Featured Amazon orders 100k delivery vans from Rivian

The U.S. Post Office would be a good candidate for a BEV. They need something to replace their current 140,000 Grumman LLV's (long life vehicles).

Those were introduced in 1994 and are reaching the end of their 30 year design life. The average delivery route is 18 miles. Even though they have a 2.5 L four cylinder, they only get 9 mpg because they typically make 500 to 700 stops every day. They consume over 280,000 gallons or $700,000 in fuel every day.

Not all the routes are short enough to make BEV's practical but even if they replaced 100,000 LLV's with BEV's, it would result in a huge operating cost savings for the Post Office.

 

What if the deal was two boxes? They pick one up when they drop the other off. That way they always have an empty to ship me the next thing, I have an empty in case I need to do a return. They’re identically sized, so it’ll fit in the truck for sure. I’m sure they have the database and accounting power to charge me for an extra pickup if I forget to put the empty out on schedule.

Dairies figured this out decades ago- including using EVs to do it. What’s so terrible about that model?

 

My bad.
In the case of a reused item, plastic would last far longer than cardboard. The Post Office has been using them for decades now, and some in service might be that old.

They can still sell the glass and metal. Then there is some that might burn the paper products for power.

Nothing wrong with it, but it may not be practical when there is a longer turn around time. With dairies, they were going out to the customer's house everyday or every other day. For most Amazon customers, it is probably once a week or even month. Amazon would need to dedicate more space for storing plastic boxes.

PS: Most of my Amazon boxes end up as weed block in my garden.

 

I thought about that too. Yes, they’ll need some warehouse space for the box waiting for my next order. But why don’t they just store other products in it until then? A bin is a bin. They’re already using sophisticated systems to manage their warehouse shelves, and it doesn’t seem like much of a stretch for them to go one further and store the things their AI thinks I’ll order next.

If they’ve got their own trucks running regular routes, my box only needs a space on that truck a day per week- or maybe just a day per month.

Thanks for the tip on cardboard as weedblocker, I’m going to look into that. My garden is relatively untended and wild but the harvest has been good anyway. Soooo many peppers this year.

 

Charged EVs | Workhorse electric truck could be the next USPS delivery vehicle

 

postal workers and ev's, a match made in heaven

 

The material last forever...but that doesn't mean that the container would last near that long.
If they had a way o reclaim them and really recycle them then it would be better.

But, for me it wouldn't make any sense. Sometimes I order something that comes in an envelope. Next time it is a big box, next time a smaller box. A re-usable box pair just for one person only really makes sense if you get regular deliveries of the same thing. Maybe perfect for businesses.

Mike

 

Hey, it would be nice if they had a way to reclaim and recycle the single use packaging they’re shipping now. But that just isn’t working out very well.

I readily agree that it’s less than ideal to use a larger plastic box to ship a small item, but doing so prevents that small box or envelope from being “recycled” (collected separately and then thrown into a landfill anyway).

An electric truck dramatically reduces the environmental penalty of hauling half-empty boxes around- so let’s take advantage of it!

Materials recycling in the USA is less than successful and appears to be getting worse, but electric trucks are right around the corner. Let’s maximize the gains on our strengths and eliminate dependencies in our weak areas.

 

Many of those envelope packages can't go into recycling to begin with.

Plastic doesn't recycle well. Remelting it changes it, so it isn't the same material. Which is why milk bottles get turned into composite lumber, and not back into bottles. Converting it back into a syn-crude is probably the best path in terms of reusing it, and the processes for that can work with plastics, like the soft plastic everybody wants in their car, that aren't recyclable now.

 

I was wondering if the Amazon RiviVan mega-order was perhaps a distraction from their truck and SUV project, but then along came Musk and dumped into our lap the Cyborg Truck and ... and ... and ... all of a sudden, the R1T looks dated, dawdy, miniscule and awfully too expensive.

Disrupted!

 

#2,4,5,6, ~7* Plastics can be converted to diesel fuel or gasoline at about 98% efficiency using a simple pressure vessel low heat (500F) and a column/sill.
Plastic gas costs about 1/4 to make as compared to crude and the only emissions are methane and co2 (that you could burn)
Any contamination (food, paper, organically) turns into carbon monoxide and methane (also burnable)

Japan made a consumer table top version of their Blest plastic to gas machine over a decade ago to make it easier for residential Japanese citizens to dispose of plastic bags, etc (Japan makes it challenging to get rid of waste)
The person could then just dump the contents from the machines container into their gas tank.

Too bad our government is afraid of doing the right thing, (turning plastic to fuel is much safer than recycling)
it’s only recently that our first plastic to fuel facility is starting
(though some homemade systems are going on 20 years old)

 

Here's the opposite take. some think the Tesla truck reveal was such a disaster / oddity ..... that the pickup reveal will actually give rivian more of a toehold. Coincidentally - this actually brings the somewhat zombie thread back on topic after it took a amazon waste /echo / packing materials detour.

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hmm... tesla experience and charging infrastructure, or rivian beginner, better looking'?

 

I do not know..I really like the looks of the cybertruck. Of course, I really like bladerunner too.

 

I am certain Rivian is going to be fine, but I am not so sure if the R1T would turn into a significant commercial product. We don't know what the number of R1T pre-orders is, and how firm they will turn out to be. And what does Ford really want with its $0.5bn investment in Rivian - surely not to subsidize its competitor? I can see the following scenario: the R1T and R1S will remain technology demonstrators, perhaps sell in small series, while Rivian focuses on manufacturing Amazon EVans and skateboard chassis for a Ford-branded EV in foreseeable future.

I think most people, if you ask them in a correct way, without putting words into their mouths, will not say that the Cyborg truck is ugly - there is nothing intrinsically ugly about it. Also, most people would probably not describe the R1T as a breathtaking beauty.

 

i'd say it's more shocking than ugly. i'm slowly warming to it

 

It's just different. So different - it defies the norm. And nothing's more difficult than for older folks to accept change.
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The Rivian truck looks like any other truck; the Cyborg truck looks like itself. Not a bad thing.

I don't see how this is an "older folks" fault that in the past 20 years there has been little to no innovation in the pickup trucks exterior design - apart from giving them bigger and bigger noses . Now somebody needs to muster the chutzpah to begin changing the whole layout to match the new powertrain specifics, and to truly maximize the advantages, offered by it.

 

you got that right. i don't even like changing my underwear...

 

Thus the second part of my post.