Amazon puts first electric semi trucks into ocean freight operation

Southern California truck spotters may have loads of electrical semi vans to be careful for as Amazon provides fifty Class 8 EVs to its business fleet.

The fully electric Volvo semi trucks bought will haul each heavy cargo containers and buyer bundle hundreds in Amazon’s first- and middle-mile operations in California. The trucks will join the hundreds of last-mile electric vans from Ford and Rivian that are already delivering packages across the golden state.

These are the first-ever electrical vans within the firm’s ocean freight operations, often known as drayage operations. They’ve already began hitting the highway on the ports of Los Angeles and Lengthy Seaside, with a dozen anticipated to be in service by the top of the yr.

“We’re proud to launch our largest fleet of electrical heavy-duty automobiles but in California,” mentioned Udit Madan, vice chairman of Worldwide Amazon Operations. “Heavy-duty trucking is a very troublesome space to decarbonize, which makes us all of the extra excited to have these automobiles on the highway at this time. We’ll use what we study from deploying these automobiles as we proceed to establish and put money into options to cut back emissions in our transportation community, and to impression sustainability within the trucking business extra broadly.”

Amazon picks Volvo VNR Electrical semi

Amazon’s electric semi of choice this time is the Volvo VNR Electric. These class 8 vans have a spread of as much as 275 miles with a gross mixed automobile weight ranking (GVWR) of 82,000 kilos. The heavy-duty Volvo vans ship with a variety of security options that can be acquainted to Volvo Automobile house owners, together with energetic collision mitigation, blind-spot detection, lane departure warning, lane holding help, and adaptive cruise management.

Altogether, the Volvo VNRs Amazon simply added to its fleet are projected to journey greater than 1 million miles annually with zero dangerous carbon and diesel particulate emissions popping out of their exhaust pipes.

Electrek’s Take

On the one hand, Amazon is making a giant deal out of shopping for electrical drayage vans – which isn’t actually huge a deal in 2024, since that’s a authorized requirement at this level. You actually can’t purchase a brand new, inner combustion drayage truck in California as of this yr.

That mentioned, I’m a “celebrate every positive change” form of man, and the individuals who reside and work round Amazon’s operations can be actually and figuratively respiratory simpler with these vans in operation. As such, I’m prepared to present California Governor Gavin Newsom a victory lap.

“California continues to cleared the path in setting world-leading local weather targets. No different state has created the form of atmosphere the place Amazon and different companies can lead on sustainability and take main steps ahead like deploying this fleet of electrical vans,” mentioned Gavin, in a press release. “California’s local weather motion continues powering our financial system and creating jobs.”

SOURCE | IMAGES: Amazon.