Amazon India to have 10,000 EVs in its delivery fleet by 2025

Amazon India is set to include 10,000 EVs (electric vehicles) to its fleet of delivery vehicles in the country by 2025, the company said on Monday.

The firm had launched successful pilots across cities in 2019, and the learnings from these pilots helped it create scalable and long-term EV variants to build this large fleet, the company said in a statement.

The development comes after the Seattle-headquartered ecommerce giant's CEO and founder Jeff Bezos visited India and announced an investment of $1 billion in the country over the next six years to onboard and digitise MSMEs (micro, small and medium enterprises).

The initiative is part of the company’s climate pledge signed in September 2019, where it committed to including 1,00,000 EVs in its delivery fleet globally by 2030. The company said its aim is to reduce carbon emissions and the environmental impact of delivery operations.

“At Amazon India, we are committed to building a supply chain that will minimise the environmental impact of our operations. We will continue to invest in the electrification of our delivery fleet, thereby reducing our dependence on non-renewable resources,” Akhil Saxena, vice president (customer fulfillment -- APAC and emerging markets), Amazon, said.

The fleet of delivery vehicles will include three and four wheelers that have been designed and manufactured in India. In 2020, these vehicles will operate in over 20 cities, including Delhi NCR, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Pune, Nagpur and Coimbatore.

To reduce packaging waste, the company in September last year said it would eliminate single-use plastic in its packaging by June this year.

The firm is also looking to employ over one crore people in the next six years -- a nearly 1.5 times increase in its workforce.