In 2019, Amazon said that it would deploy more than 100,000 electric delivery vehicles on the road by the year 2040 when it co-founded The Climate Pledge. After five years, the Bezos-built home has just surpassed the 15,000 EV mark.
Famously, Amazon and Rivian teamed up and invested a significant amount of capital in a concept that was essentially just a sketch at the time. Less than three years later, the vans were driving around distributing cat litter to clients who could not be bothered to walk to Costco, along with free two-day shipping.
It’s hard to argue with their success. To date, Amazon vans from Rivian have delivered more than 800 million packages to customers in the US. And Amazon, to its credit, has moved up the timeline.
Amazon now plans to fully electrify its 100,000+ delivery van fleet by 2030 — fully ten years ahead of the original plan.
“Our 2024 Sustainability Report underscores our unwavering commitment to achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2040,” states Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon. “Electric vehicles (play) a pivotal role in our strategy.”
Back in May, Amazon announced that it had placed a number of fully electric Volvo semi trucks into ocean freight service in California.
Those trucks are hauling heavy cargo containers and customer package loads in Amazon’s first- and middle-mile operations, joining the thousands of last-mile electric vans from Ford and Rivian that are already delivering packages across the golden state.
As you can imagine, keeping all those EVs going requires a massing investment in infrastructure to go along with the massive investment in vehicles. To that end, Amazon has installed over 17,000 chargers at more than 120 delivery stations across the US. The company is exploring other electric transport solutions, such as electric cargo bikes and drones, to advance its sustainability efforts even further.