[HN Gopher] How Amazon Became the Largest Private EV Charging Op...
___________________________________________________________________
How Amazon Became the Largest Private EV Charging Operator in the
US
Author : defrost
Score : 73 points
Date : 2024-04-22 08:23 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bloomberg.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bloomberg.com)
| mrbishalsaha wrote:
| Amazon trying to be everywhere
| cjbenedikt wrote:
| It would be interesting if Amazon would calculate how much CO2
| they save because their customers don't drive to the supermarket
| but order from Amazon. With the data that Amazon certainly has
| access to, it should be possible to calculate this. Certainly
| considerable in the US.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Meanwhile, I would never dream of ordering groceries outside of
| specialty items through Amazon. They are prohibitively
| expensive on most food items that have any sort of weight
| compared to Walmart and Instacart. Granted, I don't have a
| Whole Foods nearby.
| nashashmi wrote:
| Just you wait. Order your groceries in the morning. It will
| be arrived by night from a service called grocery fulfillment
| and distribution.
| huytersd wrote:
| Instacart already delivers within an hour to my home from a
| store of my choice. This means in addition to the regular
| grocery store items, I can get speciality items from the
| ethnic Indian, Chinese, Korean stores delivered too. With
| the subscription ($9.99/month) there are no delivery fees
| either. That's going to be hard to beat.
| eurleif wrote:
| Yes, no delivery fees; merely service fees for the
| service of delivery.
| huytersd wrote:
| Yeah but it's like $2-3, not terrible for the
| convenience.
| csa wrote:
| > there are no delivery fees either
|
| Careful with that.
|
| The delivery fees may not be explicit, but they
| definitely charge more for items at some stores, with
| Costco being one of the more egregious ones.
| huytersd wrote:
| Are you sure about that? Because if so I would reconsider
| my use of instacart. We buy a lot of stuff from Costco
| and it's a 45 min drive away so we almost never go into
| the store.
| csa wrote:
| Check out this thread on Reddit:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Frugal/comments/1cal0ff/comparin
| g_c...
|
| Short answers:
|
| - Yes, they mark up. 24%ish.
|
| - Markup may be different when shopping on IC directly
| versus Costco same day delivery (via IC).
|
| - Coupons like 50% off orders over $xx changes that math.
|
| - Factor in tip into the equation.
| roughly wrote:
| Not to beat the drum on urbanization, but I live 2 blocks
| from my grocery store, so that's not really putting
| anything on the table for me.
|
| Different views of the future.
| 0x457 wrote:
| I have a grocery store literally downstairs, and I
| sometimes pay someone to deliver bags to me.
| duxup wrote:
| Personally I don't order food items from Amazon because I
| worry about their whole counterfeit issues / that they really
| don't care about that issue.
| Closi wrote:
| Not quite as simple as that bit of analysis, as:
|
| 1. The CO2 of the Amazon delivery needs to be taken into
| account (apportioned to the number of drops), vs delivery to
| store. Delivery to stores is highly efficient compared to last
| mile.
|
| 2. Most Amazon purchases probably wouldn't directly result in
| less trips to the supermarket (i.e. am I driving to the
| supermarket just to pick up one item, or am I going there
| anyway and picking up everything I need when I am there?)
| earthling8118 wrote:
| Delivery to stores might be more efficient, but then the last
| mile cost doesn't go away. Most of the stuff that I would buy
| from Amazon isn't available at the stores that I go to so it
| would require an entirely separate trip to somewhere that I
| would not go otherwise. Often multiple stores.
| throwup238 wrote:
| It depends on where your stores are and how frugal the rest
| of your shopping is. My Trader Joes/Costco (five minutes
| away) is in an eight block shopping center with Best Buy,
| Home Depot, and a dozen other big box stores which I think
| is fairly common in America.
|
| Between that and shopping for fresh meat and produce at
| ethnic markets that are all over the city, the vast
| majority of my shopping is amortized over staple groceries
| that I can't or won't buy online.
| nashashmi wrote:
| The emissions of producing the vehicles should be tallied as well
| along with emissions for electric production.
|
| For a company at scale as amazon, they are a major consumer of
| equipment and the sourcing of that equipment is also a corporate
| operation.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/electric-vehicle-myths
|
| Draw attention to https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/electric-
| vehicle-myths#Myt... specifically the lifecycle green house gas
| chart.
| nashashmi wrote:
| That is good news all around. But we need to also realize
| when you have as many as 100,000 trucks, battery failures and
| battery replacements are nearly 1000 times a year. Those
| costs add up to the ghg. It might be definitely less than ICE
| Cars but if your goal is to offset, then this is a cost to
| offset too.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Any failed or end of life batteries will be feedstock for
| the recycling stream. To drive down lifecycle green house
| gas emissions, there should of course be focus on using
| clean energy through the process whenever possible. We are
| building an enormous energy storage manufacturing and
| deployment flywheel, improvement should be continuous as
| the Machine is built.
|
| https://www.redwoodmaterials.com/recycle-with-us/
| vel0city wrote:
| I imagine they break-even in GHG emissions in most places in
| the US within a year or two of ownership. These trucks will
| likely be in service for over a decade. Last-mile delivery
| trucks get absolutely _horrible_ mileage, constantly having to
| accelerate and brake all day long with a large amount of mass.
| audunw wrote:
| Then you also need to factor in the recycling opportunity for
| the production.
|
| An EV may have fairly high CO2 emissions during production, but
| much of that is associated with mining of metals/minerals.
| Those are generally recyclable. Large scale commercial
| recycling of EV batteries is already happening. So those CO2
| emissions are not for just one vehicle. It's for many vehicles
| far into the future.
|
| The CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels will never benefit
| anything but the one vehicle it's propelling forward.
|
| You've also gotta keep in mind that the mining and industrial
| transportation sector is also being decarbonised, sometimes
| with the same EV technology that EV cars are made with.
| Electric mining dump trucks is now a reality. Keep the long
| term picture in mind: we actually have a very viable pathway to
| eliminate whatever minor CO2 emissions are associated with EVs
| by just pouring more investments and R&D into EV technology.
| jeffbee wrote:
| You are not the first person to think this thought. It is
| standard greenhouse gas inventory methodology. Quoting from
| Amazon's GHG report:
|
| """Transportation activities generate carbon emissions through
| the combustion of fossil fuels when vehicles are driven, the
| manufacturing of vehicles, and the supply chain for fuels. The
| emissions model for transportation covers emissions associated
| with "well-to-wheels" impacts (e.g.,extracting, refining,
| distributing, and consuming transportation fuels) and "vehicle"
| impacts (e.g., manufacturing, maintaining, and disposing of
| vehicles). These impacts are reported as emissions factors
| based on grams of CO2e per kilometer basis."""
| w0m wrote:
| VW put out a report on the topic a few years back.
|
| Tldr; for consumer vehicles, break even point for emissions was
| roughly 40k miles in the EU, and 50k in the US. After that it
| was a ~net positive vs equivalent gasoline model. For
| commercial use cases where 50k miles can be done many times
| over in a single year (and expected vehicular lifecycle is much
| much longer), it should be pure gravy.
| jlv2 wrote:
| When making the comparison, don't forget to tally the effects
| and emmisions of drilling, pumping, refining, and delivering
| oil and gasoline to the point-of-sale.
| triceratops wrote:
| And all the oil spills and methane gas leaks.
| nashashmi wrote:
| These are not by design. They are by chance.
| triceratops wrote:
| That doesn't matter. They happen and they have an effect.
| nashashmi wrote:
| Yes. All of these are things that should be tallied if we are
| only looking for ghg contributions.
| MBCook wrote:
| It's amazing how fast we went from rarely seeing an electric
| Amazon van near me to seemingly most of them being EVs.
|
| Makes so much sense. I wonder how many (tens of?) thousands a
| single warehouse location might save per day in gas alone. Last
| mile in urban/suburban areas is nearly ideal for an EV.
|
| The upfront is very expensive with all the ancillary costs, but
| it's hot to pay off handsomely after a while. And if a real
| carbon tax were to ever appear it would be all the better.
| jollyllama wrote:
| A use case like this is probably one of the best for EV's.
| Presumably Amazon will be able to have a centralized
| maintenance facility where new batteries can be installed.
| They'll be able to price in their own maintenance and resale
| value will be of no concern.
| reactordev wrote:
| And they likely have the batteries on the shelf since it's a
| fulfillment center and they sell them. Just buy them from
| their own warehouse. Brilliant.
| dymk wrote:
| It pays off fast. For my situation in Washington, I'd be paying
| ~$4.50/gal for an ICE car that gets ~28mi/gal, or ~$0.11/KWh
| (at the tier-2 rate) for an EV that gets 3.5mi/KWh.
|
| For the ICE car, that's ~6.2 mi/dollar, for the EV it's ~31.8
| mi/dollar. ~5x cheaper per mile to drive the ICE. I drive ~15k
| miles per year, so ~$2.4k in gas, or $470 in electricity -
| saving ~$2k/year.
|
| This doesn't take into account the lower total cost of
| ownership of EVs in general. They're simple. They don't need
| oil changes. The transmission can't go out.
|
| And that's just for me driving once or twice a day; I'm sure
| the Amazon drivers are putting factors more miles on their
| cars, so a faster break-even point.
| Kirby64 wrote:
| It's even better for delivery vans, too: EVs thrive in
| repeated stop-start conditions, which is what Amazon cans
| frequently do.
|
| It seems like only a matter of time before other similar
| vehicles that are more industrial make this shift (eg,
| garbage/recycling trucks). Imagine no more super loud garbage
| trucks in the mornings...
| organsnyder wrote:
| Given the loudest part of garbage trucks around me is their
| brakes, I'm thrilled at the prospect of them getting regen.
| briffle wrote:
| I chatted with a friend who used to be a garbage man in a
| mid-sized west coast city. Most drivers in our area have
| a daily route, and when they are done, they are done, but
| paid for the whole's day work.
|
| So they have an incentive to floor the throttle, and slam
| the brakes. The drivers don't pay for fuel or brake pads
| out of their salary, the company does, but if they drive
| like a maniac, they can finish a few hours earlier.
| playingalong wrote:
| Where I live the biggest noise is from the loading
| mechanism and the built in press.
| Symbiote wrote:
| We've had electric garbage trucks in Copenhagen since last
| year. It's a small but nice improvement.
|
| https://group.vattenfall.com/press-and-
| media/newsroom/2023/s...
| klooney wrote:
| Washington is sort of a best case though- you have pretty
| darn cheap electricity over there.
| foobarian wrote:
| Would be a no-brainer to cover warehouses and parking lots
| with solar and charge the fleet yourself for even less.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Except the vehicles are probably in use during the
| daytime.
| Retric wrote:
| It's common to have a mix where some trucks make 1 route
| per day and others do several. So you can optimize by
| rotating loading times, spare vehicles, and having some
| onsite batteries.
|
| Solar > battery means DC fast charging gets to skip AC>DC
| losses which are significant. But you don't need to use
| 100% of solar's output to save a lot of money.
| MBCook wrote:
| Even if you're not charging the fleet, you can power the
| warehouse.
|
| As long as you're using less electricity from the grid
| overall per day, you'll save money in the long run.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Energy costs in most of the US are favorable to this math.
| The cost of energy supply should be pushed down as
| renewable deployment continues indefinitely.
|
| https://www.globalenergyinstitute.org/average-electricity-
| re...
| bagels wrote:
| California has a lot of renewables, but retail prices
| have increased rapidly.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Unconstrained distribution costs because of lack of
| political will to aggressively regulate (PG&E, etc).
| Mostly a California problem, as long as PG&E is permitted
| to extract executive comp and profits while minimizing
| infrastructure investment. Supply costs are plunging
| during the day due to utility scale solar output.
|
| _The reason PG &E rates are skyrocketing in California_
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40128003 - April
| 2024 (26 comments)
|
| _After 111 years, SF finally moving to oust PG &E and
| create a public-power system_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39587901 - March
| 2024 (13 comments)
|
| https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-
| insight... | https://archive.today/PeDeH ("April 2024:
| CAISO sets back-to-back solar peak records in April;
| power spot prices plunge")
|
| > Spot power prices have been trending lower year on year
| on lower natural gas spot prices and more renewable
| generation supply, including hydropower following years
| of drought.
|
| > CAISO has 19.011 GW of installed solar generation
| capacity, which accounts for the majority of renewable
| resources on the grid at 62%, according to the Key
| Statistics report. Solar capacity has increased nearly
| 15% compared to a year ago and 26% from two years ago.
|
| > There are currently 28.6 GW of solar projects in the
| CAISO generation queue, including 13.8 GW that have
| executed interconnection agreements and nearly 4.5 GW of
| those have on-line dates expected listed for 2024. Only
| two solar projects slated to come online in 2024 do not
| have batteries connected.
|
| https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/US-CAL-CISO
| ("ElectricityMaps.com: California CAISO Zone")
| storyinmemo wrote:
| California has a PG&E regulatory capture problem.
| jdofaz wrote:
| Electricity is very cheap next door in Arizona
| freeAgent wrote:
| Yeah, I wish I could get remotely close to that cheap
| electricity in CA.
| dymk wrote:
| Solar panels :) it even made sense (for me) in WA at
| $0.11/KWh.
| freeAgent wrote:
| I've already got them (and a battery), but it ain't
| cheap! They're also pressuring everyone to go
| electric/heat pump for everything, but then I'd have to
| start paying the extortionate electric rates here once
| again.
| haliskerbas wrote:
| Agreed, starts to break down if you live in California and
| already own a hybrid.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| > The transmission can't go out.
|
| Are transmission failures really that common? In nearly fifty
| years of driving and owning eight different cars I've never
| had a transmission failure. One of the cars (Volvo Amazon
| estate car) did 350k miles including the previous owner
| rallying it for a couple of years. Apart from fixing a
| leaking radiator when I bought it I never had any problems
| with the motor or gearbox. We scrapped it just because my
| wife wanted a newer more comfortable car.
| nehal3m wrote:
| I had a 2002 Saab 9-5 Sedan automatic transmission blow out
| on the day I bought it. ODO said about 300k km (190k miles
| give or take). The dealer replaced the car with a younger
| 9-5 Wagon with lower mileage so I'm kinda glad it did.
|
| That 2002 model is supposed to be a lemon transmission-wise
| though (even so, 300k seems decent as far as lifespans go).
| glial wrote:
| I had a Chrysler van and had to replace the transmission
| twice. Glad to hear you've had better luck than I.
| jdofaz wrote:
| their minivans are notorious for transmission problems
| bombcar wrote:
| There was (is?) a time where if you replaced the tranny
| fluid with anything BUT the exact Chrysler one, it would
| kill it dead pretty quick. Some people would buy up
| minivans with dead transmissions at 80k miles or whenever
| the quick lube place told them to flush the tranny, then
| clean it out and put the right fluid in and it'd work
| fine again.
| Arrath wrote:
| My mom didn't even get one home from the dealership when
| it seized up on the highway. Something about the solenoid
| pack but don't take my word for it, I was all of 8.
| SmellTheGlove wrote:
| I've owned 3 cars in my life, one of them driven into the
| ground, one high mileage and given away when we moved to
| the city, and the third we still own. A transmission is the
| one thing I've never had to fix. Now that's just me.
| Obviously transmissions do fail, but I'd bet in aggregate,
| it's not nearly the most pressing issue. But it is the
| second most complicated set of moving parts in the car, so
| when it goes, it's not cheap.
|
| All that said, electric cars really shine in city driving.
| No transmission to go, and regenerative braking to save the
| pads. It's valid to call it out if that's your use case
| like these Amazon trucks.
| LeafItAlone wrote:
| A lot of the major cars makers have had years of bad
| transmissions. Just Google " transmission failure class
| action" with manufacturer names and you'll see how many
| settle. But not all years and not at the same time across
| manufacturers, so it's easy to miss bad ones.
| Two4 wrote:
| I come from a country where most people drive manual
| transmissions, and the rule of thumb is that you're
| replacing the clutch at 150-250k kilometers. Automatics
| have torque converters instead of clutches, so that's
| probably a non-issue. I do imagine that they're much more
| integrated, and without a sacrificial clutch plate to take
| load shocks, the entire system will give out after a
| certain distance. This is all conjecture though.
| bombcar wrote:
| From my experience I've never had a tranny fail that
| wasn't beat to death unmercifully.
|
| Clutches wear out, and it is _possible_ to wear out an
| automatic transmissions ' clutches, but I've never had it
| happen.
|
| Every car I've sent to the junkyard has had a working
| transmission.
| fragmede wrote:
| Automatics used to have torque converters. These days
| they've got multiple clutches are are mechanically more
| efficient and have more gears than a manual transmission.
| I still like my manual transmission car though.
| thrill wrote:
| Sounds about right. When my '96 BMW 328 finally met the
| pothole from hell, I was on my 5th clutch at a little
| over 500,000 miles.
| jerlam wrote:
| You probably don't make as many deliveries as an Amazon
| driver, who are constantly stopping and parking and
| starting and backing out of tight spots.
| RankingMember wrote:
| A bad transmission design can really leave a mark,
| particularly when the company using it tries to sweep it
| under the rug. Talk to owners of vehicles with Ford's
| "Powershift" dual-clutch automatic transmission and you'll
| hear nothing but horror stories.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_PowerShift_transmission
| stetrain wrote:
| In my anecdotal experience I've found it to be not uncommon
| in work trucks used for commercial duty over 200k miles.
| Not sure about in the delivery van space.
|
| It's a different level of wear and tear than a normal
| commuter passenger vehicle.
|
| I think the bigger savings on a delivery van would be
| brakes. In constant stop-start driving using the motor for
| regenerative braking is both an efficiency saver and
| reduces wear and tear on the mechanical brakes.
| fragmede wrote:
| "efficiency saver" kinda downplays the fact that the
| energy is being recovered which was previously just
| wasted. Not throwing all that energy away is material at
| Amazon scale.
| hughesjj wrote:
| My Chevy cavalier died due to a transmission issue at
| around 125k miles. The Schuylkill expressway in rush hour
| didn't help. Very clonky shifts near the end and it would
| stall out when trying to find the right gear.
| 0x457 wrote:
| My dad had to replace the transmission in his last two
| mustangs twice in each. It never fully failed, but it was a
| nightmare to drive.
| tw04 wrote:
| You never owned a Chrysler product, did you? They were
| notorious for taking a transmission from a much smaller car
| or truck and putting it into a bigger one because on
| average they would last the life of the 3-yr/36k mile
| warranty, and not much longer. Same with things like shocks
| and struts and springs.
|
| GM on the other hand went the exact opposite direction most
| of the time and put an overengineered heavy duty
| transmission with maybe slightly cheaper internals into
| their smaller vehicles.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| They were, but not really any more. The problems have
| largely been engineered out.
|
| Transmissions are tough because they endure a lot of
| extreme forces. Shift points have the risk of slamming
| components together.
| scoot wrote:
| You've no idea how spoiled you are with those prices. UK at
| current prices and exchange rates: Fuel:
| Petrol: (Gasoline) USD7.10/US Gallon Diesel: USD7.47/US
| Gallon Electricity: Domestic: USD0.36/KWh
| Charging network: USD0.70 - USD1.01/KWh
| tschwimmer wrote:
| I think you have a typo in your comment. You said that it's
| 5x cheaper for ICE, but I think you meant electric
| MBCook wrote:
| Where I am the electricity I use is makes it about 1/3 the
| cost to drive an EV over gas.
|
| But for Amazon their drivers are constantly doing
| stop/starts, which is horrible for fuel efficiency.
|
| So I bet their numbers are way better. And I wasn't including
| maintenance which as you mentioned should be tremendous.
| chatmasta wrote:
| The lower TCO depends on the intended lifetime of the
| vehicle. For delivery use cases where the expected lifetime
| is probably on the order of 5-10 years, it's believable that
| TCO is lower.
|
| But if the expected lifetime is "as long as I can drive it,"
| then TCO is probably not lower, simply because the maximum
| lifetime of an EV is lower than that of an ICE vehicle. At
| some point the car will fail - it will need battery
| replacement (every X years), or it will depend on obsolete
| infrastructure, etc.
|
| You can drive a 1960 Cadillac today. Will you be able to
| drive a 2020 Tesla in 2084?
| pdabbadabba wrote:
| > It's amazing how fast we went from rarely seeing an electric
| Amazon van near me to seemingly most of them being EVs.
|
| Interesting to hear you say that. I've been looking for them
| but I've still never seen an Amazon EV in the DC metro area.
| MBCook wrote:
| I happen to live rather close to a large(?) Amazon
| fulfillment center they just built a few years ago. Our
| electricity isn't very expensive either, though it's not what
| hydro areas pay.
|
| I don't know if we're a test site or it was just easy to get
| the power installed or what. Perhaps being a new facility
| meant they just needed new vehicles anyway so it made sense
| to not buy gas.
|
| But once they started appearing they kept getting more
| common.
| londons_explore wrote:
| I want to see a cost-benefit analysis to the shareholders from
| this move.
|
| Does Amazon hope that this investment in EV's and EV
| infrastructure will put them in a good position to sell EV's at
| some future point?
|
| Maybe it'll give them a few years of de-facto monopoly in some
| cities/states that pass laws requiring all deliveries be carbon
| free?
|
| Maybe being top of 'low carbon' company lists alone is worth it
| if that means they attract environmental conscious shareholders?
|
| Maybe this is cheap positive PR which is cheaper than just
| spending an equivalent amount on adverts?
|
| For a company so laser focussed on financial efficiency, the move
| to EV's doesn't seem to make a lot of sense.
| londons_explore wrote:
| If they saved a bit of money on EV delivery vans and instead
| spent a little more on toilets[1], it would probably be far
| better use of money to buy good PR...
|
| [1]: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-56628745
| roughly wrote:
| EVs are cheaper per mile than ICE, with the notable drawbacks
| that the range is lower, the refill time is longer, and the
| batteries mean the vehicle weighs more. None of those 3 matter
| for Amazon deliveries - they're doing local deliveries (in stop
| & go traffic, where the efficiency benefits of EVs are even
| more pronounced), they sit in one place overnight, and for
| cargo vehicles the weight difference isn't as much of an issue.
| Amazon's got a history of investing in long-term logistics
| projects (there was an article here a while back about their
| investment in shipping paying off during COVID), so I'd imagine
| they've penciled this out and are doing it for financial
| reasons. The company is notoriously focused on financial
| efficiency, but not necessarily short-term financial
| efficiency.
| londons_explore wrote:
| They may be cheaper per mile, but I doubt they are cheaper
| per delivered package when you take into account the purchase
| price of the vehicle at amazons 5.3% corporate bond rate
| (effectively the cost-of-money). The Rivian+EV charger
| probably costs ~$100k, whereas a regular mercedes would cost
| $60k.
| roughly wrote:
| Again, I'm sure that's something that Amazon's famously
| meticulous finance people missed in their calculations.
| What do you think the payoff horizon is for that kind of
| purchase for them?
| Sakos wrote:
| They're doing it, so obviously they think it makes
| financial sense. And considering how insanely successful
| and good Amazon is in logistics and online retail, I'm
| inclined to believe they know what they're doing over some
| random HNer who probably doesn't know the first thing about
| the topic. What's your field exactly? Moreover, where are
| you consuming your opinions about EV from?
| throw_nbvc1234 wrote:
| They're also custom made vehicles for delivery use case
| [1]. And they're also still a major shareholder in the
| company.
|
| And long-long-term maybe some kind of integration with Zoox
| for an tsla/uber like delivery experience (with drones?).
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/3CWCqJl0BEs
| bombcar wrote:
| Even if all that is correct, 300 miles a day or so could
| eat up a $40k difference really fast (gas alone could be
| $60 a day, or $15k a year - so even baking in the cost of
| electricity you could save the difference in only a few
| years).
| MBCook wrote:
| Over what timeframe?
|
| Are they more expensive year one? Sure. New vehicles +
| chargers + infrastructure upgrades.
|
| Year 5? Maybe it's paid off. Energy costs, brake pads, no
| oil changes or other frequent maintenance.
|
| When you refresh the EVs the infrastructure is still there,
| that's one time. Gas prices go up? Your investment looks
| even better. Carbon tax appears? You're golden.
|
| Amazon must know it's worth it. You don't spend that kind
| of money for good PR alone.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Not sure about the US ones, but in Ireland they seem to use
| Mercedes eSprinters. These cost about 45k after grants (the
| new version, with a significantly bigger battery, is more
| like 55k, but I think they're on the old one). A normal
| Sprinter is more like 30k. It's not a huge difference,
| given the fuel cost diff.
| Marsymars wrote:
| How could it be cheaper per mile and more expensive per
| package if the packages per mile is equivalent?
| megaman821 wrote:
| Even if it was more expensive, it could still make sense. It
| could be a hedge against a forecasted rise in gas prices. They
| could be planning to add power generation and get long-term
| price stability. They could believe stricter regulations over
| emissions are coming in a lot of their markets.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Last-mile delivery vans are a pretty good use-case for EVs;
| they're relatively cheap from a capital perspective (they don't
| need huge batteries; they are not typically travelling hundreds
| of km/day) and they're way, way cheaper to fuel.
| 0x457 wrote:
| For starters, they own Rivian, that makes those vans.
|
| You can ignore any environmental impact, the main driver for
| this is that it's much cheaper to operate an EV van for last-
| mile deliveries.
| thrill wrote:
| Amazon owns 17% of Rivian.
| 0x457 wrote:
| Yes, you're right. For some reason*, I thought they have
| bigger control over it. That said, they're the top
| institutional investor into Rivian.
| adolph wrote:
| Please don't tell me the author believes "Amazon had to learn how
| to . . . call the power company." Sure the folks at fleet
| services are different from AWS, warehouses, etc. in the big
| picture all of Amazon is devoted to transforming electricity into
| valuable services. Maybe the question is whether or not Amazon
| sees value in taking over the power companies jobs.
|
| _To get there, Amazon had to learn how to pick up the phone and
| call the power company. Electric utilities, which to that point
| primarily dealt with electric vehicles through powering the odd
| home car charging setup, encountered a new type of customer in
| Amazon._
| sircastor wrote:
| I think the point the author is making here is that calling the
| electric utility about charging dozens or hundreds of vans is
| different than checking in to make sure your home setup doesn't
| violate utility policy.
|
| Amazon is very often in a position to dictate terms of an
| agreement, but here they needed the utility's assistance.
| Amazon had to figure out how to negotiate the landscape.
| MBCook wrote:
| The article even mentioned the difference involved. You buy a
| warehouse you might need 50 or 100 KWh. Everyone planned for
| that when the facility was built.
|
| Want to charge 200 vans? Now you're talking megawatts. You
| have to talk to the utility about upgrading their lines and
| stations and such.
|
| "Hi. PG&E? We want to 100x our overnight power usage! That's
| good right?"
|
| That's not a normal call they'd have had to do before.
| clows wrote:
| What entity is the Largest Nonprivate EV Charging Operator in the
| US?
| chrisbolt wrote:
| Probably ChargePoint: https://www.edmunds.com/electric-
| car/articles/largest-ev-cha...
| 0x457 wrote:
| Those numbers are very inflated, tho. A lot of Charge Point
| locations aren't open to the public. Some Ikea stores in the
| US use them to charge delivery vans, and those aren't open to
| the public.
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if Tesla has more public chargers
| than anyone else on this list.
| Marsymars wrote:
| It does specifically say "public" in reference to the
| ChargePoint locations.
| xyst wrote:
| Like AWS, soon EV owners will be charging largely on Amazon owned
| charging infra
| tech_ken wrote:
| AWS was built from the start to be a sold product, whereas it
| sounds like this massive charging network is purely internal.
| Seems like a very big difference between wiring up your
| warehouse lots for charging, versus building power
| infrastructure across the country.
| MBCook wrote:
| I agree. Plus level 2 is what you want for overnight or tiny
| top-ops if you're going to be in a store for a while.
|
| You don't want it for road trips or in place of a home
| charger. It's too slow. You want DC fast charging.
|
| But for something like Amazon who has vans sitting overnight
| it's much cheaper and more than adequate.
| robbieboy wrote:
| EC2 was developed first for Amazon's internal infrastructure.
| user90131313 wrote:
| Elon vs Bezos race is the real reason for this right?
| xeromal wrote:
| Bezos isn't the CEO
| fragmede wrote:
| He's executive chairman of the board.
| xeromal wrote:
| That's correct
| speedylight wrote:
| He owns 9% of the company.
| chintan wrote:
| Imagine the amount of solar they could put on the roof tops of
| those warehouses to offset the costs
| sircastor wrote:
| It would be interesting to know what the net gain is. Obviously
| there is the materials and labor cost of installation, but then
| you also have the battery cost. I assume most of the trucks are
| out during the day, so you need batteries to store the
| generated power until the truck can be charged at night.
|
| And does Amazon own the warehouses outright, or do they lease
| them?
| bsder wrote:
| > I assume most of the trucks are out during the day, so you
| need batteries to store the generated power until the truck
| can be charged at night.
|
| Why not just double your fleet size instead?
|
| That's a bit extreme, but this is the kind of optimization
| that your bean counters are good at. You probably don't need
| to double your fleet but just keep enough that you can shift
| the consumption curve or take advantage of price changes.
| ctvo wrote:
| Shit man, jeff@amazon.com and let him know.
|
| (Not private thank you very much)
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