Amazon orders 100K electric delivery trucks from Rivian • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon orders 100K electric delivery trucks from Rivian

#41

Post by 693471 » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 6:23 PM UTC

jackhack wrote: post #16

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #9

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.

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 transiti…

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

Re: Amazon orders 100K electric delivery trucks from Rivian

#42

Post by danans » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 6:24 PM UTC

blacksmith_tb wrote: post #14

danans wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 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…

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 sa…

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

That article compares the footprint of building a new car vs keeping and existing already built car, not ICE vs EV lifetime carbon footprint. The actual reduction in lifetime carbon footprint for an EV is around 50% vs and ICE, as described here:

https://blog.ucsusa.org/rachael-nealer/gasoline-vs-electric-...

Not sure if you'd call that night and day, but it's pretty huge.

> . 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.

Indeed, and by consequence, it should reduce the rate of respiratory illnesses in cities caused by particular air pollution today.

Re: Amazon orders 100K electric delivery trucks from Rivian

#43

Post by Faark » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 6:26 PM UTC

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #9

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.

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...

Re: Amazon orders 100K electric delivery trucks from Rivian

#44

Post by rolltiide » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 6:28 PM UTC

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!

Re: Amazon orders 100K electric delivery trucks from Rivian

#45

Post by tootie » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 6:32 PM UTC

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #9

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.

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.

Re: Amazon orders 100K electric delivery trucks from Rivian

#46

Post by bdamm » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 6:37 PM UTC

xxpor wrote: post #31

ducleonctor wrote: post #13

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.

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.

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

Re: Amazon orders 100K electric delivery trucks from Rivian

#47

Post by WhompingWindows » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 6:37 PM UTC

Rebelgecko wrote: post #20

qsymmachus wrote: post #7

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/

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.

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.

Re: Amazon orders 100K electric delivery trucks from Rivian

#48

Post by dharmab » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 6:38 PM UTC

VBprogrammer wrote: post #32

blacksmith_tb wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sa…

As I write this I'm on the 521 bus in central London. This bus is battery electric powered. I didn't even realise it was possible until I got on one. The difference in noise alone is unbelievable. The elimitation of tailpipe emissions is a huge bonus in a dence city centre. Even if the lifecycle emissions are the same it would still be worth it. The only thing I don't like about them is the torque and instant reactio…

>The only thing I don't like about them is the torque and instant reaction of the motor make it easy for inconsiderate bus drivers to make the ride quite unpleasant.

Seems easy enough to solve this with a fly-by-wire "throttle" and some software to limit max acceleration from a stop.

Re: Amazon orders 100K electric delivery trucks from Rivian

#49

Post by cameldrv » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 6:38 PM UTC

tootie wrote: post #45

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #9

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.

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.

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

Re: Amazon orders 100K electric delivery trucks from Rivian

#50

Post by csours » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 6:39 PM UTC

jt2190 wrote: post #6

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)

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.