Walmart and Amazon sign deals to add new EVs to their fleets

Retailers are getting charged up about electric vehicles.

Walmart will add thousands of electric delivery vans from General Motors subsidiary BrightDrop to its fleet, GM announced yesterday, while automaker Stellantis said it’s set to sell its latest EV innovation to Amazon.

It’s electric: Walmart’s deal will bring on 5,000 BrightDrop vans, set to start hitting the road by 2023 and fuel the retailer’s goal to operate a zero-emissions fleet by 2040.

• The move will support its plan to scale its InHome delivery service from 6 million to 30 million households by year’s end and hire 3,000+ delivery drivers.
• FedEx also upped its 2020 order of 500 BrightDrop EVs to 2,000 yesterday.

“As important as it is that we save our customers time and money through convenient delivery options, it’s just as important that we focus on creating a more sustainable last mile delivery fleet that avoids emissions,” Tom Ward, SVP of last mile, Walmart US, said in a statement.

Meanwhile, with its new deal, Amazon will be the first commercial customer for Stellantis’s new Ram ProMaster Battery Electric Vehicle—debuting in 2023—which is optimized for last-mile delivery.

• Amazon isn’t new to EVs: Stellantis has supplied it with thousands of them since 2018. The e-comm giant has also bought over 100,000 EVs from automaker Rivian, the first 10,000 of which are coming by the end of the year.

Full charge: With deliveries skyrocketing, companies are prioritizing EVs to cut greenhouse-gas emissions and save $$ on fuel. The Corporate Electric Vehicle Alliance—which counts Amazon as a member, alongside Best Buy, Clif Bar, Ikea North America, and more—formed in 2020 to help accelerate fleet electrification.—EC