How Amazon Became the Largest Private EV Charging Operator in the US

For the ICE car, that's ~6.2 mi/dollar, for the EV it's ~31.8 mi/dollar. ~5x cheaper per mile to drive the ICE. I drive ~15k miles per year, so ~$2.4k in gas, or $470 in electricity - saving ~$2k/year.

This doesn't take into account the lower total cost of ownership of EVs in general. They're simple. They don't need oil changes. The transmission can't go out.

And that's just for me driving once or twice a day; I'm sure the Amazon drivers are putting factors more miles on their cars, so a faster break-even point.

Interesting to hear you say that. I've been looking for them but I've still never seen an Amazon EV in the DC metro area.

1. The CO2 of the Amazon delivery needs to be taken into account (apportioned to the number of drops), vs delivery to store. Delivery to stores is highly efficient compared to last mile.

2. Most Amazon purchases probably wouldn't directly result in less trips to the supermarket (i.e. am I driving to the supermarket just to pick up one item, or am I going there anyway and picking up everything I need when I am there?)

[1]: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-56628745

You can ignore any environmental impact, the main driver for this is that it's much cheaper to operate an EV van for last-mile deliveries.

And does Amazon own the warehouses outright, or do they lease them?

(Not private thank you very much)

Amazon is very often in a position to dictate terms of an agreement, but here they needed the utility's assistance. Amazon had to figure out how to negotiate the landscape.

Draw attention to https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/electric-vehicle-myths#Myt... specifically the lifecycle green house gas chart.

An EV may have fairly high CO2 emissions during production, but much of that is associated with mining of metals/minerals. Those are generally recyclable. Large scale commercial recycling of EV batteries is already happening. So those CO2 emissions are not for just one vehicle. It’s for many vehicles far into the future.

The CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels will never benefit anything but the one vehicle it’s propelling forward.

You’ve also gotta keep in mind that the mining and industrial transportation sector is also being decarbonised, sometimes with the same EV technology that EV cars are made with. Electric mining dump trucks is now a reality. Keep the long term picture in mind: we actually have a very viable pathway to eliminate whatever minor CO2 emissions are associated with EVs by just pouring more investments and R&D into EV technology.

"""Transportation activities generate carbon emissions through the combustion of fossil fuels when vehicles are driven, the manufacturing of vehicles, and the supply chain for fuels. The emissions model for transportation covers emissions associated with “well-to-wheels” impacts (e.g.,extracting, refining, distributing, and consuming transportation fuels) and “vehicle” impacts (e.g., manufacturing, maintaining, and disposing of vehicles). These impacts are reported as emissions factors based on grams of CO₂e per kilometer basis."""

Tldr; for consumer vehicles, break even point for emissions was roughly 40k miles in the EU, and 50k in the US. After that it was a ~net positive vs equivalent gasoline model. For commercial use cases where 50k miles can be done many times over in a single year (and expected vehicular lifecycle is much much longer), it should be pure gravy.