shroomwell

They appear to be going for a very, if not all, electric fleet for their deliveries. They’re definitely ramping up to attempt to be competitive with brown and purple in the future. For reference, I believe FedEx has a current fleet size of about 85,000 vehicles, and UPS has about 100,000.

https://www.automobilemag.com/news/a...B891D6D1F787B5

No Land 3

I said it before, if Amazon wants to take over an industry, they have the ability to do so

GoodRide

To add some context, this announcement coincided with the climate walkout planned by nearly 1500 Amazon employees... an obvious move by HQ to “control the narrative”, if you ask me.

Rivian has yet to deliver a single vehicle. No comment from them yet on this multi-billion dollar deal. We’ll see, I guess.

6Badger9

Nothing says helping the environment with 100,000 electric vans, powered by batteries that are mined from the earth. (Not very clean mining at that).

Birdsmash

...and electricity production never harms the environment. Bahaha

rickair7777

FDX and UPS were always pretty secure due to the vast scope and costs associated with starting up a national (to say nothing of international) overnight delivery system.

But the same could be said of the big satellite launch service providers, who were so comfortable that they didn't even bother to compete, instead just teamed up under one brand. The tech billionaires turned that industry on it's ear.

The silver lining for pilots though, is that in this climate they will not be able to go cheap if they want to reliably staff a large number of planes in a short period. As expensive as managers think we are, we're still cheaper than fully loaded planes which don't fly. But I could see them doing some sort of "Uber Crew" model where "independent contractors" bid for trips in real time using their phone. And by "Bid" I mean "Lowest Bid".

worstpilotever

Nothing is perfect, but electric cars are far more efficient than gas.

No Land 3

Nuclear power is the most green way to produce electricity... Just need a really good battery that we don't have to rely on China for the minerals.

742Dash

It is not so simple.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/a...ssarily-clean/

worstpilotever

Exactly, as I said, nothing is perfect. However, an electric motor is more efficient than a gas engine, meaning more of the energy gets converted to what you want it to be doing (moving the vehicle). An electric vehicle also regenerates energy when it slows down. Does a gas engine do that? Of course the way the electricity is generated plays a part. Of course the raw materials play a part. But those also play a part in gas engines. I believe we will see more and more of a shift to solar and wind energy and less reliance on coal. As that happens electric cars will become more and more efficient and cleaner overall than gas engines.