Video source: YouTube, Amazon News

Amazon.com Inc’s (Nasdaq: AMZN) new electric delivery vans will hit the road in more than a dozen cities in 2021.

On Wednesday, the e-commerce giant said the vehicles, which were custom-built by startup electric truck maker Rivian, are already being used to make deliveries to customers in Los Angeles.

Testing will soon be expanded to 15 other yet-to-be-named cities as Amazon continues to build toward its goal of 10,000 electric vans in service by 2022.

“We’re loving the enthusiasm from customers so far – from the photos we see online to the car fans who stop our drivers for a first-hand look at the vehicle,” Ross Rachey, director of Amazon’s global fleet and products, wrote in Amazon’s transportation blog. “From what we’ve seen, this is one of the fastest modern commercial electrification programs, and we’re incredibly proud of that.”

In September 2019, Amazon announced plans to purchase 100,000 electric delivery vehicles from Rivian as part of its goal to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2040.  

Amazon has already started prepping its facilities for the vans, adding thousands of charging stations at delivery centers throughout North America and Europe. The electric vans – which Amazon said can travel up to 150 miles on a charge – are still in a test phase and may be tweaked before they go into full production later this year.

Besides being a customer, Amazon is also one of Rivian’s owners, having led a $700 million investment round in early 2019. 

In recent years, a number of big companies have taken steps to add electric vehicles to their fleets.  With deliveries surging during the COVID-19 pandemic, many carriers are renewing their push toward battery-powered trucks.

United Parcel Service Inc. (NYSE: UPS) placed an order for 10,000 electric vehicles from Arrival, a U.K.-based start-up, last January and plans to put 2,000 of the new EVs on the road every year starting in 2020.

Last month, General Motors Co (NYSE: GM) said it was launching a startup that will make electric delivery vehicles and it will deliver 500 trucks to its first customer, FedEx Corp (NYSE: FDX), later this year. 

_____

Source: Equities News