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Amazon’s new electric delivery vans will hit the road in more than a dozen cities starting this year, the company said on Wednesday. The vans, which are designed and built by dynamic startup Rivian, are already making deliveries to customers in Los Angeles. Amazon plans to expand its testing to 15 more cities this year, as it continues to grow towards a fleet of 10,000 vehicles by 2022. The companies have not named the cities they would choose.
In a short video released today, Amazon is touting the fact that the vans were designed, built and are now being tested within a year. “We love the customer enthusiasm so far – from the photos we see online to car fans stopping our drivers for a preview of the vehicle,” said Ross Rachey, Global Fleet and Product Manager at Amazon. in a report. “From what we’ve seen, this is one of the fastest modern commercial electrification programs, and we’re extremely proud of it.”
Rivian is a relatively new name in the EV industry, having only debuted his pickup truck and SUV at the end of November 2018 – although he has been operating in stealth since 2009. Originally founded to do something that competed with Tesla’s first car, the Roadster, Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe ultimately steered the company into a more action-adventure SUV and pickup truck customer segment.
Since coming out of stealth, Rivian has transported a series of huge investments from several major players. Amazon led a $ 700 million round in February 2019, followed by $ 500 million from Ford in April 2019. Most recently, Rivian landed $ 2.65 billion from T. Rowe Price and the Climate Pledge Fund of Amazon. (Jeff Bezos recently announced that he will be stepping down as CEO to devote more attention to the initiative.)
Rivian has shown two vehicles so far: the R1T pickup and the R1S SUV. Built on the same architecture as the delivery van, Rivian says its vehicles – which will start at around $ 70,000 – will be able to travel up to around 400 miles on a single charge, hit 60 miles per hour in under three seconds, and ultimately be able to behave in a certain capacity.
Amazon initially announced the new delivery van as part of its climate commitment to become a carbon neutral company by 2040.
It’s funny that Amazon’s Rachey mentions the photos of the delivery van uploaded. Curious passers-by also captured the unique, shall we say, external sound that emanates from the van when parked or traveling at low speed. Electric vehicles can be particularly quiet compared to their internal combustion engine counterparts, so regulators force them to produce artificial sound when moving at low speeds to alert pedestrians and other road users who otherwise the approaching vehicle would not be heard.
Based on the spatial and sci-fi sound that was selected, it would appear that Rivian is going for something that could best be described as “chill / lo-fi beats for chilling / studying a playlist”. According to The reader quoting a post from Drive Tesla Canada, the artificial sound of Rivian vans is so loud that it can be heard from inside someone’s house.
It’s unclear if this will be the final sound used for Amazon’s entire delivery fleet. In other words, there is still time to change it. Please change it.
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