LA Times: mail era, the U.S. Postal Service seems hardly plugged in — but at least it wants its vehicles to be. The postal service has awarded contracts to several California firms to develop a prototype postal van that would run on electricity. The contracts are part of the service’s effort to determine whether it can convert some, or even all, of its 142,000 delivery vans to electricity. Such a project would be worth billions of dollars to the companies that win production …