
Jeff Bezos climate change plan unveiled – buy 100k electric vans. - gshakir
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/19/jeff-bezos-speaks-about-amazon-sustainability-in-washington-dc.html
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Arubis
I'm glad to see that there's deliberate movement in this direction. However,
it's a little dismaying that the headline is implying that we can address
climate change by Consuming More Stuff; that's how we got into this mess in
the first place.

~~~
dimitar
Some consumption is good, i.e. replacing and old appliance or a car with a
more efficient one, or you can buy a video game on Steam rather than driving
to a picnic. It is not always apparent what behaviour is the most energy-
wasteful. For example airplanes emit tons of CO2, but if the same 300 people
in a plane drove the same distance it could be much worse.

Advanced economies have grown their GDPs, but have also reduced their
emissions since about 1990.

The best policies to counter climate change like carbon taxes and schemes like
cap and trade, which align people's incentives to emit less, but also don't
damage the potential for growth and consumption as much.

~~~
mrpopo
> For example airplanes emit tons of CO2, but if the same 300 people in a
> plane drove the same distance it could be much worse.

Technically true, however airplanes provoke a rebound effect. By making travel
so efficient and fast, it makes people travel more. If airplanes didn't exist
all people would simply travel less, not drive more.

~~~
lenova
And not to be pedantic, but when the above poster said "or you can buy a video
game on Steam rather than driving to a picnic", that discounts the amount of
times the game developers had to drive to work to create said game. As well,
replacing an old appliance or car isn't a straight-forward net savings, you
need to take into account the materials harvested and factories that need to
be built to produce those new items.

~~~
gutnor
The average game on Steam sells 32000 copies. It takes some seriously poluting
developer to offset the picnic of thousands of people.

Also (pedantic but you started it), the society we currently live in is based
around work. So if games weren't being developed it is more likely the
developers would still travel to work.

~~~
austhrow743
That's only if you cut out games. An overall lifestyle change of much less
consumption would slash jobs.

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throwaway5752
This is a big deal because it increases the critical mass towards
electrification of transportation, even moreso than the carbon offset by the
vans. Right now early adopters are okay with ChargePoint and tolerating some
uncertainty with the next charge, but we need 1) more renewable grid input and
2) much more "refueling" infrastructure (public 40 and 80 amp charging).

~~~
giacaglia
Amazon clearly wants Rivian to succeed:
[https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/15/rivian-
announces-700-million...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/15/rivian-
announces-700-million-investment-round-led-by-amazon.html)

:-)

~~~
throwaway5752
And that is fine, in my opinion. I don't think it's self dealing. If you think
climate change is an urgent issue, you fund solutions. When you fund
solutions, you choose the best option. When you're ready to act on it, you
choose the best option.

~~~
WhompingWindows
Well, it's not as if there are 100k electric vans ready for purchase, Rivian
needs their investment and their orders to scale up to 100k. Amazon's creating
its own demand and supply here.

~~~
throwaway5752
Yup. Just comes with the territory of the scale they are operating at. Looking
at Renault Kangaroo ZE and Nissan e NV200 sales its possible 100k electrics
vans is more than have ever been produced, cumulatively, period.

------
codingdave
While I applaud any move towards decreasing negative impacts our our
environment, I also encourage people to take advantage of Amazon's option to
pick a delivery day and get all your stuff at once.

Even without that option, Amazon has some work to do on their route planning -
I should never need 3 different deliveries from 3 different drivers on the
same day, and that has occurred at my house.

~~~
mabbo
Consider this: shipping is free for you. Sending more trucks to deliver
packages many times per day is annoying for you, but it's _expensive_ for
Amazon.

That's a huge incentive to do that as rarely as possible.

------
fooblitzky
How can you meet Paris commitments early when you are working on helping oil &
gas companies extract fossil fuels from the ground even faster?

[https://aws.amazon.com/oil-and-gas/](https://aws.amazon.com/oil-and-gas/)

------
driverdan
> Bezos said the first electric delivery vans will be on the road by 2021

I strongly doubt this will happen. Their truck still isn't in production and
they haven't even built a concept van yet. The chances of them producing vans
in two years is very low.

~~~
AgloeDreams
I thought this about a year ago when they came out of stealth, however; Rivian
has all the magic in their sleeves. 1: They actually did the work, the
prototype trucks are rather far in development for their announcement.
Seemingly they are almost R&D-complete. This is different from most other EV
startups like FF or Lucid as they pretty much just showed off mockups.

2, and this is what really matters:

They got major investments from established ICE manufacturers (Huge investment
from Ford) with agreements to cooperate on building the factory and making
products together. This is the real barrier to entry on EV startups and they
executed on it by spending years figuring out the powertrain issue and then
going off and getting help by those with the institutional knowledge on
manufacturing them. This is why I think they will win.

3: It's a van, a skateboard with a metal box on top, likely borrowing heavily
from already developed designs. Note that the van appears largely production
ready lacking all the normal concept drawing details and lacking any form of
wild 'FUTURE!!' details. Boring Ford van mirrors, standard marker lights,
correct size tires and rims. This is a production-ready design, not a concept-
car, that likely makes use of the Ford production machine for all the little
bits. Think of it like building an app with Angular or React, they know what
they want to do and what they want to use other sources for.

~~~
electriclove
I appreciate the optimism and hope you are right but there is plenty of
talk/hype in this space and there are not many EVs that are not compliance
cars actually in production in the US.

------
rasz
>delivery vans from vehicle manufacturer Rivian

is Rivian really a vehicle manufacturer? or a startup? I though you have to
actually manufacture something to be called manufacturer.

~~~
IronWolve
They already have their Truck and SUV on display at the motor shows, 0-60 in 3
seconds, towing 7700 lbs, 700hp, 400 mile range. They said shipping in 2020.
But I dont see any mention of vans on their website.

Amazon is a financial backer of Rivian, so this makes sense.

~~~
driverdan
They've been showing the truck for years. It's still vaporware. They've yet to
build a single production vehicle.

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zelias
The shareholder proposal may have been defeated, but this is a sign to me that
it _worked_ to bring this problem to the forefront of Amazon's agenda. This is
a good thing.

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gok
Wow talk about win-win. Amazon gets electric vans and Rivian gets ~$10B in
expected revenue, which increases the value of Amazon's stake in Rivian.

~~~
lazyjones
Also, Amazon gets to pay fewer taxes due to accrual...

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cryoshon
we can't "electric van" our way out of the climate crisis because it makes too
little of a dent over too long of a timescale. bezos' plan is far too weak to
even be worth media coverage.

mediocre quarter-measure plans like this one will keep us moving at full steam
towards catastrophe. if bezos wanted to put a dent in climate change
genuinely, he'd take the path of least resistance: subsidize a meaty discount
on goods that emit the least CO2 during their production and use as measured
by a third party authority. this would create a virtuous economic cycle of
manufacturers competing for lower emissions.

instead, he's found a way to accomplish little other than self-enrichment
while appearing to make an effort. well, bravo. bezos is well on the way to
being the richest man on an uninhabitable rock of a planet.

~~~
penneyd
He also stated the goal is to be carbon neutral by 2040, that's a solid goal.
So it goes beyond the vans.

------
benologist
AWS profits something like a million dollars an hour so it's pretty
unambitious to need 11 years to make AWS be fully green. $100+ billion in
profit will accrue from AWS in that time. It doesn't take 11 years to claw
back 1900 workers' health care.

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perfunctory
Yet another plan. Great. When will we finally start seeing media reports on
actual emission reductions? In 2020 I want to read "Amazon has reduced its
total emissions by 5% compared to 2019".

~~~
wongarsu
The most upvoted comment on HN would be how this 5% reduction is just
meaningless marketing, probably because Amazon will have increased sales by
X%, meaning the products delivered maybe had a higher carbon footprint.

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DanCarvajal
I'm rooting for Rivian, if they make a true small SUV after their initial R1S
launch I'd be all over it.

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sidcool
These will be mostly Rivian pick up trucks. Kinda smart move. $700 million
investment will help Amazon.

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adrianN
For cities it would make sense to deliver packages to neighborhood hubs in
vans and from there deliver them using cargo bikes to the recipients. That
would probably safe more energy, but cost a bit more as a bicycle worker can
transport fewer packages per day.

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jason46
What about the strain on the environment from sourcing and disposing batteries
for these vans?

~~~
penneyd
Because dirty diesel has no ill effects?

~~~
jason46
Did I say that? I'm wonder if sourcing and disposing batteries on a mass scale
will be any better than burning fuel.

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pleatedwaffle
Is there any chance this will make Rivian Trucks cheaper? I really want one.

~~~
notJim
The company has been around for 10 years without shipping a product. To me the
bigger question is whether you'll _ever_ be able to buy one. By contrast,
Tesla started in 2003 and shipped the Roadster in 2008 and the Model S in
2012.

~~~
AgloeDreams
Counter point: They have major investment and signed contracts from real
manufacturers like Ford (which is the real issue with starting an EV company,
sure you can design an electric truck but can you build them?) The fact of the
matter is that they now have the tech, solid R&Ded designs and the best people
on earth to help them make them, this is not what any other company has ever
had at EV manufacturing, not even Tesla.

------
m0zg
Where I live UPS trucks have been plug-in hybrid for years now. They are
powered entirely by battery when driving slowly through neighborhoods. So I'm
not sure how much difference this would _really_ make.

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0x262d
as expected, sections of the bourgeoisie are trying to barely solve CO2
pollution while continuing to maximize every other kind of resource
consumption and concomitant non-CO2 pollution. or at least, pretend that they
are trying to solve it. either way they will run into the concerted resistance
of the bourgeoisie who depend on CO2 pollution as a business model, and who
are extremely powerful.

the alternative to this shitshow is to democratically plan resource
investment, and get away from the insanity of a road-and-small-vehicle-based
city system (aka, establish socialism). I'm optimistic we'll get there after
the youth watch rich people vacillate over climate change for a few more years
:)

~~~
Fins
Because every place that did implement socialism did SUCH a great job of
preventing pollution and protecting nature!

As they say, the only thing History teaches us is that History teaches us
nothing.

------
option
this is awesome and makes a lot of business sense (Amazon is an investor in
Rivian). kudos to Amazon!

