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Transportation Businesses Technology

Amazon To Invest Over 1 Billion Euros in European Electric Van, Truck Fleet (reuters.com) 28

Posted by msmash from the shape-of-things-to-come dept.
Amazon said on Monday it will invest more than 1 billion euros ($974.8 million) over the next five years in electric vans, trucks and low-emission package hubs across Europe, accelerating its drive to achieve net-zero carbon. From a report: The retailer said the investment was also aimed at spurring innovation across the transportation industry and encouraging more public charging infrastructure for electric vehicles (EVs). The U.S. online retailer said the investment would help its electric van fleet in Europe more than triple from 3,000 vehicles to more than 10,000 by 2025. The company did not say what percentage of its European last-mile delivery fleet is electric today, but said those 3,000 zero-emission vans delivered over 100 million packages in 2021. Amazon said it also hopes to purchase more than 1,500 electric heavy goods vehicles - used for "middle-mile" shipments to package hubs - in the coming years.
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Amazon To Invest Over 1 Billion Euros in European Electric Van, Truck Fleet More

Amazon To Invest Over 1 Billion Euros in European Electric Van, Truck Fleet

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  • 1 billion USD, Average sale price of a BEV is north of 60 K USD. About 16000 cars. Less than 2% of the production capacity of just Tesla.

    • They're not making cars so an order of 16k vehicles is a pretty nice contract for whoever is supplying them.

      Really it's a market signal, if Amazon determines this is the way to go (and for short haul delivery vehicles it really is) other companies are more likely to follow suit.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by khchung ( 462899 )

      No, 16k BEV over 5 years is not a big deal.

      This [autorentalnews.com] is a big deal, 100,000 BEV over 6 years is more than 16k in one year.

  • . . . than Rings of Power. Hope it's managed better too. I don't wanna see any delivery drivers extending out the window horizontally to hand me a package.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      They must be very upset about Rings of Power. It's not terrible or anything, but it's not great either. It launched right along side House of the Dragon which is having an excellent first season. All the talk on social media is about the HBO show, not about Amazon's half billion dollar bet.

  • Unlike the US, the EU is trying to reign in the sleazy behavior of Amazon with regulations and fines. Since the EU is going to mandate EVs for delivery anyway, Amazon is making a big announcement about something required so they can pretend to be a "good corporate citizen".

    It's all about forestalling accountability. The big bucks are in the market manipulation and protecting that part of their income stream is the goal here.

    • To put some perspective on this, when I worked as a delivery driver for Amazon (UK), the Amazon branded (and presumably owned) vans in the queue for collecting loads made up 10 to 15% of the vehicles used.

      With a 90 mile round trip from the loading base to our delivery area (120 mile round trip from the next nearest Amazon base), I don't think this generation of electric vans is going to be popular on those routes.

      • The Rivian-built electric vans that Amazon have been getting are said to have a 200 mile range, so 90-mile round trip plus whatever the route itself is seems doable?

        It sounds like this article is about an additional investment though and includes larger freight trucks, so no idea what the range on those would be without knowing what vehicles that actually are. International sells a class 7 electric truck with an advertised 135 miles range which still sounds viable for at least for a good portion of use case

        • For some cases. But our circuit would routinely clock up 250 miles/ day/ vehicle, because we were on "rural" routes. So, 30% of deliveries to 90% of the area, and 70% into the town we're around about.

          Outside our delivery districts and the neighbouring one (60-ish miles away) there was no delivery problem. The computer would say, before completing an order, "we don't deliver there". Full stop, end of debate. Find a delivery address within range (friend, collection place, whatever). Your home address ... if

  • Europe has an electricity production problem. They have been cut off from Russian natural gas, likely their petroleum and coal too. The war in Ukraine has done damage to the electric grid, power plants, and to transportation like seaports, bridges, airports, roads, things vital to bringing in fuel to produce electricity.

    There are those that will claim the natural gas shortage impacts heating, not electricity. I'm pretty sure that without natural gas there's going to be a problem producing enough electric

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bn-7bc ( 909819 )
      Not only a production probkem but a distribution problem as well. This might be extreme in norway, but at times we had wind farms in western Norway having to be shut down bevause the power they produced was retailing for less than the ware on the turbines, while in southeastern norway power retailed for several hundred times that but there was no transmission capacity to move it. There will need to be significant infrastructure soending both on the generation and transmission side of things, with the dual t

  • Carbon carbon. The CO_2 emissions are irrelevant. However, the streetside toxic carbon-based-molecule emissions are significant, especially soot and various nasty stuff like formaldehyde.

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