Amazon orders 20 electric trucks from Volvo

Amazon is ordering 20 electric trucks from Volvo as part of its electrification effort for its large delivery and supply chain fleet.

Back in 2019, Amazon announced a new initiative called “The Climate Pledge.”

It’s a carbon-neutral commitment across the company, and as part of the new initiative, Amazon confirmed it ordered 100,000 electric delivery vans with Rivian, an electric vehicle startup the retail giant heavily invested in prior to the order.

You can now see the Rivian electric vans operated by Amazon across the US.

Amazon followed with several other electric vehicle orders to accelerate its fleet’s transition to electric.

We reported on an order of 1,800 electric vans made by Mercedes-Benz, and Amazon also bought 10 electric trucks from Lion Electric.

Now Amazon is expanding its fleet of heavy-duty electric trucks with an order of 20 Volvo FH Electric.

Volvo announced in a press release today:

Volvo Trucks will deliver fully electric heavy-duty trucks to Amazon in Germany by year end. The 20 Volvo FH Electric are expected to drive more than one million road kilometres annually, fuelled with electricity instead of diesel.

The Volvo FH Electric is an “up to 44 tonnes GCW” capacity truck with a range of up to 300 km (186 miles).

Volvo shared some of the electric truck’s specs:

• Battery capacity: 540 kWh
• Output power: 490 kW continuous power
• The range is up to 300 km, but the Volvo FH Electric can cover up to 500 km during a normal workday if a top-up charge is added, for example during the lunch break

Jessica Sandström, senior vice president of product management at Volvo Trucks, commented on the announcement:

Big actors in the transport business play a key role in leading the industry’s efforts to lower its carbon footprint. Therefore I´m glad that Amazon is working with us to help reduce their emissions in longer and heavier transport assignments.

Andreas Marschner, vice president Transportation Services Europe at Amazon, added:

Amazon is committed to decarbonizing its fleet, and the middle mile has been a notoriously hard-to-abate sector. That’s why welcoming these electric heavy goods vehicles from Volvo into our fleet is such a critical milestone. We’re operating one of the fastest-growing commercial transportation electrification programs, and we’ll continue to invest and innovate to decarbonize and deliver packages to customers with zero emissions.

The 20 electric trucks are expected to be delivered to Amazon by the end of the year and be in operation in Germany.

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