How Amazon became the largest private EV charging operator in the U.S.

financialpost.com:

Amazon.com Inc.‘s Maple Valley, Washington, warehouse is built for speed. At night, big rigs pull up to one end to unload boxes and padded mailers – some after a short drive from a bigger warehouse down the road, others following a flight in the hold of a cargo plane. Waiting employees scan, sort and load them into rolling racks.

Before 7 a.m. each day, many of those racks are wheeled out to dozens of vans lined up in four painted lanes. It’s the starting line at a Formula One race, but for $US22-an-hour delivery drivers who ferry bottles of shampoo and packs of batteries to suburban Seattle doorsteps.

Their routes, the last step in a journey that can take products thousands of miles, are the source of a large chunk of the carbon emissions Amazon has pledged to eliminate in the coming decades.

The solution lies in the parking lot across the street: 309 Siemens electric vehicle chargers, which power delivery vans built by Rivian Automotive Inc. Making deliveries without tailpipe emissions, and increasing the size of the electric fleet, is among the most straightforward ways Amazon can wipe carbon from its operations.

In a little more than two years, Amazon has installed more than 17,000 chargers at about 120 warehouses around the United States, making the retail giant the largest operator of private electrical vehicle charging infrastructure in the country. “We’ve figured out the path,” said Tom Chempananical, who oversees Amazon’s fleet of last-mile delivery vehicles.

If Amazon can show that it meets their climate goals while also meeting their package-delivery goals, we can show this all actually works

Logistics companies like United Parcel Service Inc. and FedEx Corp. have rolled out their own ambitious electric