Amazon announced that it will spend €1 billion to electrify its delivery fleet in Europe over the next five years, according to Reuters.
The company currently has around 3,000 zero-emission last-mile delivery vans in Europe. Amazon doesn’t say what percentage of its vans are electric, but does say that these zero-emission vans delivered 100 million packages last year.
This investment will allow the company to expand that number to 10,000 vans across Europe by 2025. These “last-mile” vans are used on local delivery routes, bringing packages to individual homes. Amazon also has “micro-mobility” delivery hubs in 20 European cities that enable delivery by cargo bike and on foot, and it plans to double this network of hubs.
Amazon will also buy larger, heavy-duty electric trucks for “middle-mile” shipments. These are vehicles like the Tesla Semi, Freightliner eCascadia, and Volvo VNR electric that move large amounts of goods from ports to distribution centers.
Finally, the investment will also cover installation of thousands of chargers at the company’s facilities around the continent.
Amazon did not specify which brands of vehicles it would buy, but it currently has an order for 100,000 Rivian Electric Delivery Vans. Those have been spotted making some deliveries, though it will take some time for the company to build them all. Amazon invested $700 million in Rivian in 2019, and the company is reportedly planning to build electric vans with Mercedes in Europe.
But Amazon isn’t only ordering vehicles from Rivian. They’ve also made orders from Mercedes-Benz themselves, Lion Electric, and, just last week, Volvo. So we don’t know who exactly will provide these vans and trucks, but when companies get around to making them, it looks like there’s another billion on the table ready to buy.
Source: electrek