Amazon is ready for its first-ever holiday season with its fleet of custom electric delivery vehicles designed by Rivian. Hundreds of the vehicles rolled out this summer in more than a dozen cities, including Baltimore, Chicago, Dallas, Kansas City, Nashville, Phoenix, San Diego, Seattle, and St. Louis. Since then, Amazon has expanded its fleet and now has more than 1,000 electric delivery vehicles making deliveries in more than 100 cities across the U.S.
Customers will begin spotting the vans delivering holiday gifts and packages to doorsteps in new cities, including Austin, Boston, Denver, Houston, Indianapolis, Las Vegas, Madison, Newark, New York, Oakland, Pittsburgh, Portland, Provo, and Salt Lake City. This expansion comes as Amazon and Rivian continue their progress toward having thousands of vehicles on the road by the end of the year and 100,000 vehicles by 2030.
“We’re always excited for the holiday season, but making deliveries to customers across the country with our new zero-emission vehicles for the first time makes this year unique,” said Udit Madan, vice president of Amazon Transportation. “We’ve already delivered over 5 million packages with our vehicles produced by Rivian, and this is still just the beginning—that figure will grow exponentially as we continue to make progress toward our 100,000-vehicle goal.”
“Fleet electrification is essential to reaching the world’s zero-emissions goal,” said Jiten Behl, chief growth officer at Rivian. “So, to see our ramp up in production supporting Amazon’s rollout in cities across the country is amazing. Not just for the environment, but also for our teams working hard to get tens of thousands of electric delivery vehicles on the road. They continue to be motivated by our combined mission and the great feedback about the vehicle’s performance and quality.”
As the custom electric vehicles are deployed to more delivery stations around the country, delivery drivers continue to share positive feedback about the vehicles, which were designed with safety, sustainability, and driver experience in mind. Drivers’ favorite features include the spacious cabin and cargo area, superior visibility with the large windshield and 360-degree cameras, and ventilated seats for fast heating and cooling.
“We started making deliveries with the electric vehicles from Rivian in August, and my team has had nothing but good things to say about the vans,” said Julieta Dennis, an Amazon Delivery Service Partner and owner of Kangaroo Logistics. “The safety features, like the automatic emergency braking and 360-degree cameras, are game changers, and the drivers also love the overall comfort of the vehicle.”
Amazon is committed to reaching net-zero carbon by 2040 as a part of its commitment to The Climate Pledge, and electric delivery vehicles are an important part of Amazon’s work to decarbonize its transportation fleet. With its commitment to have all 100,000 electric delivery vehicles on the road by 2030, Amazon will eliminate millions of metric tons of carbon per year.
Amazon also recently announced plans to invest more than €1 billion over the next five years to further electrify and decarbonize its transportation network across Europe, part of the company’s work to deliver packages to customers more sustainably. The investment is also intended to drive innovation across the industry and encourage more public charging infrastructure, which will help enable the broader transportation industry to more quickly reduce emissions.
