Amazon To Invest Over 1 Billion Euros in European Electric Van, Truck Fleet (reuters.com) 28
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.
Is it really that big a deal? (Score:2)
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??
Your calculation is off by four orders of magnitude.
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Looks like someone forgot what account they were logged into?
=Smidge=
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1 billion Euros, divided by 447 million people in EU = 2.2 Euros per person.
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???
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1 billion Euros, divided by 447 million people in EU = 2.2 Euros per person.
$2.2 billion euros per person?!?!
I'm so moving to Europe!!!
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Sorry for the obvious nit pick but $2.2 billion euros makes no cense, did you mean €2.2 billion (can also be written as EUR2.2 Billion if the euro symbol is located in an inconvenient place in your chosen keyboard layout)?
I was being lazy figuring out how to type the €.
But yes, €2.2 billion / person in Europe makes perfect and complete sense!!
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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.
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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.
Better Investment . . . (Score:2)
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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.
Just Amazon trying to score points with the EU (Score:2)
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.
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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.
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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
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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? Where is the electricity coming from? (Score:1)
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
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Carbon irrelevant (Score:2)
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.