Amazon orders 100,000 electric vans from Rivian

Friday, 20 September 2019

Electric vehicle start up Rivian just got a huge boost from one of its largest investors - Amazon has contracted the company to build 100,000 bespoke electric delivery vans that will hit the roads of America by 2022.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' revealed the order during an announcement on Amazon's strategy for combating climate change.

According to CNBC, Bezos said Amazon has committed to meet the goals of the United Nations Paris Agreement 10 years early, which will involve regularly measuring and reporting the company's emissions, implementing decarbonisation strategies and altering its business strategies to eventually eliminate carbon usage altogether. He added that his goal is for 80 per cent of Amazon's energy use to be renewable by 2024, before transitioning to 100 per cent renewable energy by 2030.

Follow a massive investment in the company, Amazon has ordered 100,000 delivery vans from EV start up Rivian.

The Rivian vans are a big part of that, making up the bulk of Amazon's 'last mile' deliveries.

**READ MORE

The Amazon order will give Rivian a massive boost in its production hopes thanks to the economies of scale it will bring.

* The Tesla of trucks lands $1 billion Amazon-led investment

* New Zealand's electric vehicle future

The Amazon van will share 'key components' with Rivian's pick up and SUV and will likely sit on an extended version of the company's skateboard platform.

* Rivian electric ute confirmed for Australia**

The vans will be built by Rivian at its facility in Normal, Illinois, that it purchased from Mitsubishi Motors. According to Reuters, Amazon says it will start making deliveries with Rivian vans in 2021. By late the following year, Rivian expects to have 10,000 vehicles on the road, according to Amy Mast, a spokeswoman for the carmaker.

Amazon's vehicles will share 'key components' with Rivian's R1T pick up and R1S SUV, most significantly the battery and skateboard platform, but the vans will have a unique body, interior and software, Mast said.

US website Jalopnik reported that an Amazon spokesperson confirmed that the van design will be exclusive to the Amazon partnership, and will be produced on a separate assembly line from the forthcoming R1T and R1S. The spokesperson also told Jalopnik that the van order will not cause any delay in delivery for reservation holders of the pick up and SUV.

The deal follows a US$700 million investment in Rivian that Amazon led in February, with the online retailer making up the bulk of it with a US$440 million investment. Two months after Amazon announced its investment in Rivian, Ford announced it would inject a further US$500 million into the company.

Earlier this month Cox Automotive - the owner of online car-shopping sites Autotrader and Kelley Blue Book as well as vehicle auction house Manheim - also announced a US$350 million investment.

The order is a major coup for a company that is aiming to launch its electric pickup and SUV late next year. To put it into perspective, EV segment leader Tesla didn't deliver more than 100,000 vehicles in a year until 2017, almost a decade after the arrival of its debut model, the Roadster.

With the vans leveraging much of the technology developed for the R1T and R1S, Rivian says the commonality will 'drive meaningful scale benefits across all Rivian-manufactured vehicles', meaning Rivian just got a huge jump in potential affordability of its vehicles thanks to a single order.