Amazon drives sustainable shipping with zero-emission electric trucks
Amazon is driving the future of sustainable shipping by expanding zero-exhaust emission deliveries in Yorkshire and across the UK.
Deliveries for Amazon customers in Yorkshire may look a little different in the future after the company announced plans to expand zero-exhaust emission deliveries with the UK’s largest-ever order of electric trucks.
Earlier this year, Amazon announced more than 140 new electric Mercedes-Benz eActros 600 trucks and eight Volvo FM Battery Electric trucks are joining the company’s transport network over the next 18 months as part of the UK’s largest-ever electric heavy goods vehicles (eHGV) order.
Once fully operational, these new eHGVs are expected to transport more than 300 million packages each year with no exhaust emissions. The new electric trucks will haul trailers with products and packages to and from Amazon fulfilment centres, sort centres and delivery stations.
To support the expanded fleet, Amazon will install additional fast-charging infrastructure across key UK sites, including 360kW electric charging points capable of charging the 40-tonne Mercedes-Benz trucks from 20 to 80 per cent in just over an hour. The new electric trucks will have a range of 310 miles (500km) on full charge.
Future of Roads Minister Lilian Greenwood said: “Business has a crucial role to play in decarbonising our roads, and that’s why it’s fantastic to see Amazon place the UK’s biggest ever order of electric trucks, supported in part by the Government’s £200m ‘Zero Emission HGV and Infrastructure Demonstrator’ project. This comes on top of our £2.3 billion to help industry and consumers switch to electric vehicles, supporting jobs, attracting investment and making Britain a clean energy superpower.”
Rail deliveries on track
For the first time in the UK, Amazon has launched rail deliveries at scale.
Products will be loaded onto train carriages on the fully electric West Coast Main Line, which runs between Scotland and the Midlands. The products are picked from stations close to local Amazon delivery and fulfilment centres – ready for sorting and packing ahead of customer deliveries. To further reduce on-road traffic, products are also transported from stations and Amazon’s wider fulfilment network to ferry ports while giving small and medium-sized UK businesses easier access to European markets.
More than 20 million products sold on Amazon are expected to travel on the UK’s electric rail network in 2025, avoiding traffic congestion and carbon emissions, with plans to expand across further rail routes before the end of the year.
Micromobility hubs
Supporting the eHGV, rail and electric vehicle deliveries are Amazon’s micromobility hubs. Micromobility hubs are physical centres within urban areas where packages are sorted before the final leg of their journey. They are usually located within Amazon delivery stations, which represent the last mile of Amazon’s order process.
Normally, packages arrive at these stations from nearby Amazon sortation centres before being loaded onto electric cargo bikes and transported to your doorstep.
Since 2022, Amazon has made more than 150 million deliveries using electric vans and cargo bikes in the UK. Delivery drivers have driven more than 19 million miles in electric vans and cycled more than 900,000 miles on electric cargo bikes on routes that would have been otherwise driven by vans with traditional fuel.
These developments will help take traditional diesel vans and trucks off the UK’s roads, reduce carbon emissions, alleviate traffic congestion, and improve air quality, as part of Amazon’s Climate Pledge commitment to achieve net-zero carbon emissions across its operations by 2040.
What’s next? Delivery by drones
In 2022, shoppers in the US began receiving deliveries from a fleet of electric drones designed, built, and operated by Amazon. Earlier this year, Amazon announced plans to make the fleet of electric drones available for customers in the UK.
The deliveries are made by a part of Amazon called Prime Air. After successfully delivering thousands of packages to customers in the US, the Prime Air team is now taking steps to start planning for initial flights from Amazon’s fulfilment centre in Darlington.
Amazon’s Prime Air team will be lodging a planning application with the local authority to seek permission to build flight operations facilities, as well as applying for authorisation from the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to fly drones in the airspace. Once those agreements are in place, Amazon will begin hiring team members in the UK to launch drone delivery.
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