Online retailing giant Amazon has unveiled more than $A1.5 billion of new spending plans on zero-emission delivery vehicles across its European delivery fleet.
This investment by Amazon was first reported by Reuters and includes €1 billion to be invested in electric vans, trucks and low-emission packaging hubs around Europe.
The company currently has 3,000 zero-emission delivery vans in Europe which according to the company delivered 100 million packages in 2021.
The new investment will increase the total number of cleaner zero-emission vans to over 10,000 across Europe in the next 3 years.
These vans will be used to do last-mile deliveries for Amazon which include delivering packages to homes across Europe from Amazon’s localised distribution centres across the continent.
As part of the broader rollout of zero-emission vehicles, this investment covers thousands of charging stations across Europe to offer the flexibility of use for its delivery vans.
Amazon has also shown similar commitment in the US with their 100,000 EV van order for Rivian’s electric delivery vans.
Other transport areas such as larger trucks are also on the high-priority list for Amazon as these are used to deliver the goods from ports to distribution centres. These include heavy-duty electric trucks like that from Freightliner, Volvo and Tesla.
The Tesla Semi truck has been highly anticipated with deliveries just announced to PepsiCo in the US. Similar EV trucks would make a big difference in cutting Amazon’s transport emissions and achieving the company’s plans to be net zero by 2040.
There have been no plans to increase zero-emission delivery vehicles in Australia. Up until recently, there were very limited options for electric delivery vans and including models such as the BYD T3 and Renault Kangoo ZE.
Now there are a few new models ready to be launched over the coming months. Vans like the new LDV’s Deliver 9 electric van are months away from landing in Australia.
This increase in options is a good sign for Amazon and other logistics companies to start considering their transition to EV fleets and help reduce transport emissions sooner.
Riz is the founder of carloop based in Melbourne, specialising in Australian EV data, insight reports and trends. He is a mechanical engineer who spent the first 7 years of his career building transport infrastructure before starting carloop. He has a passion for cars, particularly EVs and wants to help reduce transport emissions in Australia. He currently drives a red Tesla Model 3.