New Delhi: E-commerce major Amazon India today said its fleet of delivery vehicles in the country will include 10,000 EVs by 2025. Amazon’s rival, Flipkart had in June last year said it aims to replace 40 per cent of its delivery vans with electric vehicles (EVs) by March this year.
The Walmart-owned company has deployed EVs in cities like Delhi, Hyderabad and Bengaluru. Amazon, in a statement, said it piloted electric vehicles in several cities across India in 2019 and is now expanding this initiative across the country.
It added that learnings from the pilot have helped the company create scalable and long-term EV variants to build this large fleet. The announcement comes days after the American e-tail giant had announced investment of $1 billion for digitising small and medium businesses, and creation of one million jobs by 2025. ‘The fleet of 10,000 EVs – including three-wheeler and four-wheeler vehicles – has been designed and manufactured by original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in India,’ Amazon noted in its statement.
In 2020, these vehicles will operate in over 20 cities of India – Delhi NCR, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Pune, Nagpur and Coimbatore, among others. These EVs are in addition to the global commitment of one lakh EVs in the delivery fleet by 2030 announced in the Climate Pledge signed by Amazon. As part of the pledge, Amazon had announced its plans to introduce 10,000 of EVs into its delivery fleet globally in 2022 and one lakh vehicles by 2030 saving four million metric tonnes of carbon per year by 2030. Amazon India said it has been working with several Indian OEMs to build a fleet of vehicles that ensure sustainable and safe deliveries of customer orders.
The government’s focus to encourage the adoption of electric vehicles in the country, and steps towards setting up of charging infrastructure with the FAME 2 policy has helped the company accelerate and chart its vision for EVs in India, it added. ‘At Amazon India, we are committed to building a supply chain that will minimise the environmental impact of our operations,’ Amazon Vice President, Customer Fulfillment – APAC and Emerging Markets Akhil Saxena said. He added that the company will continue to invest in electrification of its delivery fleet, thereby reducing its dependence on non-renewable resources. In September last year, Amazon India had announced its plan to eliminate single-use plastic in its packaging from its fulfilment centres by June 2020.