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Amazon orders 100K electric delivery trucks from Rivian

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Re: Amazon orders 100K electric delivery trucks from Rivian

#221

Post by jillesvangurp »

This 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.

Re: Amazon orders 100K electric delivery trucks from Rivian

#222

Post by llampx »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #162
cameldrv wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Musk has been exceptional at figuring out markets to drive a tech up the experience curve that aren’t his ultimately desired market. Often it takes multiple companies to do that.

Maybe five years ago I observed that Nissan and Tesla were homing in on the same market from opposite directions. Tesla built the Roadster which is a toy. Then the Luxo Model X and S Sedans followed by the affordable Model 3. Nissan built the affordable but limited range Leaf and just kept increasing the range every other year or so. They basically started each with one type of suck (Tesla=Price, Nissan=Range) and wo…

It makes sense to go for the premium segment if you can sell in it. I do doubt that Nissan could have sold a Roadster under their brand, but stranger things have happened.

As it is, Nissan has cemented the Leaf = bad range association in people's minds.

Re: Amazon orders 100K electric delivery trucks from Rivian

#223

Post by arcturus17 »

qroshan wrote: post #198
cloudwalking wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Tesla truck will almost certainly beat them to mass market. Look how long it took Tesla to scale up production -- the Model S shipped in 2013. It wasn't until 2018 that Tesla built their 200,000th vehicle. Rivian hasn't yet shipped a single truck to customers; they're in for a long and difficult road ahead building out their production lines. All that said I do hope Rivian is successful. I would absolutely buy an…

Tesla took so long for production because Charlatan-In-Chief didn't want to use any of the lessons learned about Auto Manufacturing the past 100 years and decided to do it his way. Charlatan-In-Chief also assumed he knows more about A.I and Robotics than many who warned him about his 'Alien Dreadnought' vision. Rest assured people who are focused on building mass cars won't have the same hubris

Charlatan-in-Chief is putting spacecraft into orbit and yet here you are in an internet forum posting a barely-reasoned critique of his work?

Re: Amazon orders 100K electric delivery trucks from Rivian

#224

Post by greglindahl »

dao- wrote: post #182
leesec wrote: post #103

Honestly 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…

> 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. StreetScooter, a DHL subsidiary, managed to ramp up the production of electric delivery trucks much quicker. They also sell to third-parties (mostly in Germany I suppose). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/StreetScooter

Was it quicker? 10,000 per year is a milestone that Tesla hit in 2013.

Re: Amazon orders 100K electric delivery trucks from Rivian

#225

Post by icebraining »

dao- wrote: post #180
csours wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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 ) are selling for much less.

Where are you seeing prices? From what I can tell from that article, StreetScooter mostly produces for internal use by their parent company.

Re: Amazon orders 100K electric delivery trucks from Rivian

#226

Post by de_watcher »

isostatic wrote: post #82
zelos wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For ICE vehicles production and disposal are about 15% of the total carbon footprint, the rest is fuel and servicing. Lat time I saw the figure the total impact of producing an EV was more, but the lifetime impact was about 30-40% of an ICE. EVs really are a lot more efficient. When I worked it out for an EV charging from 'average' UK electricity, it was about 25% of my (already small and efficient) ICE car.

Petrol is a large tax source in the UK -- every mile you drive in a petrol car funds your local school.

Think about the kids! Because we've got an arbitrary tax connection between two things.

Re: Amazon orders 100K electric delivery trucks from Rivian

#227

Post by greglindahl »

danans wrote: post #210
andrewmunsell wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an i3 REx right now (also super cheap for older models), which is basically a BEV with a backup generator that powers the battery (not the wheels, like a typical hybrid or PHEV). I am on electricity 99.9% of the time for any commuting or local drives, but it enables me to do trips of practically any length which is great for me. It's a good stepping stone and my next car will be a pure BEV, but the convenience…

How do you find the performance of the i3 Rex in range extender mode?

From the specs it appears that it can barely average highway speeds in range extender mode. Which is probably enough that the performance for passing and whatnot is the same as the electric mode.

Re: Amazon orders 100K electric delivery trucks from Rivian

#228

Post by apexalpha »

arcturus17 wrote: post #223
qroshan wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla took so long for production because Charlatan-In-Chief didn't want to use any of the lessons learned about Auto Manufacturing the past 100 years and decided to do it his way. Charlatan-In-Chief also assumed he knows more about A.I and Robotics than many who warned him about his 'Alien Dreadnought' vision. Rest assured people who are focused on building mass cars won't have the same hubris

Charlatan-in-Chief is putting spacecraft into orbit and yet here you are in an internet forum posting a barely-reasoned critique of his work?

Let alone that it lands...

If there's one thing I love about people calling Musk a 'charlatan' who build his company on 'government subsidies' and 'fairytales' it is that you can just reply with a video of a double 80m orbital booster landing vertically after putting a massive payload into orbit.

Re: Amazon orders 100K electric delivery trucks from Rivian

#229

Post by greglindahl »

fallous wrote: post #203
qqqwerty wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point is that the energy inputs required to produce a gallon of gasoline could approximately power an EV vehicle roughly the same distance that a typical ICE could go on a gallon of gasoline. A quick google search seems to back that up.

I'm not sure I'm seeing the same comparisons that you are regarding travel distances. A Tesla Model 3 uses 24-29 kWh/100 miles (depends on drive/battery options) which would be 4-5 gallons of gasoline. That would be 20-25MPG assuming the 10kWh/gallon ICE which is pretty low for a mid-sized sedan. An Accord hybrid pulls around 48MPG, while a Dodge Charger Hellcat SRT manages an EPA combined 23MPG (hardly a typical ICE…

The Model 3 gets 126 MPGe.

Re: Amazon orders 100K electric delivery trucks from Rivian

#230

Post by aetherspawn »

I 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

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