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Amazon orders 100K electric delivery trucks from Rivian
- paggle 7y agoThe idea of going "carbon neutral" is the biggest crock of shit. Literally sitting and breathing is not carbon neutral, all human activity spews out carbon and even in the craziest case if you plant a gazillion trees and bury them it only delays the carbon emissions by a few hundred years.
- onychomys 7y agoEven if that was true, so what? It's clearly better to emit N minus X tons of carbon after buying electric trucks than it is to emit N tons before.
- paggle 7y agoYeah, I'm not talking about buying trucks, I'm talking about their claim to go "carbon neutral" by 2040 and all of the other dipshits who use that term.
- Dylan16807 7y agoBreathing is carbon neutral if your food source is carbon neutral. I'm glad you realize that carbon-negative activities can offset carbon-positive activities. I really don't understand why you immediately declare that it doesn't matter, though. If the average person/company uses mostly-renewable supplies, and buries enough trees to offset the rest, then it doesn't 'only delay' carbon emissions, we can stop forever or even reduce the levels. And you act like delaying bad effects for hundreds of years isn't a very good thing all by itself...
- devmunchies 7y agowhats the carbon footprint of producing a single van?
- djaychela 7y agoIIRC 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/2010/sep/23/carbon-footprint-new-car https://www.theguardian.com/environment/green-living-blog/20...
- penneyd 7y agoLess than that of a van that continues to generate carbon after it leaves the factory.
- danans 7y agoThe more correct question is: Liftime EV-Van Footprint = Production-Footprint(EV-Van) + Operational-Footprint(EV-Van, lifetime-miles-driven) vs 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 7y agoI 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/2010/sep/23/carbon-footprint-new-car https://www.theguardian.com/environment/green-living-blog/20...
- perardi 7y agoWarning: 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-criticizes-rivian-for-not-employing-well-over-1000-people-despite-the-company-being-ahead-of-estimates 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-remarks-that-undervalued-c-u/article_12524dab-d72d-56db-b8f9-a33e778d15b2.html https://www.news-gazette.com/news/rauner-apologizes-for-rema... Anyway, yay, the auto plant that funded my upbringing is back in action.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- notdonspaulding 7y agoFellow 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.
- larrywright 7y agoWow, I would not have expected to find so many Normalites here.
- mtw 7y agoDid 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
- RyanAF7 7y agoOH BOY!! More fraud ahead! Let's see, first he'll pump almost a Billion dollars into a company, then he'll "buy" vehicles from said company which can now use that order to misleadingly project revenue growth so that it can obtain a competitive advantage over other such competition and take a step in assuring a handsome return for its investors all while Amazon and lil'Bezos incorporate those projections into its ever rising stock price so they can continue to sell treasury stock to buy more such companies as well as their own stock to do the same and wipe their asses with it. AMAZON IS ENRON!!!!!
- Animats 7y agoSo 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-fleet-20000-trucks-delivery-services/ https://multichannelmerchant.com/operations/amazon-adding-fl...
- IMTDb 7y agoConsidering 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.
- thesis 7y agoThey 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.
- CodeWriter23 7y agoWell, they have contractors leasing Amazon-branded vans from a fleet management company. Like the top poster illustrated.
- 8ytecoder 7y agoAmazon 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.
- mulletbum 7y ago
- jt2190 7y agoAmazon led a USD 700 000 000 investment round in Rivian last February. https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/02/electric-truck-startup-announces-700-million-funding-round-led-by-amazon/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/02/electric-truck-startup-... (Edit: change amount from thousands to millions)
- excursionist 7y ago700M not 700K
- csours 7y agoSo 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 7y 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.
- csours 7y agoGM wound up not investing, but Ford did invest. Disclaimer: I work for GM, I have no knowledge of this deal, any opinions are my own.
- dao- 7y 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 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/StreetScooter) are selling for much less.
- qsymmachus 7y agoAs 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/ https://aws.amazon.com/oil-and-gas/
- kennywinker 7y agoDude... 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.
- Rebelgecko 7y agoThe sooner Amazon helps get all of the oil and gas out of the ground, the sooner we'll be forced to adopt electric cars.
- qsymmachus 7y agoNo – 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/ https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/chapter-2/
- Robotbeat 7y agoUnfortunately, 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.
- hn_throwaway_99 7y agoWow, 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 7y agotipping 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.
- 7952 7y agoConsumption 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.
- ryacko 7y agoResidential net consumption is more complex than that due to solar and wind. There is a duck curve, and sometimes the lowest energy prices are in the middle of the day, for wholesale it could be negative.
- 7952 7y agoI don't understand what you mean? Surely the duck curve just relates to renewable production rather than consumption.
- coralreef 7y agoDo delivery trucks typically consume 90%+ of their battery on a daily basis?
- ducleonctor 7y agoFor 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StreetScooter Living in Bavaria, I see these drive around everywhere now.
- m463 7y agoI've seen frito-lay driving electric delivery trucks driving around for years as well. I do not recall the brand.
- erdleerdle 7y agobe more German
- xxpor 7y agoThese 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.
- achenatx 7y agothis 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-UPS-driver-drive-on-average https://www.quora.com/How-many-miles-per-day-does-a-FedEx-or...
- greglindahl 7y agoThere 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 7y agoThese trucks are solving the "last mile" delivery. Do you see many USPS delivery vans on the highway? That's the market.
- greglindahl 7y agoThis discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21016645 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21016645 has more comments and only recently fell off of the front page.
- rolltiide 7y agoI 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!
- graton 7y agoAm I the only one who noticed multiple spelling errors in the article. "whine" instead of "when", "revelled" instead of "revealed" :(
- leesec 7y agoHonestly 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.
- razster 7y agoI'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).
- gpm 7y agoI'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-r1t-spotted-testing-at-tierra-del-fuego.267/ https://www.rivianforums.com/threads/preproduction-rivian-r1... I wouldn't assume it's not a submarine commercial though...
- leesec 7y agoYeah 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".
- new_realist 7y agoRivian disguises their trucks as F-150s for real world testing, so good luck finding a video not made by them.
- djsumdog 7y agoThere 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 7y agoWhen 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 7y agoEVs 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21019030
- Brakenshire 7y agoBatteries 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.
- dbcurtis 7y agoAm 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.
- _AzMoo 7y agoCan'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 7y agoSure, but one begins to wonder how much knowledge this company has of actual usage if they get something this straightforward wrong.
- greglindahl 7y agoDidn't someone give a big list of trucks that already do this, last time it came up?
- jiveturkey 7y agoIf they are targeting sales to a small number of large fleets, this doesn't matter. In fleet operations, the driver will never ever be allowed to change a tire. This is simply not acceptable, insurance-wise. You will dispatch a second truck to handle the delivery and also a tire repair service truck. An electric delivery truck is probably not even in the cards for small players, where gas or diesel is a better option all around.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- paulsutter 7y agoAre 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
- rsynnott 7y agoTheir employees would still exist if they didn’t; they’re not cloning them somewhere. And people would still buy stuff.
- choppaface 7y agoAnd remember when Uber “ordered” 100,000 Mercedes S-Classes? https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/news/a28508/uber-orders-100000-mercedes-benz-s-class-sedans-report/ 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.
- taneq 7y agoClimate change? I thought it was about Bezos taking a snipe at Tesla because SpaceX is way ahead of Blue Origin.
- ineedasername 7y agoAmazon 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 7y agoUgh 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.
- williesleg 7y agoAmazon is one of Rivian's primary investors. Interesting.
- harry8 7y 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.
- harry8 7y agoIn 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 7y agoThis 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?
- harry8 7y agoThis 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.
- woodandsteel 7y agoThe larger story here is that the ev revolution, after decades of hopes and slow progress, is finally taking off.
- grumpy8 7y agoNever 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.
- cowsandmilk 7y agoIt 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.
- good_guy 7y agoYay! now they can increase the worker benefits.
- Solar19 7y agoWhat is the article referring to when it cites an "increase in climate change" and says that it's been more aggressive than predicted?
- jillesvangurp 7y agoThis 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.
- aetherspawn 7y agoI 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 http://sea-electric.com
- solarkraft 7y agoWhy do you think Amazon went with Rivian instead of your company?
- aetherspawn 7y agoPersonal 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.
- DrScump 7y agoPlus, you guys drive on the wrong side of the road.
- TecoAndJix 7y agoA guess: Rivian is an American company and Amazon wants that juicy DoD cloud contract. Not the best look when there are domestic alternatives
- gchokov 7y agoDid they order those through Amazon.com?
- accounn 7y agoAmazon is scam & spy business in plain sight. Now do what you suppose to do. Suppress to protect scam & spy business in plain sight.
- hwj 7y agoI've never heard of Rivian before and had to look it up: it's an American automaker founded in 2009.
- taf2 7y agoThe US government could do something similar if we wanted to force a global change