Amazon’s new delivery van
Amazon
Amazon is now testing its electric delivery trucks in San Francisco, the company announced Thursday.
It’s the latest expansion in California of Amazon’s custom electric vehicles developed in partnership with startup Rivian Automotive, which has raised about $ 8 billion from investors since 2019. Amazon announced last month that it has begun testing electric delivery trucks in Los Angeles. The company plans to expand the program to another 14 cities this year.
Amazon said San Francisco was chosen as one of the initial cities to test Rivian’s electric pickups because of its ‘excellent customers, unique terrain and climate’. Deliveries will initially be made from Amazon’s delivery station in the San Francisco suburb of Richmond, but Amazon expects to begin deliveries from other Bay Area sites soon.
“From what we’ve seen, it’s one of the fastest modern commercial electrification programs, and we’m incredibly proud of it,” said Ross Rachey, director of Amazon’s fleet and products, in a statement. “As we continue to grow and invest in California, we want to do it responsibly, so we’m excited for customers in the Bay Area to see how these vehicles are doing through their area.”
Amazon, which backed Rivian through its $ 2 billion Climate Pledge Fund, agreed in September 2019 to buy 100,000 electric vehicles from scratch as part of its ambitious effort to get Amazon’s fleet to run entirely on renewable energy . Each pickup has a distance of 150 miles per charge.
Amazon has since said it operates thousands of electric vehicles worldwide. In 2020, he said he delivered more than 20 million packages of electric delivery vehicles in North America and Europe.
To make the move to electric vehicles, Amazon has redesigned its delivery stations and added thousands of chargers for electric vehicles. Amazon said the vehicles are currently being driven by Amazon employees who are specially trained to drive them.
Amazon launched a version of the electric delivery trucks last fall. They have a boxer design, the well-known Prime brand and upgraded safety features, such as an advanced driver assistance system and exterior cameras that give the driver a 360-degree view from outside the vehicle.
Amazon is still refining the design of its electric delivery vans ahead of production, which Rivian plans for the fourth quarter of this year.