Large fleet of heavy-duty electric trucks hits the road for Amazon
The combined EV fleet is expected to travel more than 1 million miles yearly with zero tailpipe emissions on the first, last and middle mile and reflects Amazon’s electrification advance across the board.
The first mile is where goods are moved from where they are manufactured, through customs, across oceans, into ports, and then into the fulfilment networks. Amazon also mentions the first electric drayage trucks now serving from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, with a dozen expected by the end of the year. The electric drayage trucks transport containers from the ports to an Amazon facility in Santa Fe Springs, where items are prepared for the next leg in their journey, the middle mile. Trucks in the middle mile move customer orders between Amazon’s various centres and, finally, delivery stations, where packages are loaded into last-mile vans to be delivered to customer doorsteps.
For the heavy-duty trucks, Amazon deployed 35 Class 8 electric trucks in Southern California and installed over 45 DC fast chargers across 11 sites.
The Volvo VNR Electrics for Amazon have a range of up to 275 miles and a gross combination weight of 82,000 pounds. Amazon adds that drivers were excited about these electric trucks, highlighting their impressive power, significantly lower noise levels, and ergonomic cab design.
“The Volvo VNR Electric was built on the already proven regional haul VNR platform, which makes it well suited for drayage and middle-mile operations, particularly in areas of dense population and moderate to heavy traffic volumes,” said Keith Brandis, vice president of partnerships and system solutions, Volvo Group North America.
“Heavy-duty trucking is a particularly difficult area to decarbonize, which makes us all the more excited to have these vehicles on the road today,” added Udit Madan, vice president of Worldwide Amazon Operations. “We’ll use what we learn from deploying these vehicles as we continue to identify and invest in solutions to reduce emissions in our transportation network, and to impact sustainability in the trucking industry more broadly.”
Amazon has been operating electric yard tractors since 2019 and now has over 140 zero-emission moving trailers around sites in the US, one of the largest fleets in the States. In 2022, they launched custom electric delivery vans from Rivian (The Electric Delivery Van or EDV) and have rolled out more than 13,500 nationwide. However, these are few, considering that the initial option envisioned 100,000 units. This gap also led to the end of the exclusivity clause between Rivian and Amazon in late 2023.
This year, the company has also been named the largest private operator of charging infrastructure in the USA since it has installed more than 17,000 chargers in around 120 warehouses in just over two years.
In California, Amazon runs 58 renewable energy projects, which will help the company reach its goal of matching 100% of the electricity in operations with renewable energy by 2025, five years ahead of the initial 2030 target.
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