Amazon's Deployment of Rivian's Electric Delivery Vans Expand to Canada (cleantechnica.com) 70
"Amazon has deployed Rivian's electric delivery vans in Canada for the first time," reports CleanTechnica, with 50 now deployed in the Vancouver area.
Amazon's director of Global Fleet and Products says there's now over 35,000 electric vans deployed globally — and that they've delivered more than 1.5 billion packages.
More from the blog Teslarati: In December 2024, the companies announced they had successfully deployed 20,000 EDVs across the U.S. In the first half of this year, 10,000 additional vans were delivered, and Amazon's fleet had grown to 30,000 EDVs by mid-2025. Amazon's fleet of EDVs continues to grow rapidly and has expanded to over 100 cities in the United States... The EDV is a model that is exclusive to Amazon, but Rivian sells the RCV, or Rivian Commercial Van, openly. It detailed some of the pricing and trim options back in January when it confirmed it had secured orders from various companies, including AT&T.
Amazon's director of Global Fleet and Products says there's now over 35,000 electric vans deployed globally — and that they've delivered more than 1.5 billion packages.
More from the blog Teslarati: In December 2024, the companies announced they had successfully deployed 20,000 EDVs across the U.S. In the first half of this year, 10,000 additional vans were delivered, and Amazon's fleet had grown to 30,000 EDVs by mid-2025. Amazon's fleet of EDVs continues to grow rapidly and has expanded to over 100 cities in the United States... The EDV is a model that is exclusive to Amazon, but Rivian sells the RCV, or Rivian Commercial Van, openly. It detailed some of the pricing and trim options back in January when it confirmed it had secured orders from various companies, including AT&T.
hello from Europe (Score:5, Insightful)
There are a lot of EV vans here. Businesses adopted them quickly due to the obvious benefits - lower running costs, less maintenance, competitive edge from lower emissions.
It looks like North America is some years behind, but moving along the same path.
Re: hello from Europe (Score:1, Interesting)
Re: hello from Europe (Score:1)
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Don’t tell us or anything.
Not Germany? (Score:3)
You would have thought that the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association would have known what they're talking about [acea.auto].
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Funny, I live in the country that is the largest manufacturer of cars in Europe (No, it is not Germany, guess again!).
Germany - 4.3 million
Spain - 2.5 million
France - 1.6 million
(Russia) - 1.7 million
(Turkey) - 1.5 million
UK - 800k.
Sorry, don't believe you.
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Russia. Yeah, those T-72s are pretty large.
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You live somewhere in Eastern Europe (fine), think you build the most cars (you don't), make sweeping statements based on personal observation (not smart) and think EV vans are a niche thing in 2025 (your country is behind the curve).
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No, it is not Germany, guess again!
It is Germany. By a factor for more than double they not only produce the most cars in their factory, but they also produce the most cars per capita in their factories, and are home to the two largest car producing brands as well.
The problem with writing like an arse with unverifiable claims is that the one thing you said which we can verify just turned out to be complete rubbish. So ... I'm guessing your entire post is complete rubbish.
Sorry if you were being sincere, we have nothing else to go on other th
Re: hello from Europe (Score:1)
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80% of Americans live in urban/suburban areas
Over 50% live in the top 20 metro areas alone
1 in 8 people in the entire country live in NYC, LA and Chicago
Only four states, Vermont, Maine, West Virginia, and Mississippi have majority rural populations in the entire country.
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Lies, damn lies, statistics.
Lets be clear. You aren't "rural" even if you are the only person living in a small town surrounded by desert.
Only 15 million people live in the three cities listed. The population of the United States is about 342 million. so more like 1 in 25 people.
Metro areas are very expansive often extending over large rural areas at the edges.
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NYC: 8.5M
LA: 3.9M
Chicago: 2.7M
Total: 15.1M
Population USA: 342M
1 in 22.6 people live in those 3 cities.
On the other hand, if we include the "metro area" and not just city proper:
NYC Metro: 19.9M
LA Metro: 12.8M
Chicago Metro: 10.1M
Total: 42.8M, 1 in 8 people.
The math checks out if one uses metro instead of actual city. Basically, "metro" areas include the suburbs where many would commute into the city to work.
On the topic of electric vans, they would still totally work for deliveries through the metro area, n
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Range isn't too bad. I saw a Rivian (Rivivan?) out on Highway 9 between Van Zandt and Deming Washington the other day.
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The big delivery outfits here all have vans. The bigger supermarkets have their own, there is Royal Mail, Evri, and a few other delivery services. Then you have some independent contractors who use ordinary cars. Many of the taxis are hybrids of EVs now, due to the mileage and fuel costs, but I haven't really looked at the independent delivery people.
At the very bottom of the chain you have guys on electric bikes.
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Not just the bottom of the chain.
Quite a few of the big boys can be seen delivering around London in cargo bikes and pedivans of various sorts.
There are also drop sided vans which are basically small lorries I've seen used by more commercial construction type companies delivering hired small plant as well. Can't remember the company.
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E bikes, including e cargo bikes, are rapidly growing in number as well. Further down you describe these as the bottom of the chain in the UK, but I think that perception is shifting quite rapidly to be more like the Netherlands, at least in London, because cargo bikes have such significant advantages over large vehicles. It's all good, though. I always get a small bit of pleasure when the DPD and UPS guys deliver to me, because their vans are electric. DPD van is a mid-size thing, but the UPS van is an abs
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The main problem with ebikes is that there are so many that exceed legal power limits, or have more than just pedal assistance. It's bad enough that there are so many dangerous cyclists around, and kids on electric scooters.
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That's not a problem with e bikes, that's a problem with people selling illegal, motorbikes work no consequences. And plus there aren't "so many" dangerous cyclists around. The accident numbers simply don't support that idea. Any time someone rides a bike instead of drives a car they statistically make the world a little bit safer.
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To make an apples to apples comparison you have to compare the probability of an accident per mile, per passenger. I couldn't find any stats for that, only overall numbers of serious accidents per year.
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To make an apples to apples comparison you have to compare the probability of an accident per mile, per passenger.
Well, no, not exactly. Firstly, it's the probability of a serious collision per mile.
Thing is of course that the maximum seriousness of collision on a bike is way, way, way less than with a motor vehicle. This kind of thing is simply impossible on a bike:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk... [theguardian.com]
even the most 'roided up, juiced professionals can't get enough energy into their bike to penetrate a fence l
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This is why I don't like to get into arguments about this stuff. My wife was hit by a cyclist and injured. Not enough for it to be classified as "serious", but it has a big effect on her. I'm not trying to say the two things are equivalent, but I do think there is a problem that needs to be addressed.
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This is why I don't like to get into arguments about this stuff. My wife was hit by a cyclist and injured.
That's very unfortunate and you (and her) have my sympathy.
I'm not trying to say the two things are equivalent, but I do think there is a problem that needs to be addressed.
I'm not going to defend whoever it was who collided with your wife. They're in the wrong, and it should not have happened. But statistically anything that puts people off cycling in favour of driving will result in more people in you
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I don't buy the "if we make it even slightly less convenient to cycle, those people will all switch to cars". It's also easy to think of mitigations if the goal is to get people out of cars, such as better and cheaper/free public transport.
There are lots of things that wouldn't cost much or have much effect on ridership, but which would be effective. New bikes should come with proper lights, for example. Maybe a sound maker too, like EVs have. Just a few quid on the price of a brand new bike costing hundred
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I don't buy the "if we make it even slightly less convenient to cycle, those people will all switch to cars".
Why? People generally use the most convenient method of travel for them. Very few people are petrol heads or cyclists or trainspotters, or hikers or whatever you call dedicated bus riders. Most people just want to get to do the things they need to do with the minimum of fuss. If a method of travel is inconvenient (of which danger is a subset), then people will en-masse gravitate to something else.
Any
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If you object to a noise maker on the grounds that you need to hear cars, maybe you should campaign against making cars better insulated against outside noise.
I'd have the bike ones only kick in above a certain speed, and make a noise that is different to cars. Speed detected by a simple optical flicker detector. You wouldn't be able to hear most of it anyway, the speaker would be pointed forward and away from you. Make it part of the light assembly, same battery you need to keep charged for that.
Really tho
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If you object to a noise maker on the grounds that you need to hear cars, maybe you should campaign against making cars better insulated against outside noise.
We're talking about bikes, right? Cars ought to be less well noise insulated, but that's not really relevant here. It's a matter of safety for me when drivers approach from behind because around 95% of them do illegal close passes. Anything that affects my ability to hear danger is a no-go as far as I'm concerned.
Speed detected by a simple optical fli
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The biggest problem we face for safer travel in the UK is a distorted perceptions of where the safety risks lie. People routinely underestimate just how dangerous cars are, just how safe bikes are, and just how vulnerable everyone outside a car is.
Cars were involved in about 60% of all fatal crashes in 2023, whereas for bikes it was 4%. Car occupants were 47% of all road fatalities in the same year, whereas cyclists were 6% and pedestrians were 26%.
People mutter darkly about dangerous cyclists mowing down p
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My was was knocked over by a cyclist a few weeks ago. She was walking on the pavement. Luckily it was an ordinary bike, not an ebike, but even so she ended up with a head injury in A&E.
The police were involved, but couldn't trace the guy.
I'm sure cars are more dangerous, but I do wonder how many bike accidents are not reported and therefore not part of the statistics.
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Luckily it was an ordinary bike, not an ebike
ebikes are a bit heavier, but once the rider is accounted for it's not a big proportion and won't go faster than 15.5 mph under power. Surely you wouldn't be conflating illegal unlicensed motorbikes sold on Amazon with EPACs, right?
I'm sure cars are more dangerous
They are. Orders of magnitude more. It's unexpected of course that a 2 ton metal box with a hundred kW powering it, capable of 100mph and excellent protection for the driver is more dangerous than an unp
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15.5 MPH? That's insanely slow for a bicycle
Not really. It's a fair bit slower then I ride most of the time, but it's faster to or at least comparable to the kind of speed a better than average person will make on a pushbike.
Were I live the laws for ebikes is 28 MPH.
That feels crazy fast without a license or insurance, frankly. Sure with a good hill most people could manage that on a push bike, if pushed, but that still sounds way too fast, even moreso if there's even vaguely shared use infrastructure.
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I noticed that in many European cities the small comercial vehicles tended to be electric, but fewer private cars. This makes sense to me - a private car is typically only driven to the office and back each day, whereas a tradesman's van or a delivery vehicle is on the road 8+h per day. So the savings on "fuel" would be better for the commercial vehicle. Of course this is just based on my observation - I have no idea what the tax incentives etc are. In the longer term, hopefully it means more EVs for everyo
Military lingo (Score:2)
Pointing out how corporate actions and CEO speak are flowing with military terms, decisive action terms and call to order terms.
Anyone know a medical term for this verbal trait?
Makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Electric makes sense for a delivery van; short distances with a lot of stop and go; always going back to the depot at night to charge.
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We have long distance EV freight trucks here in Europe too. The latest chargers for them exceed a megawatt.
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That doesn't change that if you're looking at comparative advantage - most CO2 saved for a given amount of battery, for example, delivery vans are an obvious pick before the EV freight trucks.
Though even with the freight trucks, one could concentrate on local delivery routes before longer haul ones to maximize savings.
Trivial impact (Score:3)
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I think he's implying most goods originate overseas. I don't think that's actually true in the US, and it also ignores that overseas packages are typically delivered by ship, not plane.
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Yes and no. Those diesel semi's for example, can carry tens of tons of packages, whereas the vans are delivering them are probably going to be carrying maybe 100 kilos. Consider that a diesel semi may over 2000 km say 50X the mass in packages that one delivery van will carry on its day long route. If each of those delivery vans drives an average of other 40 km on its route, that's more distance than the semi drove. The delivery trucks may do even more driving than that. Now, they are smaller vehicles, but t
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But when you consider how far the package has to travel from china/vietnam/indonesia ... to get to the door, the length of that last trip to the door is pretty trivial.
If you look at an individual package sure that "last mile" is short. I addressed this though, you have to consider it in terms of a tree where the "trunk" of the tree is the bulk transit. At the end of that transit, thousands and thousands of packages from that bulk transit have to be individually delivered. It adds up.
Also, planes are also way, way more efficient per unit mass per unit distance traveled than small road vehicles. Consider a passenger sedan that carries five people massing about 350 kilos. T
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, planes are also way, way more efficient per unit mass per unit distance traveled than small road vehicles.
Why is that comparison relevant here? My guess is that weight is not a very important limitation for package delivery compared to volume. As for the tree comparison, I think you would find most trees have far more mass in their trunks than their collection of branches.
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Why is that comparison relevant here?
Because you wrote:
You are right of course that semi's are more efficient. Planes probably not.
My guess is that weight is not a very important limitation for package delivery compared to volume.
Well, the most common cargo plane in the world is the Boeing 747. A cargo 747 has a cargo volume of about 735 cubic meters and the mass it can carry is about 130 metric tons. So if you filled up the volume of the cargo area completely, the density of the cargo would need to be below about 184 kg/m^3. That is about 18% of the density of water. Put in package terms, the minimum density of packages for shipping purposes is typically assumed to be 160 kg/m^3 by shippers. The fact that number i
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https://safety4sea.com/maersk-... [safety4sea.com]
So on a mass-per-distance basis, the container ship is 16,740 times as efficient as a car.
I am not sure exactly how that translates to, e.g., a step van making a couple hundred stops vs. a container ship from China to LA and a train or semi from LA to Phoenix.
B
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But transoceanic shipping is very efficient.
Surprisingly so. A while back (for a slashdot argument of course), I calculated the impact of shipping a washing machine from China to the UK by sea was less than the delivery from the shop. Economies of scale work and ships are unintuitively large. They look big, but you see the linear dimension, they're kind of cubically big as it were.
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Air, very little.
These numbers are within the US, not counting import to the US:
https://www.bts.gov/content/us... [bts.gov]
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The reality is the packages delivered are often flown most of the way. Or by a diesel semi. The final delivery to someone's door is a trivial part of the emission footprint for delivering a package.
Err no, the final delivery is a critical part of emissions. I can't smell an international freighter, I can't hear it, it's not idling in my street, it's not producing NOx emissions or particulates known to cause cancer in front of my house.
Not everything is about climate change. Even if climate change is a complete hoax there's frigging HUGE reasons to switch away from burning gasoline and diesel in population centres. The impact directly on my life of delivery companies having switched away from smelly di
Winter (Score:4, Interesting)
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In the winter I get about 1/3 less range and on really cold days ( -18C/0F )
At 0F a typical normal Rivian gets about 20% range reduction. Much of that comes from initial battery conditioning on a trip, something that delivery truck EVs don't actually worry much about since they are driven constantly. Incidentally this is why some companies suggest you pre-warm the cabin before going somewhere - it often also warms the battery pack so you don't suffer range loss in the initial part of your trip.
I have to run the engine in order to get enough heat to keep the windshield defrosted.
Different car designs require different tech. Rav4s have an engine to backup their heatpu
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I laugh at mention of prewarming the cabin, that would last about 5 minutes.
And I laugh at your ignorance, that of someone who has clearly never used an EV before. Maintaining cabin temperature even in extreme cold uses tiny fraction of the power of driving a car.
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Real world testing gives a wide variety of range reduction in cold weather, depending on the make and model of EV. Some are really good at maintaining range, some are lousy at it.
In any case, preheating the cabin and battery cuts that substantially, and you generally don't need to keep warming the battery while driving as the regular discharge and charging from regenerative braking keeps the battery at operating temperature to limit range loss.
It's a contribution, but it isn't something like 30% is what he
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I'd argue that it is still a factor.
Not a lot of convertibles in Alaska.
And there are vehicles up there that, despite being all ICE, that work better or worse to the point that yes, it is an issue.
Then keep in mind that we're still effectively with the "first year" models. Odds are the underperforming companies will fix their performance sooner or later, or get outcompeted by those that do.
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I wonder how they'll do in the winter. I have a Rav4 plug in hybrid. In the winter I get about 1/3 less range and on really cold days ( -18C/0F ) I have to run the engine in order to get enough heat to keep the windshield defrosted. I imagine that in a delivery van, without the cabin insulation and with the doors frequently open that the heating problem will be much worse. OTOH in the summer and for short trips, I hardly ever use the gas engine.
This is Vancouver, so I don't think they're too concerned about the winter.
Wonderful! (Score:1)
Each Amazon distro hub is going to have to have a major cities worth of solar and wind turbines just to charge the vans.
What about when the battery gets too low... better hope there's tons of available chargers with their own solar fields close that aren't occupied by every Tesla in the county.
If this is all to prevent climate change, it'll only take a couple hundred years to see any difference... meanwhile, we'd better find a solution to the growing power demand from all the EVs... and, no, filling your ga
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1 - The Amazon parking lots where these things live over night is HUGE. Full of Level 2 chargers that charge them up overnight.
2 - Because the parking lots are huge, there are plans to put solar over the entire parking lot. That doesn't include the space on top of the warehouse itself (which is often even BIGGER than the parking lot). Hence, the power output of all that solar could easily handle the needs of the vans. The problem isn't feasibility (as your post seems to imply) but expense. The build ou
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So, (at best)... 460 watts per panel, the Rivian van seems to be around 135kW-hr.
So, cover the property in panels... might charge a couple of them during the day, except they're all out and about then. Now, you need a huge battery storage system so they can charge off them (whatever amount of power is left after leakage and line loss), and if it's not enough (and, it won't be) out of the battery storage system, they'll have to switch to grid. Hopefully, the area the solar covered parking lot is in never s
cost? (Score:2)
Is this saving money for Amazon?