Amazon orders 100K electric delivery trucks from Rivian

https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/19/amazon-orders-100k-electric-delivery-trucks-from-rivian-as-part-of-going-carbon-neutral-by-2040/

by prostoalex • 7 years ago

506 268 7 years ago

techcrunch.com

devmunchies• 7 years ago

whats the carbon footprint of producing a single van?

djaychela• 7 years ago

IIRC the build energy is around the same as ~20k-30k miles of driving. Obviously this is dependent on many variables, but it's a significant amount - around 17 tonnes for a mid-range hatchback car [1]

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/green-living-blog/20...

penneyd• 7 years ago

Less than that of a van that continues to generate carbon after it leaves the factory.

danans4• 7 years ago

The more correct question is:

Liftime EV-Van Footprint = Production-Footprint(EV-Van) + Operational-Footprint(EV-Van, lifetime-miles-driven)

Lifetime ICE-Van Footprint = Production-Footprint(ICE-Van) + Operational-Footprint(ICE-Van, lifetime-miles-driven)

This calculation overwhelmingly favors the EV van, increasingly so as the carbon footprint of the operational electricity source itself reduces in footprint (i.e. increasing use of solar, window, nuclear, etc). Delivery vans in particular have a charging profile (late evening through morning) that matches the peak production of wind.

Note that the carbon footprint of petroleum use is strictly higher than even the highest carbon sources of electricity, and it has a high extraction cost also.

blacksmith_tb• 7 years ago

I think it's clear the lifecycle calculation favors the EV, but I don't think it's night and day[1]. Likely the emissions associated with the manufacture of the ICE and EV vans are similar (the batteries in the EV may even make it a little worse). But there's no doubt that the EV is a huge improvement in use, and switching a large portion of the trucks in our cities to EV would be giant win for air quality. As you say, electricity generation can continue to get greener as well, unlike gas production...

1: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/green-living-blog/20...

gpm2• 7 years ago

Lifetime footprint seems like the wrong thing to measure, you want something more along the lines of lifetime footprint divided by distance travelled.

If X vans last 3x longer than Y vans, driving the same number of miles per day, they're an improvement over Y even if there lifetime footprint is twice as big.

igravious• 7 years ago

If you used a programming language where you could only create (prod-footprint) and modify the state of (op-footprint) objects but you could never garbage collect them … what would you think of that language?

Don't you need + Disposal-Footprint(EV-Van) and + Disposal-Footprint(ICE-Van) tacked on to the end of both of your equations?

EV and ICE vans don't magically poof! into thin air once you're done with them.

prions• 7 years ago

Carbon footprint is one thing to be critical about, but a bigger advantage with electric vehicles is removing point source pollution and moving the ghg production to powerplants. Powerplants are usually farther away from people (not idling under their windows) and often have more stringent emission standards than vehicles. There's also the opportunity to make electric vehicles with renewable energy barring the petroleum products that compose the vehicle itself.

hadlock• 7 years ago

Point source pollution, and also I am guessing, about 85% of dense urban daytime noise where average speeds are below 20mph. HVAC and tire noise make up a considerable portion of the remainder. Big cities are about to get a lot quieter over the next 20 years.

zelos• 7 years ago

For ICE vehicles production and disposal are about 15% of the total carbon footprint, the rest is fuel and servicing. Lat time I saw the figure the total impact of producing an EV was more, but the lifetime impact was about 30-40% of an ICE.

EVs really are a lot more efficient. When I worked it out for an EV charging from 'average' UK electricity, it was about 25% of my (already small and efficient) ICE car.

isostatic2• 7 years ago

Petrol is a large tax source in the UK -- every mile you drive in a petrol car funds your local school.

outworlder• 7 years ago

whats the carbon footprint of producing a single van?

Are you saying they should repurpose already built trucks, instead of buying new ones? Then we would have to calculate how long the new electric trucks would take to offset their emissions.

If buying used was not on the table, this question is moot.

ars• 7 years ago

You can get a pretty decent number for the carbon footprint by using dollars instead.

Add the cost of the van, plus cost of power to the van, vs cost of ICE van, plus fuel.

Then compare.

Animats• 7 years ago

So how does this work? Right now, Amazon outsources delivery. Will they be building huge garages for their fleet? Or trying to get their drivers to pay for the vans, like Uber? And like they did in 2018, when they "bought" 20,000 Mercedes vans?[1] That deal: "Amazon will not own the vans but they will be handled by fleet management companies, who will then lease them to the delivery service owners."

[1] https://multichannelmerchant.com/operations/amazon-adding-fl...

IMTDb• 7 years ago

Considering Amazon history I would not be surprised that this leads to "Amazon Delivery" which does exactly what you think. "Amazon Delivery" would slowly be responsible for an increasing portion of "Amazon Retail" parcels then generate money by opening to a wider audience.

8ytecoder• 7 years ago

Amazon rents the delivery vans to the contracting companies even now. I read somewhere that these vans are specific models that skirt the regulation and qualify as personal vehicles.

thesis• 7 years ago

They already have this in some areas. Most of our deliveries are directly from Amazon trucks. I'm in a Houston suburb across the city (not in a 1 hour delivery area) from the distribution center. I just started noticing same day deliveries as well.

dyeje• 7 years ago

I believe Amazon is working towards building its own shipping empire [1] [2].

[1] https://www.npr.org/2019/08/07/749163966/fedex-is-breaking-u... [2] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/15/amazon-will-compete-with-fed...

Robotbeat9• 7 years ago

I see Amazon shipping vans in my neighborhood fairly regularly.

jt2190• 7 years ago

Amazon led a USD 700 000 000 investment round in Rivian last February. https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/02/electric-truck-startup-...

(Edit: change amount from thousands to millions)

excursionist• 7 years ago

700M not 700K

csours2• 7 years ago

So 700 000 000/100 000 would be 7 000 - So an initial investment of 7 000 per vehicle they want to buy.

Now if they buy 100 000 vehicles at a rate of $100 000 each (pretty reasonable for industrial vehicles), that is 10 000 000 000 (10 Billion dollars). If it's $50k each, that will be $5B. $5-10 Billion in sales ain't too shabby.

mcintyre1994• 7 years ago

Earlier this week, Reuters reported that Amazon and General Motors were both expected to invest in Rivian, "in a deal that would value the US electric pickup truck manufacturer at between $1 billion and $2 billion."

Assuming that valuation is vaguely accurate they must own a pretty decent chunk of the company too.

dao-5• 7 years ago

Now if they buy 100 000 vehicles at a rate of $100 000 each (pretty reasonable for industrial vehicles),

Ahem, electric delivery trucks built by a DHL subsidiary (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/StreetScooter) are selling for much less.

jansan• 7 years ago

Maybe you are totally mixing up revenue and profit.

qsymmachus2• 7 years ago

As far as I'm concerned, this move is pure greenwashing until Amazon stops collaborating with oil and gas companies to extract fossil fuels faster.

https://aws.amazon.com/oil-and-gas/

Rebelgecko2• 7 years ago

The sooner Amazon helps get all of the oil and gas out of the ground, the sooner we'll be forced to adopt electric cars.

qsymmachus2• 7 years ago

No – as much oil and gas must be left in the ground as possible.

Depending on how much of a global temperature increase you're willing to tolerate, there are specific limits (carbon budgets) to how much fossil fuels we can burn. This is discussed at length in the IPCC's report: https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/chapter-2/

Robotbeat9• 7 years ago

Unfortunately, we cannot afford to pull all of the fossil fuels out of the ground.

There are trillions of barrels of unconventional oil shale (confusingly, not the same as shale oil) in the Green River formation in Wyoming/Colorado alone. If it was all extracted and burned and put into the atmosphere (assuming none makes it as ocean acidification, etc), it'd raise the CO2 level from the current 400ppm (about 3 trillion tons of CO2 in the atmosphere right now) to 500ppm. Just a single formation.

And there's 5 trillion tons of coal in Alaska, equivalent to about 15 trillion tons of CO2. Even if just half of that made it into the atmosphere (the other half going to ocean acidification, weathering, and biomass), we'd have something like 1400ppm in the atmosphere, which is a very stuffy room. And that's just one state. Assume Siberia and Canada has just as much or more.

I think if we extracted every last bit of fossil fuels in the ground, we'd have a CO2 level on the order of 10,000ppm and will have measurably reduced oxygen levels as well.

WhompingWindows• 7 years ago

Why not just spend all the money you were spending on oil/gas finding/extracting/refining and put it into EVs and renewables instead? Then you will be "forced" to adopt EV's even earlier.

kennywinker• 7 years ago

Dude... amazon is a big company. It has lots of different groups. One sees an opportunity to make money by providing service to oil and gas - the other sees an opportunity to reduce their costs and/or get good pr by using ev’s.

This could be greenwashing, if this was done purely or mostly as a pr move, but that’s separate from the fact that another wing of the company does business with oil and gas.

hn_throwaway_99• 7 years ago

Wow, 100k is no small change. Hoping this accelerates the "tipping point" for electric vehicles - in my mind that's when the infrastructure for EVs (e.g. charging stations, or something in the future like battery swaps) actually makes it easier to own than a gas vehicle.

jackhack• 7 years ago

tipping point, indeed... and not in a good way:

let's take 100,000 vehicles with (I'm conservatively guessing) a 100 kWh battery each, that's a 100,000,000 kWh load each night! 100,000 Mega watt-hours is roughly the output of about 10 nuclear power plants in a 24H period.

Unless a lot of new capacity comes online, it could easily overwhelm the existing electrical grid's capacity.

Let's hope this is a gradual transition.

79522• 7 years ago

Consumption is lower at night and peaks during the day. So there is already spare capacity in the system, although it might not be clean energy.

coralreef• 7 years ago

Do delivery trucks typically consume 90%+ of their battery on a daily basis?

jlmorton• 7 years ago

Note that 100kWh/day * 100,000 vehicles is 10,000MWh/day. If a typical nuclear power plant output is about 500MW, that's 12,000MWh/day.

ttkari• 7 years ago

Isn't it more like 10,000,000 kWh, i.e. 10000 MWh? New nuclear units go up to 1600 MW of output, so it's less than 10 hours of output from a single reactor.

693471• 7 years ago

It costs 6kW to refine a single gallon of gasoline. We can shift our energy away from the refineries as their demand tapers off.

TylerE• 7 years ago

Tesla is adding over 100k vehicles a quarter to the fleet. 100k trucks over 5 years is a drop in the bucket.

danans4• 7 years ago

It's already easier with a plugin hybrid. You can drive electric for a huge amount of the typical 20 mile daily commute, and rarely having to visit the gas station, with most of your miles being powered by the grid.

If you're interested in that route, there are a ton of used Chevy Volts on the market now for $15-20k. And PHEVs are great for people in areas without good public charging infra, or who can't afford the current crop of high-range EVs (the latter being my case).

If instead you live on i.e. the West Coast, and can afford a high range pure-EV, you can go almost everywhere on electricity alone.

Robotbeat9• 7 years ago

Yup. This is my experience. Bought a used Volt for $10k 3-4 years ago and probably have only visited a gas station about a dozen times since then.

And there's significant East Coast charging infrastructure. I bought a used Leaf (first gen, I needed 5 seats for my wife's car since the first gen Volt only has 4) for $10k a year or two ago and have used Chademo charging several times without problem. The low range of the Leafs is a little annoying, but the Chademo charging capability compensates fairly well. With a >200 mile range EV, I wouldn't even need the fast charging.

If you can charge at home, you realize how annoying it was to go to the gas station all the time. When I travel and rent or borrow a gas car, I always find it annoying that I have to go to the gas station regularly. It's just not convenient compared to just habitually plugging it in when I get home. It also smells.

andrewmunsell2• 7 years ago

I have an i3 REx right now (also super cheap for older models), which is basically a BEV with a backup generator that powers the battery (not the wheels, like a typical hybrid or PHEV).

I am on electricity 99.9% of the time for any commuting or local drives, but it enables me to do trips of practically any length which is great for me. It's a good stepping stone and my next car will be a pure BEV, but the convenience (and backup gas generator because I don't have in-home charging, I live in an apartment complex) is a lifesaver sometimes.

stetrain• 7 years ago

To build a PHEV with all the performance characteristics of a Battery Electric Vehicle while running on battery, you need a motor, battery, and inverter that's almost as large as those on a BEV.

So the best PHEVs tend to be those that look more like BEVs with an accessory motor/generator, which is the Volt (sadly now discontinued) and the i3 Range Extender (Range extender models discontinued in EU).

I think at some point things might flip around, with non-plugin hybrids being the economy option, pure BEVs being the mid-priced option, and BEV with a range extender being a premium option for those who want all the advantages of both.

Faark• 7 years ago

It would be nice, but I doubt the chargers they install will be available to the public. R&D for installing them is good, but will probably trickle down a lot less/slower.

Also those 100k will be on the road only by 2030, and 10k by 2022 according to the other tech-crunch article [0]

[0] https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/19/amazons-climate-pledge-com...

Robotbeat9• 7 years ago

I charge at a (pre-Amazon) Whole Foods charging station fairly regularly. I wonder if they'll integrate more charging there.

tootie• 7 years ago

I honestly don't understand why electric vehicle manufacturers went direct to consumer. Fleets are the ones that are looking at pure economics and would have the most to gain by cutting down on energy consumption.

cameldrv2• 7 years ago

Because looking at pure economics, electrics were not competitive until recently.

Tepix• 7 years ago

I don't think they have. There are already quite a few cities around the world with a large percentage of electric buses.

de_watcher4• 7 years ago

They went to fleets too. We just have more information about direct customers because we're direct customers.

alex_duf2• 7 years ago

I think we're past the tipping point when a company orders 100k vehicules

AtlasBarfed2• 7 years ago

Truck prices are already out of control, and the superior towing (if they do the torque right) should put in the class of superduty trucks.

Plus these will have tons of commercial customers who get to depreciate it on schedule, and the longer term lower maintenance and fuel costs come into play more.

... assuming the design goes well.

ducleonctor• 7 years ago

For once, mighty Amazon comes late to the show.

Germany's parcel service DHL builds up a fleet of small electric delivery vans since 2014:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StreetScooter

Living in Bavaria, I see these drive around everywhere now.

xxpor2• 7 years ago

These seem like they'd never work in the US. They aren't fast enough to go on the highway and their range is limited to 62 miles.

greglindahl6• 7 years ago

There are urban parts of the US where some delivery trucks never go on the highway and don't drive that far in a day.

There are also parts of Germany where delivery trucks need to be able to go on the highway and to drive farther than 62 miles.

bdamm• 7 years ago

These trucks are solving the "last mile" delivery. Do you see many USPS delivery vans on the highway? That's the market.

achenatx• 7 years ago

this quora question has some good answers. Rural routes could be 150, urban routes could be as low as 5 miles but more typically around 60-80

https://www.quora.com/How-many-miles-per-day-does-a-FedEx-or...

rsynnott3• 7 years ago

The US has cities, I believe.

reaperducer• 7 years ago

Germany's parcel service DHL builds up a fleet of small electric delivery vans since 2014

In Chicago, FedEx has had electric delivery vans since at least 2005.

I saw a UPS truck in Nevada last month that I thought was a regular UPS truck until it sped away almost silently. I guess UPS has been converting its fleet, but I don't know for how long..

cr0sh• 7 years ago

UPS has had hybrid trucks here in Phoenix for quite a few years; I haven't seen any fully electric ones yet, but I'm not really looking, either.

Tade0• 7 years ago

I remember the fury of one of the top VW executives when he discovered that DHL developed their own vehicles instead of hiring VW to do that.

Good for DHL. I would buy such a thing if they sold them to consumers.

AndyPa32• 7 years ago

I've heard that DHL urged VW and Mercedes for years to develop e-delivery trucks, but both manufacturers did not show any interest. It was kind of last resort to search for partner and start a joint venture to build those trucks.

erdleerdle• 7 years ago

be more German

m4632• 7 years ago

I've seen frito-lay driving electric delivery trucks driving around for years as well. I do not recall the brand.

greglindahl6• 7 years ago

This discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21016645 has more comments and only recently fell off of the front page.

rolltiide• 7 years ago

I love it when your investors are also your biggest customers, they know if they get your revenue numbers they can flip the shares at a massive multiple of those revenue numbers. Its like guaranteeing a 10x

And the founders get paid twice or thrice!

perardi3• 7 years ago

Warning: petty partisanship ahead.

Our last Republican governor in Illinois spent some quality time trashing this company, which sure looks shortsighted in retrospect: https://www.adaptbn.com/home/2018/5/16/breaking-rauner-criti...

He also made a point to trash all of Central Illinois as a place to do business, which is a heck of a strategy for business development. https://www.news-gazette.com/news/rauner-apologizes-for-rema...

Anyway, yay, the auto plant that funded my upbringing is back in action.

notdonspaulding2• 7 years ago

Fellow Normalite here, you still in the area? Would love to talk shop with a local Hacker Newser. Email in my profile if you're interested.

larrywright3• 7 years ago

Wow, I would not have expected to find so many Normalites here.

codetrotter• 7 years ago

Your email address is not visible to others unless you put it in the about field along with the other text you have there.

beat• 7 years ago

I grew up in Bloomington, the closest city in the world to Normal. I moved away before the Mitsubishi plant was built, tho.

lp251• 7 years ago

my father worked at the Mitsubishi plant for 20-something years. left a few years before they shut down. spent 5 years at Tesla.

he just started at rivian, back in the old Mitsubishi plant.

has to be surreal

perardi3• 7 years ago

My dad started way back in 1989, and had the fortune to take an early retirement package. Now he spends his days doing adult enrichment at Bradley University. Living the sweet mid-century union dream.

dsfyu404ed• 7 years ago

A politician from the Chicago area trashed downstate. <surprised Pikachu>

There's a saying about tigers and stripes for exactly this situation. Anyone who thought he would be good for downstate because he had an R beside his name was thinking very wishfully.

trenning• 7 years ago

Some friends used to make an annual trip down there. It was where the DSMs were built so it was a fun drive down in our loud rattleboxes.

Neat they're using the plant again.

perardi3• 7 years ago

Oh man, the old turbo Eclipse. Now that was a car. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsubishi_Eclipse

They don't build them like they used to. Probably for a reason. My dad heard gossip at the plant they had to move away from the racer boy turbo platform because they were just too astronomically expensive to insure–because they were invariably driven by 20-something guys who wrapped them around trees.

And as an adult male who has driven a WRX: yes, that tracks.

mtw• 7 years ago

Did Amazon announce they'd also help Rivian in AI / self-driving ? This is an area of expertise where Tesla is years ahead of Rivian by I'm thinking if Rivian gets Amazing engineering help, they will catch up sooner

graton• 7 years ago

Am I the only one who noticed multiple spelling errors in the article. "whine" instead of "when", "revelled" instead of "revealed" :(

leesec4• 7 years ago

Honestly this is a good move, I just have a quick question:

Does anyone anywhere have video footage of a Rivian actually being driven? Like, not in a commercial, someone genuinely driving it. I just want to know if they are anywhere close to having a production vehicle. If they have a single production vehicle that does what they say, then OK they "just" have to figure out scaling up the manufacturing.

If they don't have a single vehicle, they are years and years away, to the point that Tesla truck may beat them to mass market.

They have great marketing though.

gpm2• 7 years ago

I'm not sure making a single vehicle is harder to build than a large scale plant is... but I did find this via a quick google search: https://www.rivianforums.com/threads/preproduction-rivian-r1...

I wouldn't assume it's not a submarine commercial though...

leesec4• 7 years ago

Yeah I've seen this, it also looks like a submarine commercial to me. What I'm more interested in is it's specs. Can it really charge as fast as they say? Does it really have that range and acceleration?

I've seen the shell of one in person, but it just seems to me if you actually could make an electric truck go 0-60 in 3 seconds and last 400 miles you would just make a video of it doing that instead of making a marketing video of putting a grill in its "gear tunnel".

cloudwalking3• 7 years ago

Building a prototype is the easy (and fun) part. Scaling production is much harder. https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-says-building-fact...

cloudwalking3• 7 years ago

The Tesla truck will almost certainly beat them to mass market. Look how long it took Tesla to scale up production -- the Model S shipped in 2013. It wasn't until 2018 that Tesla built their 200,000th vehicle. Rivian hasn't yet shipped a single truck to customers; they're in for a long and difficult road ahead building out their production lines.

All that said I do hope Rivian is successful. I would absolutely buy an electric pickup truck.

qroshan2• 7 years ago

Tesla took so long for production because Charlatan-In-Chief didn't want to use any of the lessons learned about Auto Manufacturing the past 100 years and decided to do it his way.

Charlatan-In-Chief also assumed he knows more about A.I and Robotics than many who warned him about his 'Alien Dreadnought' vision.

Rest assured people who are focused on building mass cars won't have the same hubris

laurex• 7 years ago

Ford may come before Tesla. They have a much more developed assembly process. https://electrek.co/2019/09/02/fordl-electric-f150-market-20...

evo_9• 7 years ago

They are wintering testing in Tierra del Fuego, Argentina. Looks pretty legit to me.

https://electrek.co/2019/08/31/rivian-r1t-winter-testing-tie...

travisporter• 7 years ago

Is this common practice? I assume they’re being built closer to the arctic.

dao-5• 7 years ago

If they don't have a single vehicle, they are years and years away, to the point that Tesla truck may beat them to mass market.

StreetScooter, a DHL subsidiary, managed to ramp up the production of electric delivery trucks much quicker. They also sell to third-parties (mostly in Germany I suppose).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/StreetScooter

greglindahl6• 7 years ago

Was it quicker? 10,000 per year is a milestone that Tesla hit in 2013.

wil421• 7 years ago

I think those will only work well in a very urban environment. The amazon warehouse is about 23 miles from my house. 50-60km range or even 100km will not work from home deliveries. 100km seems a little short even for USPS.

josefresco• 7 years ago

I could not find a single video of a 3rd party test drive. Only commercials, and walk-arounds.

AtlasBarfed2• 7 years ago

It's not THAT hard to drop in batteries and motors to some 3D printed body and have it move around.

The basic design paradigm (skateboard) of EVs is basically established, new EV companies are systems integration and supply chain (esp. battery) setup... well, probably motor design now too, but it's not like people don't know how to make electric motors.

razster• 7 years ago

I'm surprised Amazon didn't go with Zenith Motors. They've got a good electric cargo van and a barebone chassis/cab. In my area, I've been seeing a dozen of them boppin' down the road (Northern Cali).

djsumdog• 7 years ago

There is so much pollution that goes into making those vehicles, and all the waste from the batteries that need to be recycled every 8~10 years. This makes no sense from an environment perspective. You're better off buying older vans, that aren't so old they aren't inefficient, and just keep running those.

Plus you're talking about more growth and selling more products, which is just more waste.

We can't buy ourselves out of environmental disaster. We can't keep consuming. This feels like lipservices because for us to not destroy our planet, we actually need to buy fewer goods, that are more durable/fixable, even if they cost more. It's the opposite of what ever retailer big and small wants.

Frost1x• 7 years ago

When a large business makes any significant investment decision, it has nothing to do with anything else but the perception of increased profit for the business.

Anything else is a side effect, always. If the action can be painted in a way that PR spins propaganda up that the people love or that quantified positive benefits from that PR result in net profits then we have successful alignment as a society (but the motive is never there). Amazon could have done this (or a partial) transition years ago but they didn't because it would have hurt their bottom line. Apparently now, this is more cost effective and the image/optics for the general public is more valuable.

Heck, most small investments big businesses make fit the same model but small investments get much less scrutiny (analysis) and typically give a better bang for the buck to society.

Now as to which is better for the environment... that's a very complicated matter and Amazon isn't concerned about that. If electric vehicles are better than we have proper alignment between goals to strive for in society and business actions. If not then we need to adjust incentives for businesses so they do get us to where we need to be.

SethTro• 7 years ago

EVs have much lower lifetime emissions than ICE.

I'd encourage you to read some of the great comments discussing this below https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21019030

Brakenshire3• 7 years ago

Batteries don’t have to be recycled every 8-10 years, nowhere near. If you keep them within temperature and leave a safety margin they’ll outlast the car. There’s already plenty of data for Tesla batteries lasting hundreds of thousands of miles without significant degradation. Look after Lithium Ion batteries and they’re good for 1500 cycles, that’s 300k miles for a 200 mile car, 450k miles for a 300 mile car.

thfuran• 7 years ago

they’re good for 1500 cycles, that’s 300k miles for a 200 mile car, 450k miles for a 300 mile car

These aren't average cars, they're delivery vehicles meant to be driving rather a lot. Just ball parking here, but 100 miles per day, 6 days a week, 50 weeks a year is 300k miles in 10 years. 8-10 years doesn't seem that off the mark given your numbers.

dgacmu• 7 years ago

You've got it backwards. Electric vehicles have more embodied energy / carbon, but use less to operate, particularly if the electricity source is not coal. Delivery vehicles that have a high duty cycle and start/stop often are a great target for BEVs. It's true that with current tech, a plug-in hybrid may still be better from a CO2 perspective, but fleets also care about the lower maintenance costs that could be provided by electric-only vehicles.

More: http://www.cmu.edu/me/ddl/publications/2010-JMD-Shiau-etal-P...

And in general: https://www.cmu.edu/cit/veg/

dbcurtis5• 7 years ago

Am I the only one who finds the spare tire location an absolute deal breaker? You have to unload the payload, and lift up the payload bed floor in order to access the spare. Now, I suppose this doesn't matter much to Amazon. But I have had the experience of being out the back-country where cell phones don't work, miles from a highway, changing a truck tire by myself. If I had to spend 1 or 2 hours unloading the truck before I could get at the spare, that would be a huge issue. At one point I was seriously considering writing a deposit check for a Rivian. The spare tire location told me instantly that this truck is not for me -- the designers have no idea how trucks are actually used. The utter cluelessness of that design decision boggles me.

brianwawok• 7 years ago

Where can I find details on this part?

dbcurtis5• 7 years ago

https://www.tfltruck.com/2018/11/rivian-r1t-electric-truck-p...

Nice picture there. Also, search Rivian on the TFL Trucks web site for everything they have ever done on the Rivian.

_AzMoo2• 7 years ago

Can't be too hard to just mount a wheel carrier in the bed, or swinging on the rear, and just use that spot as extra storage though. I don't know a single off-roader who doesn't mod their vehicle in similar ways to make up for perceived shortcomings.

oh_sigh• 7 years ago

Sure, but one begins to wonder how much knowledge this company has of actual usage if they get something this straightforward wrong.

dbcurtis5• 7 years ago

Can't be too hard to just mount a wheel carrier in the bed

Um... yeah. Kind of defeats the purpose of having a truck.

rotten• 7 years ago

Many new cars don't come with spare tires any more, so at least they have one.

Angostura2• 7 years ago

I understand your annoyance, but these days I carry a can of spray-in gloop for punctures.

mauvehaus• 7 years ago

Your local tire shop will not be delighted about this. I'm told the spray in gloop gets everywhere and makes changing the tire (removing it from the rim and installing a new one) hell for the techs.

dbcurtis5• 7 years ago

That can work for punctures. The back-country that I go to regularly has granite rocks that can sometimes have a sharp edge. The particular tire I was changing was a 4-steel-ply contractor-grade truck tire, two weeks old, that somehow got cross-wise of a piece of split granite that put a 3 inch gash in it. Goop will not do it in that case. I am still amazed at the damage that rock did. But hey, that's life in the mountains.

MisterTea• 7 years ago

Honestly in this day and age, Amazon is better off having a service company come and change the tire so as to avoid workplace injuries and other liabilities. Most companies are able to bring spares from their stock.

dbcurtis5• 7 years ago

Oh, sure, absolutely. An Amazon driver just calls service and goes about his business. That is different from the average truck-user case.

m4632• 7 years ago

I don't know if this is a factor, but trucks and SUVs with externally accessible tires are at risk of theft.

Additionally, heavily loaded vehicles should really have both special care and special jacks to change the tire with a load intact.

notatoad• 7 years ago

honestly, "how trucks are actually used" is mostly in a city, commuting to and from work, with the bed completely empty.

paulsutter• 7 years ago

Are they including the carbon footprints of their employees and all products including of their vendors? And if not, how meaningful is it?

The commerce giant will seek to meet its goal of becoming carbon-neutral by 2040

rsynnott3• 7 years ago

Their employees would still exist if they didn’t; they’re not cloning them somewhere. And people would still buy stuff.

choppaface• 7 years ago

And remember when Uber “ordered” 100,000 Mercedes S-Classes?

https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/news/a28508/uber-or...

Bezos is probably trying to pressure UPS (or has some other business motive) versus target Amazon’s carbon footprint. Amazon will undoubtably grow its own delivery fleet over time, but this splashy press release is probably not entirely about climate change.

taneq2• 7 years ago

Climate change? I thought it was about Bezos taking a snipe at Tesla because SpaceX is way ahead of Blue Origin.

Huycfhct• 7 years ago

Human will be saved my the egos of 2 billionaires

ineedasername• 7 years ago

Amazon already has a delivery fleet, something like 7000 trucks along with a few dozen planes. And they're pushing very aggressively to expand their Prime 2 day shipping to 1 day, which requires even more. They also sell/lease trucks to contractors, and many of these may be earmarked for that program as well. I don't doubt at all that this is a legitimate order, even if their reason for going electric isn't all sunshine and rainbows and environmental friendliness.

kart23• 7 years ago

Ugh yes. I was so excited to get driven around in one of the nicest cars on the market. I genuinely believed that uber was gonna have a ton of benzes on the road. I'm still kind of upset.

harry83• 7 years ago

"The company will be ordering 100,000 electric delivery trucks"

Headline is false. Amazon have NOT ordered 100k electric delivery trucks. Amazon have made a announcement to get a lot of free press. For themselves (vitue signalling, oooh isn't amazon green) and for the company in which they have invested.

Seriously. I'm announcing here that I will order bezos' underpants. You should take it as seriously. Corporate PR is and this is another weak edition of it from Amazon.

harry83• 7 years ago

In case that wasn't clear. The order has NOT been made. Perhaps a good story, that is more than just corporate PR would be one that matches the headline. Where the announcement is that they have made the order and the terms. (Cancellable at any time for any reason - yeah not that). That way it would be a story with substance not simply a corporate PR announcement, which this clearly is, whether we wish it were more or not.

IfOnlyYouKnew• 7 years ago

This article as well as others are a bit thin on that particular detail, with some saying "will be ordering" and others speaking of Rivian "receiving an order" or "a deal being announced".

But, in any case: do you actually have doubts that this is real? I can see scepticism regarding the timetable and targeted number of vehicles. But for Amazon to just nope away now would be catastrophic for their $750 million investment in Rivian, and their general image. It would destroy far more than whatever this announcement may get in terms of good PR.

And isn't investing $750 million into such a company enough "skin in the game" to make accusations of "virtue signalling" nonsensical, even by that cheap insult's own definition?

harry83• 7 years ago

This is a "news" story. It's supposed to be new. Writing an analysis story about how amazon are wonderful and green and citing evidence is just fine. Use good evidence. Write it and argue it well. That is not what this is. This is a naked play for positive PR and the facts are thin. Call it for what it is. Make this kind of positive PR at least as expensive as it needs to be to get. Make it so you have to do something to get it. Smoke and mirrors should not garner positive PR. This announcement is smoke and mirrors - there is NO order!! And if you think amazon are not smoke and mirrors then why are they doing it? It's a bad scene that makes them look dishonest and they should not be doing it.

"Virtue signalling" is not a cheap insult it's a useful discription of a behaviour. It also isn't in any way BAD. No really. Signalling that you are doing good things and should be thought of as doing those good things thus enhancing your brand reputation is actually what everybody wants, right? Positive PR for doing things that are good. Signalling to the market your virtue based on actual substance. Not paper thin announcements that we will be announcing something of substance later to stoke the news cycle. That's gamed up crap.

Again I don't see substance in this announcment. I see a false headline. I'm calling it because that is what it is and virtue needs to be real, not simply corporate PR "announcements" of no commitment. Or nobody gets good PR from doing good things of real substance.

Separate to that, looking at amazon stories lately is it possible to cynical enough about their PR? That's reflected here.

cowsandmilk2• 7 years ago

Amazon’s corporate statement has more detail than you claim:

Amazon today announced the order of 100,000 electric delivery vehicles from Rivian, the largest order ever of electric delivery vehicles, with vans starting to deliver packages to customers in 2021. Amazon plans to have 10,000 of the new electric vehicles on the road as early as 2022 and all 100,000 vehicles on the road by 2030—saving 4 million metric tons of carbon per year by 2030.

https://blog.aboutamazon.com/sustainability/the-climate-pled...

woodandsteel2• 7 years ago

The larger story here is that the ev revolution, after decades of hopes and slow progress, is finally taking off.

grumpy8• 7 years ago

Never heard from Rivian before. I'd have expected Tesla to get that contract, but I guess if Amazon invested in Rivian it makes sense to order 100k vehicules and make sure that company is successful to get a huge return.

cowsandmilk2• 7 years ago

It is highly likely the investment was because Rivian is the company Amazon decided long ago to order from, not that Amazon is ordering from them because they invested.

Solar19• 7 years ago

What is the article referring to when it cites an "increase in climate change" and says that it's been more aggressive than predicted?

jillesvangurp• 7 years ago

This seems like it is a great idea for Amazon, regardless of whether this deal works out for them. If Rivian manages to build and ship these cars on schedule at the expected cost, that would of course be a great outcome for Amazon. But it's not actually necessary for the overall strategy to work for Amazon.

Suppose that does not happen? Their goal with this is simply to shift the fleet of vans they rely on today to electric to reduce cost. Currently most of that is third party operated and diesel powered. The cost of that diesel is a big component of the delivery cost for Amazon. Besides, lots of cities relevant to Amazon are currently considering diesel bans/restrictions. So they have a solid motive for wanting to address that.

The mission of these delivery vans is very simple. They do nothing else than drive to and from Amazon's massive distribution centers to pick up loads of packages and distribute them in the area. I don't have numbers here but I imagine the vast majority of these trips are well below 150 miles.

So, the mission for an electric delivery van would be to drive these routes and charge quickly in between from a preferably cheap power source. It so happens that these distribution centers are huge and vans have to stop there to take new packages on board; which represents a great opportunity to plug in.

Huge distribution center here means lots of room for a couple of mega watts worth of solar panels on the roof to power a couple of tens of charging points. The resulting power can be delivered to super chargers at the loading docks and the vans can probably suck up enough power while they are loading to cover the next round. And of course, using solar power probably gets Amazon access to some nice subsidies and grants as well as lots of great PR about how green they are.

Why partner with Rivian for this? Well, Amazon is faced with a market where the existing manufactuers are dragging their heels a bit. There are some electrical vans on the market but not quite at the scale needed and most of the big manufacturers are not shipping them in meaningful volume yet. Nothing like a Tesla like small startup to shake that up a little. Best case Rivian actually delivers. Worst case Amazon just buys electric vans from somebody else (whomever steps up). Also, they just put all the third party delivery companies on notice that Amazon wants to go electric. They too would need to charge these vans and I bet they can do that on favorable terms at Amazon's chargers in Amazon's distribution centers. Yep, they'd be buying electricity from Amazon to deliver for Amazon. Either way, the vans become electric and Amazon has a need for charging infrastructure.

Best case of course this works out for Rivian as intended and Amazon gets a nice return on investment. From their point of view, they already have a great drive train for a ridiculously overpowered pickup truck and they are already building production capacity for that. Delivery vans don't need four wheel drive and probably also don't really need 400 miles of range. Meaning, a smaller variant of the drive train but with the fast charging capability would be perfect for one of these vans. Bonus points for making them capable of autonomous driving; which is something Rivian is investing in.

Finally, why 100K? Very simple. Amazon has hundreds of distribution centers serviced by hundreds of vans. If you want to electrify all/most of them you'd need about 100K vans. Ten years is reasonable timeline to electrify the delivery fleet one way or another.

aetherspawn3• 7 years ago

I work for a company that could most definitely deliver this vision before Rivian could (this is entirely my personal opinion and not reflective of my company) due to our extensive, non-vapourware, build history. The trucks are very real and being field tested, delivering real packages to real people every day. Most don’t even realise they are electric.

The price is not a niche price you may imagine; it’s very highly competitive for fleet managers that entirely makes sense on their books and not just for the environment or marketing. You don’t have to wait for the product to be R&D or whatever, because they’re rolling off the line right now, and typically no charging infrastructure is needed due to on-board charging.

Australian designed.

http://sea-electric.com

solarkraft2• 7 years ago

Why do you think Amazon went with Rivian instead of your company?

TecoAndJix• 7 years ago

A guess: Rivian is an American company and Amazon wants that juicy DoD cloud contract. Not the best look when there are domestic alternatives

aetherspawn3• 7 years ago

Personal opinion only;

If you are delivering vehicles today, then the technology that you have validated is (although not vapourware) older than today. And to meet people’s expectation of a cheap vehicle without operating at a loss (no VC money), there are realities imposed by cost.

Someone like Rivian with lots of VC money isn’t concerned with surviving between sales, so they can afford to take the risk of selling things that don’t exist yet, at a loss if they desire, and so their marketing department is constantly walking on water.

solarkraft2• 7 years ago

Slightly OT, I know: Does your company sell power trains to individuals? I'm shopping for one (around 50kW, perhaps sans battery) that is relatively inexpensive and can go on the road in Europe without an extra electromagnetic inspection.

aetherspawn3• 7 years ago

Sans battery is pretty a significant change to the controller software, I think you’ll find is a difficulty when talking inexpensive.

gchokov• 7 years ago

Did they order those through Amazon.com?

hwj• 7 years ago

I've never heard of Rivian before and had to look it up: it's an American automaker founded in 2009.

taf2• 7 years ago

The US government could do something similar if we wanted to force a global change

Amazon orders 100K electric delivery trucks from Rivian

Related Stories