
Amazon orders 100K electric delivery trucks from Rivian - prostoalex
https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/19/amazon-orders-100k-electric-delivery-trucks-from-rivian-as-part-of-going-carbon-neutral-by-2040/
======
leesec
Honestly this is a good move, I just have a quick question:

Does anyone anywhere have video footage of a Rivian actually being driven?
Like, not in a commercial, someone genuinely driving it. I just want to know
if they are anywhere close to having a production vehicle. If they have a
single production vehicle that does what they say, then OK they "just" have to
figure out scaling up the manufacturing.

If they don't have a single vehicle, they are years and years away, to the
point that Tesla truck may beat them to mass market.

They have great marketing though.

~~~
cloudwalking
The Tesla truck will almost certainly beat them to mass market. Look how long
it took Tesla to scale up production -- the Model S shipped in 2013. It wasn't
until 2018 that Tesla built their 200,000th vehicle. Rivian hasn't yet shipped
a single truck to customers; they're in for a long and difficult road ahead
building out their production lines.

All that said I do hope Rivian is successful. I would absolutely buy an
electric pickup truck.

~~~
qroshan
Tesla took so long for production because Charlatan-In-Chief didn't want to
use any of the lessons learned about Auto Manufacturing the past 100 years and
decided to do it his way.

Charlatan-In-Chief also assumed he knows more about A.I and Robotics than many
who warned him about his 'Alien Dreadnought' vision.

Rest assured people who are focused on building mass cars won't have the same
hubris

~~~
arcturus17
Charlatan-in-Chief is putting spacecraft into orbit and yet here you are in an
internet forum posting a barely-reasoned critique of his work?

~~~
apexalpha
Let alone that it lands...

If there's one thing I love about people calling Musk a 'charlatan' who build
his company on 'government subsidies' and 'fairytales' it is that you can just
reply with a video of a double 80m orbital booster landing vertically after
putting a massive payload into orbit.

~~~
qroshan
SpaceX is successful because Charlatan-In-Chief is completely hands-off and
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwynne_Shotwell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwynne_Shotwell)
is making sure he stays like that.

At Tesla, he is perfectly playing the role of a Used Car Salesman. Rising
price up, prices down, making false promises

~~~
apexalpha
[https://youtu.be/u0-pfzKbh2k?t=25](https://youtu.be/u0-pfzKbh2k?t=25)

------
jt2190
Amazon led a USD 700 000 000 investment round in Rivian last February.
[https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/02/electric-truck-
startup-...](https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/02/electric-truck-startup-
announces-700-million-funding-round-led-by-amazon/)

(Edit: change amount from thousands to millions)

~~~
csours
So 700 000 000/100 000 would be 7 000 - So an initial investment of 7 000 per
vehicle they want to buy.

Now if they buy 100 000 vehicles at a rate of $100 000 each (pretty reasonable
for industrial vehicles), that is 10 000 000 000 (10 Billion dollars). If it's
$50k each, that will be $5B. $5-10 Billion in sales ain't too shabby.

~~~
mcintyre1994
> Earlier this week, Reuters reported that Amazon and General Motors were both
> expected to invest in Rivian, "in a deal that would value the US electric
> pickup truck manufacturer at between $1 billion and $2 billion."

Assuming that valuation is vaguely accurate they must own a pretty decent
chunk of the company too.

~~~
csours
GM wound up not investing, but Ford did invest.

Disclaimer: I work for GM, I have no knowledge of this deal, any opinions are
my own.

------
hn_throwaway_99
Wow, 100k is no small change. Hoping this accelerates the "tipping point" for
electric vehicles - in my mind that's when the infrastructure for EVs (e.g.
charging stations, or something in the future like battery swaps) actually
makes it easier to own than a gas vehicle.

~~~
jackhack
tipping point, indeed... and not in a good way:

let's take 100,000 vehicles with (I'm conservatively guessing) a 100 kWh
battery each, that's a 100,000,000 kWh load each night! 100,000 Mega watt-
hours is roughly the output of about 10 nuclear power plants in a 24H period.

Unless a lot of new capacity comes online, it could easily overwhelm the
existing electrical grid's capacity.

Let's hope this is a gradual transition.

~~~
jlmorton
Note that 100kWh/day * 100,000 vehicles is 10,000MWh/day. If a typical nuclear
power plant output is about 500MW, that's 12,000MWh/day.

~~~
windsurfer
Good. That's a lot of oil that would need to be burned that this is replacing!

------
ducleonctor
For once, mighty Amazon comes late to the show.

Germany's parcel service DHL builds up a fleet of small electric delivery vans
since 2014:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StreetScooter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StreetScooter)

Living in Bavaria, I see these drive around everywhere now.

~~~
xxpor
These seem like they'd never work in the US. They aren't fast enough to go on
the highway and their range is limited to 62 miles.

~~~
bdamm
These trucks are solving the "last mile" delivery. Do you see many USPS
delivery vans on the highway? That's the market.

~~~
rootusrootus
In a dense urban environment, 62 miles is still less than most delivery trucks
drive. In the US, the actual average overall is more like 2-3x that.

------
perardi
Warning: petty partisanship ahead.

Our last Republican governor in Illinois spent some quality time trashing this
company, which sure looks shortsighted in retrospect:
[https://www.adaptbn.com/home/2018/5/16/breaking-rauner-
criti...](https://www.adaptbn.com/home/2018/5/16/breaking-rauner-criticizes-
rivian-for-not-employing-well-over-1000-people-despite-the-company-being-
ahead-of-estimates)

He also made a point to trash all of Central Illinois as a place to do
business, which is a heck of a strategy for business development.
[https://www.news-gazette.com/news/rauner-apologizes-for-
rema...](https://www.news-gazette.com/news/rauner-apologizes-for-remarks-that-
undervalued-c-u/article_12524dab-d72d-56db-b8f9-a33e778d15b2.html)

Anyway, yay, the auto plant that funded my upbringing is back in action.

~~~
notdonspaulding
Fellow Normalite here, you still in the area? Would love to talk shop with a
local Hacker Newser. Email in my profile if you're interested.

~~~
larrywright
Wow, I would not have expected to find so many Normalites here.

~~~
fardin1368
Spent 7 years in Urbana-Champaign. 45 minutes from Normal. There is huuuge
potential in that area.

~~~
larrywright
I’ve spent a lot of time there - agreed.

------
Animats
So how does this work? Right now, Amazon outsources delivery. Will they be
building huge garages for their fleet? Or trying to get their drivers to pay
for the vans, like Uber? And like they did in 2018, when they "bought" 20,000
Mercedes vans?[1] That deal: "Amazon will not own the vans but they will be
handled by fleet management companies, who will then lease them to the
delivery service owners."

[1] [https://multichannelmerchant.com/operations/amazon-adding-
fl...](https://multichannelmerchant.com/operations/amazon-adding-
fleet-20000-trucks-delivery-services/)

~~~
IMTDb
Considering Amazon history I would not be surprised that this leads to "Amazon
Delivery" which does exactly what you think. "Amazon Delivery" would slowly be
responsible for an increasing portion of "Amazon Retail" parcels then generate
money by opening to a wider audience.

~~~
8ytecoder
Amazon rents the delivery vans to the contracting companies even now. I read
somewhere that these vans are specific models that skirt the regulation and
qualify as personal vehicles.

~~~
mulletbum
My brother runs a repair company for these vans. From my understanding that is
not true only because he has set guidelines with them which he must make sure
the align with.

------
aetherspawn
I work for a company that could most definitely deliver this vision before
Rivian could (this is entirely my personal opinion and not reflective of my
company) due to our extensive, non-vapourware, build history. The trucks are
very real and being field tested, delivering real packages to real people
every day. Most don’t even realise they are electric.

The price is not a niche price you may imagine; it’s very highly competitive
for fleet managers that entirely makes sense on their books and not just for
the environment or marketing. You don’t have to wait for the product to be R&D
or whatever, because they’re rolling off the line right now, and typically no
charging infrastructure is needed due to on-board charging.

Australian designed.

[http://sea-electric.com](http://sea-electric.com)

~~~
solarkraft
Why do you think Amazon went with Rivian instead of your company?

~~~
aetherspawn
Personal opinion only;

If you are delivering vehicles today, then the technology that you have
validated is (although not vapourware) older than today. And to meet people’s
expectation of a cheap vehicle without operating at a loss (no VC money),
there are realities imposed by cost.

Someone like Rivian with lots of VC money isn’t concerned with surviving
between sales, so they can afford to take the risk of selling things that
don’t exist yet, at a loss if they desire, and so their marketing department
is constantly walking on water.

~~~
DrScump
Plus, you guys drive on the wrong side of the road.

------
harry8
"The company will be ordering 100,000 electric delivery trucks"

Headline is false. Amazon have NOT ordered 100k electric delivery trucks.
Amazon have made a announcement to get a lot of free press. For themselves
(vitue signalling, oooh isn't amazon green) and for the company in which they
have invested.

Seriously. I'm announcing here that I will order bezos' underpants. You should
take it as seriously. Corporate PR is and this is another weak edition of it
from Amazon.

~~~
IfOnlyYouKnew
This article as well as others are a bit thin on that particular detail, with
some saying "will be ordering" and others speaking of Rivian "receiving an
order" or "a deal being announced".

But, in any case: do you actually have doubts that this is real? I can see
scepticism regarding the timetable and targeted number of vehicles. But for
Amazon to just nope away now would be catastrophic for their $750 million
investment in Rivian, and their general image. It would destroy far more than
whatever this announcement may get in terms of good PR.

And isn't investing $750 million into such a company enough "skin in the game"
to make accusations of "virtue signalling" nonsensical, even by that cheap
insult's own definition?

~~~
harry8
This is a "news" story. It's supposed to be new. Writing an analysis story
about how amazon are wonderful and green and citing evidence is just fine. Use
good evidence. Write it and argue it well. That is not what this is. This is a
naked play for positive PR and the facts are _thin_. Call it for what it is.
Make this kind of positive PR at least as expensive as it needs to be to get.
Make it so you have to do something to get it. Smoke and mirrors should not
garner positive PR. This announcement _is_ smoke and mirrors - there is NO
order!! And if you think amazon are not smoke and mirrors then why are they
doing it? It's a bad scene that makes them look dishonest and they should not
be doing it.

"Virtue signalling" is not a cheap insult it's a useful discription of a
behaviour. It also isn't in any way BAD. No really. Signalling that you are
doing good things and should be thought of as doing those good things thus
enhancing your brand reputation is actually what everybody wants, right?
Positive PR for doing things that are good. Signalling to the market your
virtue based on actual substance. Not paper thin announcements that we will be
announcing something of substance later to stoke the news cycle. That's gamed
up crap.

Again I don't see substance in this announcment. I see a false headline. I'm
calling it because that is what it is and virtue needs to be real, not simply
corporate PR "announcements" of no commitment. Or nobody gets good PR from
doing good things of real substance.

Separate to that, looking at amazon stories lately is it possible to cynical
enough about their PR? That's reflected here.

------
choppaface
And remember when Uber “ordered” 100,000 Mercedes S-Classes?

[https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/news/a28508/uber-
or...](https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/news/a28508/uber-
orders-100000-mercedes-benz-s-class-sedans-report/)

Bezos is probably trying to pressure UPS (or has some other business motive)
versus target Amazon’s carbon footprint. Amazon will undoubtably grow its own
delivery fleet over time, but this splashy press release is probably not
entirely about climate change.

~~~
taneq
Climate change? I thought it was about Bezos taking a snipe at Tesla because
SpaceX is way ahead of Blue Origin.

~~~
Huycfhct
Human will be saved my the egos of 2 billionaires

~~~
taneq
I'd rather they had a pissing contest by building space exploration companies
than that they just kept building bigger and bigger boats.

------
greglindahl
This discussion
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21016645](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21016645)
has more comments and only recently fell off of the front page.

------
dbcurtis
Am I the only one who finds the spare tire location an absolute deal breaker?
You have to unload the payload, and lift up the payload bed floor in order to
access the spare. Now, I suppose this doesn't matter much to Amazon. But I
have had the experience of being out the back-country where cell phones don't
work, miles from a highway, changing a truck tire by myself. If I had to spend
1 or 2 hours unloading the truck before I could get at the spare, that would
be a huge issue. At one point I was seriously considering writing a deposit
check for a Rivian. The spare tire location told me instantly that this truck
is not for me -- the designers have no idea how trucks are actually used. The
utter cluelessness of that design decision boggles me.

~~~
_AzMoo
Can't be too hard to just mount a wheel carrier in the bed, or swinging on the
rear, and just use that spot as extra storage though. I don't know a single
off-roader who doesn't mod their vehicle in similar ways to make up for
perceived shortcomings.

~~~
oh_sigh
Sure, but one begins to wonder how much knowledge this company has of actual
usage if they get something this straightforward wrong.

~~~
jiveturkey
If they are targeting sales to a small number of large fleets, this doesn't
matter. In fleet operations, the driver will never ever be allowed to change a
tire. This is simply not acceptable, insurance-wise. You will dispatch a
second truck to handle the delivery and also a tire repair service truck.

An electric delivery truck is probably not even in the cards for small
players, where gas or diesel is a better option all around.

------
rolltiide
I love it when your investors are also your biggest customers, they know if
they get your revenue numbers they can flip the shares at a massive multiple
of those revenue numbers. Its like guaranteeing a 10x

And the founders get paid twice or thrice!

------
hwj
I've never heard of Rivian before and had to look it up: it's an American
automaker founded in 2009.

------
woodandsteel
The larger story here is that the ev revolution, after decades of hopes and
slow progress, is finally taking off.

------
grumpy8
Never heard from Rivian before. I'd have expected Tesla to get that contract,
but I guess if Amazon invested in Rivian it makes sense to order 100k
vehicules and make sure that company is successful to get a huge return.

~~~
cowsandmilk
It is highly likely the investment was because Rivian is the company Amazon
decided long ago to order from, not that Amazon is ordering from them because
they invested.

------
mtw
Did Amazon announce they'd also help Rivian in AI / self-driving ? This is an
area of expertise where Tesla is years ahead of Rivian by I'm thinking if
Rivian gets Amazing engineering help, they will catch up sooner

------
paulsutter
Are they including the carbon footprints of their employees and all products
including of their vendors? And if not, how meaningful is it?

> The commerce giant will seek to meet its goal of becoming carbon-neutral by
> 2040

~~~
rsynnott
Their employees would still exist if they didn’t; they’re not cloning them
somewhere. And people would still buy stuff.

------
Solar19
What is the article referring to when it cites an "increase in climate change"
and says that it's been more aggressive than predicted?

------
gchokov
Did they order those through Amazon.com?

------
taf2
The US government could do something similar if we wanted to force a global
change

------
jillesvangurp
This seems like it is a great idea for Amazon, regardless of whether this deal
works out for them. If Rivian manages to build and ship these cars on schedule
at the expected cost, that would of course be a great outcome for Amazon. But
it's not actually necessary for the overall strategy to work for Amazon.

Suppose that does not happen? Their goal with this is simply to shift the
fleet of vans they rely on today to electric to reduce cost. Currently most of
that is third party operated and diesel powered. The cost of that diesel is a
big component of the delivery cost for Amazon. Besides, lots of cities
relevant to Amazon are currently considering diesel bans/restrictions. So they
have a solid motive for wanting to address that.

The mission of these delivery vans is very simple. They do nothing else than
drive to and from Amazon's massive distribution centers to pick up loads of
packages and distribute them in the area. I don't have numbers here but I
imagine the vast majority of these trips are well below 150 miles.

So, the mission for an electric delivery van would be to drive these routes
and charge quickly in between from a preferably cheap power source. It so
happens that these distribution centers are huge and vans have to stop there
to take new packages on board; which represents a great opportunity to plug
in.

Huge distribution center here means lots of room for a couple of mega watts
worth of solar panels on the roof to power a couple of tens of charging
points. The resulting power can be delivered to super chargers at the loading
docks and the vans can probably suck up enough power while they are loading to
cover the next round. And of course, using solar power probably gets Amazon
access to some nice subsidies and grants as well as lots of great PR about how
green they are.

Why partner with Rivian for this? Well, Amazon is faced with a market where
the existing manufactuers are dragging their heels a bit. There are some
electrical vans on the market but not quite at the scale needed and most of
the big manufacturers are not shipping them in meaningful volume yet. Nothing
like a Tesla like small startup to shake that up a little. Best case Rivian
actually delivers. Worst case Amazon just buys electric vans from somebody
else (whomever steps up). Also, they just put all the third party delivery
companies on notice that Amazon wants to go electric. They too would need to
charge these vans and I bet they can do that on favorable terms at Amazon's
chargers in Amazon's distribution centers. Yep, they'd be buying electricity
from Amazon to deliver for Amazon. Either way, the vans become electric and
Amazon has a need for charging infrastructure.

Best case of course this works out for Rivian as intended and Amazon gets a
nice return on investment. From their point of view, they already have a great
drive train for a ridiculously overpowered pickup truck and they are already
building production capacity for that. Delivery vans don't need four wheel
drive and probably also don't really need 400 miles of range. Meaning, a
smaller variant of the drive train but with the fast charging capability would
be perfect for one of these vans. Bonus points for making them capable of
autonomous driving; which is something Rivian is investing in.

Finally, why 100K? Very simple. Amazon has hundreds of distribution centers
serviced by hundreds of vans. If you want to electrify all/most of them you'd
need about 100K vans. Ten years is reasonable timeline to electrify the
delivery fleet one way or another.

------
devmunchies
whats the carbon footprint of producing a single van?

~~~
danans
The more correct question is:

Liftime EV-Van Footprint = Production-Footprint(EV-Van) + Operational-
Footprint(EV-Van, lifetime-miles-driven)

vs

Lifetime ICE-Van Footprint = Production-Footprint(ICE-Van) + Operational-
Footprint(ICE-Van, lifetime-miles-driven)

This calculation overwhelmingly favors the EV van, increasingly so as the
carbon footprint of the operational electricity source itself reduces in
footprint (i.e. increasing use of solar, window, nuclear, etc). Delivery vans
in particular have a charging profile (late evening through morning) that
matches the peak production of wind.

Note that the carbon footprint of petroleum use is strictly higher than even
the highest carbon sources of electricity, and it has a high extraction cost
also.

~~~
blacksmith_tb
I think it's clear the lifecycle calculation favors the EV, but I don't think
it's night and day[1]. Likely the emissions associated with the manufacture of
the ICE and EV vans are similar (the batteries in the EV may even make it a
little worse). But there's no doubt that the EV is a huge improvement in use,
and switching a large portion of the trucks in our cities to EV would be giant
win for air quality. As you say, electricity generation can continue to get
greener as well, unlike gas production...

1: [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/green-living-
blog/20...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/green-living-
blog/2010/sep/23/carbon-footprint-new-car)

~~~
VBprogrammer
As I write this I'm on the 521 bus in central London. This bus is battery
electric powered. I didn't even realise it was possible until I got on one.

The difference in noise alone is unbelievable. The elimitation of tailpipe
emissions is a huge bonus in a dence city centre. Even if the lifecycle
emissions are the same it would still be worth it.

The only thing I don't like about them is the torque and instant reaction of
the motor make it easy for inconsiderate bus drivers to make the ride quite
unpleasant.

It's one of these if you are interested:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Dennis_Enviro200_M...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Dennis_Enviro200_MMC)

~~~
dharmab
>The only thing I don't like about them is the torque and instant reaction of
the motor make it easy for inconsiderate bus drivers to make the ride quite
unpleasant.

Seems easy enough to solve this with a fly-by-wire "throttle" and some
software to limit max acceleration from a stop.

------
graton
Am I the only one who noticed multiple spelling errors in the article. "whine"
instead of "when", "revelled" instead of "revealed" :(

------
qsymmachus
As far as I'm concerned, this move is pure greenwashing until Amazon stops
collaborating with oil and gas companies to extract fossil fuels faster.

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

~~~
Rebelgecko
The sooner Amazon helps get all of the oil and gas out of the ground, the
sooner we'll be forced to adopt electric cars.

~~~
Robotbeat
Unfortunately, we cannot afford to pull all of the fossil fuels out of the
ground.

There are trillions of barrels of unconventional oil shale (confusingly, not
the same as shale oil) in the Green River formation in Wyoming/Colorado alone.
If it was all extracted and burned and put into the atmosphere (assuming none
makes it as ocean acidification, etc), it'd raise the CO2 level from the
current 400ppm (about 3 trillion tons of CO2 in the atmosphere right now) to
500ppm. Just a single formation.

And there's 5 trillion tons of coal in Alaska, equivalent to about 15 trillion
tons of CO2. Even if just half of that made it into the atmosphere (the other
half going to ocean acidification, weathering, and biomass), we'd have
something like 1400ppm in the atmosphere, which is a very stuffy room. And
that's just one state. Assume Siberia and Canada has just as much or more.

I think if we extracted every last bit of fossil fuels in the ground, we'd
have a CO2 level on the order of 10,000ppm and will have measurably reduced
oxygen levels as well.

~~~
vonmoltke
> And there's 5 trillion tons of coal in Alaska

Say what? There is only 909 billion tonnes of proven coal reserves in the
entire world:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_by_country](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_by_country)

~~~
Robotbeat
Right. Only about 1 trillion in _proven_ _reserves_ , a number which often
increases over time due to technology and economics and exploration.

I was discussing how much actual coal is there. Coal _resources_ , which is a
(relatively) fixed number.

The fellow I was responding to was talking about extracting all the oil and
gas from the ground (not just that which is today known with high certainty
and both technically and economically viable).

For instance, look at this graph of US proved oil reserves. It has climbed for
most of the last 100 years and peaked in 1970 at about 39 billion barrels,
declined and has started rising again:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserves_in_the_United_Sta...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserves_in_the_United_States#/media/File:US_Proved_Crude_Oil_Reserves.svg)
...but that data only goes until 2012. The reserves have kept climbing, and as
of 2017 have now equalled their peak of 39 billion barrels:
[https://www.eia.gov/naturalgas/crudeoilreserves/pdf/table_1....](https://www.eia.gov/naturalgas/crudeoilreserves/pdf/table_1.pdf)

In other words, technology and economics has improved access to fossil fuels
faster than we can burn it.

But it's not like there was a bunch of oil added into the ground. It was there
the whole time. Hence why I'm using _resources_ : It's the ultimate limit.

We cannot rely on Peak Oil (or Peak Coal for that matter) to stop our reliance
on fossil fuels and the ensuing climate change. We just keep getting better
and better at extracting them. Trends in automation of mining do not bode well
for the climate, either.

~~~
vonmoltke
> Right. Only about 1 trillion in proven reserves, a number which often
> increases over time due to technology and economics and exploration.

I get that, but you are claiming that the unproven reserves of one portion of
the US are more than five times the current proven reserves of the entire
world. Where is your evidence for that?

> We cannot rely on Peak Oil (or Peak Coal for that matter) to stop our
> reliance on fossil fuels and the ensuing climate change.

No, we need to stop burning them. That is unrelated to _extracting_ them
except for extraction being the first step in the process.

~~~
Robotbeat
Sorry for not providing the citation right away. Here's the evidence (with
discussion and links to source studies) for trillions of tons of coal in
Alaska:
[http://www.groundtruthtrekking.org/Issues/AlaskaCoal/HowMuch...](http://www.groundtruthtrekking.org/Issues/AlaskaCoal/HowMuchCoal.html)

In particular, it links to this 2005 USGS study:
[https://pubs.usgs.gov/dds/dds-077/](https://pubs.usgs.gov/dds/dds-077/)

> "The combined measured, indicated, inferred, and hypothetical coal resources
> in the three areas are estimated to be 5,526 billion short tons ( _5,012
> billion metric tons_ ), which constitutes about 87 percent of Alaska’s coal"

The amount of fossil fuel energy in the ground (if we're very clever about
extracting it) is absolutely vast. Enough to provide current needs for
hundreds or even thousands of years, but to cook the climate and chemically
change the atmosphere to that of a stuffy room long before that.

~~~
de_watcher
We're just changing climate back to what is was way before us. Current state
was created by the organisms who went into the ground. Our turn now.

------
djsumdog
There is so much pollution that goes into making those vehicles, and all the
waste from the batteries that need to be recycled every 8~10 years. This makes
no sense from an environment perspective. You're better off buying older vans,
that aren't so old they aren't inefficient, and just keep running those.

Plus you're talking about more growth and selling more products, which is just
more waste.

We can't buy ourselves out of environmental disaster. We can't keep consuming.
This feels like lipservices because for us to not destroy our planet, we
actually need to buy fewer goods, that are more durable/fixable, even if they
cost more. It's the opposite of what ever retailer big and small wants.

~~~
Brakenshire
Batteries don’t have to be recycled every 8-10 years, nowhere near. If you
keep them within temperature and leave a safety margin they’ll outlast the
car. There’s already plenty of data for Tesla batteries lasting hundreds of
thousands of miles without significant degradation. Look after Lithium Ion
batteries and they’re good for 1500 cycles, that’s 300k miles for a 200 mile
car, 450k miles for a 300 mile car.

~~~
thfuran
>they’re good for 1500 cycles, that’s 300k miles for a 200 mile car, 450k
miles for a 300 mile car

These aren't average cars, they're delivery vehicles meant to be driving
rather a lot. Just ball parking here, but 100 miles per day, 6 days a week, 50
weeks a year is 300k miles in 10 years. 8-10 years doesn't seem that off the
mark given your numbers.

~~~
Brakenshire
In the special case of delivery vehicles that applies. But the high mileage
also means a phenomenal reduction in carbon emissions and pollution over those
300k miles.

