Amazon orders 1,800 Mercedes electric vans for Europe deliveries

Amazon has purchased one,800 whole-electrical vans from Mercedes-Benz in the online retailer’s largest determination to date to reduce the carbon footprint of its delivery functions in Europe.

A bulk of the vans will go into support this 12 months, Amazon said on Friday.

Amazon said it experienced purchased one,200 of Mercedes-Benz’s substantial eSprinter vans and 600 of the midsize eVitos.

The purchase is the greatest for Mercedes’s electrical cars to date and consists of 800 vans for Germany and 500 for the U.K.. It is dwarfed, nonetheless, by Amazon’s recent purchase for a hundred,000 electrical delivery vans from Rivian Automotive, a startup it has invested in.

The Mercedes purchase helps make it very clear Amazon will also search for cars from other automakers to take out greenhouse gases from its delivery fleet.

Amazon is increasingly delivering shipments with its very own team or contractors as an alternative of relying on key carriers.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said in a assertion the Daimler arrangement was aspect of the retailer’s “journey to build the most sustainable transportation fleet in the planet.”

Mercedes on Friday joined The Local weather Pledge, started out by Amazon very last 12 months, which calls on signatories to be internet zero carbon across their enterprises by 2040. The automaker has previously said it was aiming to have a carbon neutral fleet by 2039.

In 2018, Amazon turned the largest consumer of Mercedes’ non-electrical Sprinter vans, securing twenty,000 cars for delivery contractors.

“Transferring ahead, we are prioritizing the addition of electrical cars,” Ross Rachey, Amazon’s director of world wide fleet and solutions for very last-mile delivery instructed Reuters.

Other delivery companies are pushing for much more electrical fleets. In January United Parcel Service said it was buying ten,000 delivery trucks from Uk-based Arrival.

Other automakers are also doing work on bringing electrical vans to industry. Ford strategies an all-electrical variation of its Transit van in North America in 2022, and General Motors aims to get started creation of an electrical van in late 2021.

Bloomberg contributed to this report