-charging infrastructure—such as Oslo's electric buses or taxis with inductive charging—but in Spain, deployment is insufficient. On the other hand, critics point out that the electric car is an ideological imposition disguised as ecology: manufacturing emissions for batteries are accounted for in China, while oil emissions are charged to the consuming country. An example: the German electricity mix in 2015, with 49% fossil fuels, produced 500 g of CO₂ per kWh, casting doubt on the supposed cleanliness of electric vehicles when charged via such a grid.

The puzzling anecdote: the Leaf taxi driver and 3,500 cycles

While Correos faces batteries that don't last a year, there is the story of the first Spanish taxi driver to use a Nissan Leaf: he replaced the 24 kWh battery at 350,000 kilometers. How is this possible? Physics dictates that discharging to 100% limits you to around 300 cycles. The answer lies in the depth of discharge. That driver only used 15% of the capacity (about 100 km per charge), performed a quick recharge at midday, and thus accumulated 3,500 cycles before replacement. Such careful usage is unfeasible in a delivery fleet where every minute counts. The paradox is that electric vehicles perform well where the battery isn't pushed hard; where it needs to be squeezed dry, as in Correos' case, they become a disaster.

The Correos case is not an isolated exception. It is the chronicle of a miscalculated transition, where the theory of "plug and forget" clashes with the reality of daily deliveries. Until battery technology makes a quantum leap—solid-state batteries, recharging in minutes—diesel will remain the de facto option for intensive delivery. And the ministry in charge simply looks the other way.