If you order something with Amazon Prime, there’s a higher chance that you’ll see a Rivian Electric Delivery Van at your doorstep compared to last year. That’s because the American e-commerce giant just announced it increased its EDV fleet in the United States by 50%.
Amazon now has over 15,000 Rivian battery-powered vans shipping parcels across the country, 5,000 more than it had in October of last year. Meanwhile, the company’s European operations now have over 300 Rivian-made delivery EVs roaming the streets in Germany.
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Rivian's commercial business
Besides offering custom-built electric vans to Amazon and now AT&T, Rivian is also dipping its toes into other areas of the commercial vehicle sectors. Recently, the guts of the Electric Commercial Van were used to create a right-hand drive mail van that will deliver parcels in Canada.
In July 2022, the first Amazon-branded EDVs hit U.S. roads. A year later, the company announced it had 5,000 electric vans doing deliveries and then, four months later, the fleet had doubled to 10,000. Now, that number surpassed the 15,000 mark.
Five years ago, Amazon pledged it would have 100,000 Rivian electric vans delivering parcels by 2030. It’s quite an ambitious plan, but one that could be slightly delayed, seeing how the 10,000-unit mark was supposed to be recorded in 2022 but it only happened in October 2023. Furthermore, the rate at which Rivian delivered electric vans to Amazon has dropped compared to the previous milestones.
It took Rivian a year to deliver the first 5,000 units, then four months for another 5,000. Since then, it took nine months for the latest 5,000 EVs to be delivered. To reach its target of 100,000 units by 2030, the EV maker needs to significantly step up its manufacturing game–keeping this rhythm of 7,500 units per year on average will result in just 60,000 vans in 2030.
Gallery: Amazon Electric Delivery Vehicle
With its current fleet of Rivian EVs, Amazon said it delivered more than 800 million packages to U.S. customers. To keep such a large number of EVs topped up and ready to go, the American e-commerce company has over 17,000 chargers installed at more than 120 delivery stations in the country.
Initially, Rivian’s electric commercial vehicle was exclusive to Amazon. However, that exclusivity ended last year when Rivian announced that anybody could buy its now-renamed Electric Commercial Van or ECV, with prices starting at $83,000 for the entry-level version. One month later, AT&T entered the chat and announced that it would start a pilot program in 2024 with several Rivian ECVs and R1 EVs.
