🌐 50,000 EVs Later: How Amazon Is Remaking Delivery

50,000 electric delivery vehicles.

The world's largest private electric delivery fleet.

To hear Amazon's executives talk about it, the word that jumps out is execution.

From the tiniest details inside the van, like designing a driver seat with air vents near the neck to cool drivers quickly as they get in and out hundreds of times a day.

To the coefficient of friction in the floor mats—so they cushion the driver's feet while providing just the right amount of grip.

To the mapping of every single route in America while accounting for variables such as temperature, topography, elevation, payload, and time of day that could affect battery performance.

It is not just the 40,000 custom Rivian delivery vans now on the road.

It is the two-wheel, three-wheel, and four-wheel vehicles that make up the global rollout.

In Manhattan, the majority of Whole Foods Market and Amazon Fresh deliveries are now made by e-bike.

In India, where two-wheelers are one of the dominant modes of transportation, Amazon is scaling electric scooters because they fit the country’s transportation system.

In Southern California, Amazon's heavy-duty electric semi-trucks are moving shipping containers from the port into its logistics network.

Across Europe, Amazon now operates more than 70 micromobility hubs in more than 50 cities.

In 2019, Amazon co-founded The Climate Pledge with Global Optimism, committing to reach net zero carbon by 2040, ten years ahead of the Paris Agreement.

Hundreds of other large global companies have signed on to it.

That same year, Amazon announced one of the largest electric vehicle commitments in the world: 100,000 electric delivery vehicles by 2030.

Today, Amazon is halfway there.

But the lesson is not that Amazon bought a lot of electric vehicles. The lesson is how Amazon is executing to get there.

Here's what stood out from my conversation with Emily Barber, Director of Global Fleet and Products at Amazon, and Tom Chempananical, Director of Fleet for the Americas.

Customer obsession cuts through complexity

"We always have an empty chair in the room that represents the customer sitting at the table. And that sort of brings to light for teams to think about, okay, what is right for that customer? What are you actually trying to solve for the customer?"

— Tom Chempananical

That customer obsession is what keeps a problem this big from becoming abstract.

Amazon needed a vehicle the market was not ready to build

"We talked to almost every OEM on the planet for many years in a row and sort of shared our ambition with them. And what we consistently heard back was one of two things: not possible, or it's going to take five to six years."

— Emily Barber

Rivian was willing to build something new. That changed the program from replacing a gas van with an electric van to rethinking what a delivery vehicle could be.

The van became the driver's office

"We think about the vehicle as being the office for the driver. It's their office as they go through the day. And we wanted to obsess over every action that they have to take within that vehicle as they go through the day."

— Tom Chempananical

The seat. The key fob. The backing-up sound. The airflow. The floor mats. All of it came from designing around the driver's workday.

The floor mat is a climate strategy

"We spent so much time thinking about the floor mats that go on, because it needed the right coefficient of friction to make sure that they get the grip that they need as they're walking in and out of the vehicle. But it needs the right cushioning at the same time, considering how much time they're spending on that floor mat itself."

— Tom Chempananical

The EV fleet gets better without ever leaving the road

"We can continuously push updates into the fleet over the air without pulling a single van off the road. And the van that a driver gets today can be meaningfully different than the one they took on the route yesterday."

— Tom Chempananical

Charging infrastructure had to exist before the vehicles did

"Infrastructure is one of the big things. Obviously, to get ready to deploy all of these electric vehicles into the wild, we needed to figure out a playbook to scale charging infrastructure rapidly."

— Emily Barber

Every route becomes an energy model

"We've had to create energy estimation models for every route that is happening across the U.S. to determine where EV-eligible routes exist today based on the vehicle we have, the battery pack, and the energy that it can deploy over the course of a given route."

— Emily Barber

Temperature. Elevation. Payload. Battery size. Daily route variation. A gas fleet can stop for fuel. An EV fleet knows a lot more about the world.

The ecosystem has to come along

"You can do everything within our four walls and get much better with it. But once they go out into the wild and they're out delivering packages, you've got to make sure that the service infrastructure is set up."

— Tom Chempananical

Repair shops. High-voltage batteries. Aluminum bodies. Tire changes. Driver training. Utility coordination. The vehicle is the centerpiece of a larger transition.

No one vehicle fits every place

"As we've grown our transportation network, we've realized there is no one-size-fits-all solution here. And we try and let the route, as well as the environment in which it's operating, determine the right vehicle for that route."

— Emily Barber

The neighborhood experience changes too

"Whenever an Amazon van came in to do deliveries, their dogs would always come out barking and get all disturbed as they're coming through. And now that the Rivian vans are coming in, they're like, we're so thankful. The dogs are super calm."

— Tom Chempananical

Lower emissions are one benefit. A quieter neighborhood is another.

Demand signals can create markets

"When we announced The Climate Pledge as well as our commitment to buying 100,000 electric delivery vans, I see it as a reflection of two things. One, that we believe really strongly in the power of these demand signals to encourage investment as well as innovation. And two, that we are not afraid of scale."

— Emily Barber

Supercool Takeaway

Amazon approaches its climate ambitions with the same playbook as it does for every other part of the organization. Customer obsession. Build the system that meets the sustainability goals and puts the customer first.

Always.

Operator Takeaways

Turn the climate target into an operating system.

A climate goal only matters when it changes how the company operates. For Amazon, electrification meant chargers, utilities, routing models, training, maintenance, software, and daily execution.

Design around the work.

Amazon did not just ask how to electrify a van. It asked what the driver does hundreds of times a day, then designed the vehicle around that reality.

Say yes when everyone else says no.

Every major automaker told Amazon its van was impossible or years away. Rivian said yes. 

Ford sells 2 million vehicles a year. Rivian sells fewer than 100,000. Ford’s market cap is $50B. Rivian’s is $25B. It’s good to say yes.

This Week’s Podcast Episode:

50,000 EVs Later: How Amazon Is Remaking Delivery

🎙️ Listen on Apple, Spotify, and all other platforms.

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