Let’s put Amazon’s order for 100,000 electric delivery vans by 2030 into perspective. Today, FedEx uses 85,000 “motorized vehicles” to deliver packages around the world. UPS has around 123,000 package cars, vans, tractors, and motorcycles, including about 10,000 the company says will use “alternative fuel and advanced technology.” One hundred thousand delivery vans? That’s a lot.
For proponents of electric vehicles, it’s a big opportunity—and not just for Rivian, the decade-old startup in which Amazon has invested, and from which it will buy the vans. Rivian, which has not yet put a vehicle into production, has a busy few years ahead of it.
More significantly, though, the deal suggests that fleets—delivery fleets, truck fleets, taxi fleets, ride-hail fleets—may be the key, or a least a key, to transportation’s electric future. That’s especially true in a country where just 2 percent of today’s auto sales end with someone driving a plug-in electric car off the lot.
Read the complete Wired article by AARIAN MARSHALL here: https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-all-electric-future-fleet-vehicles/
