Rivian receives an order of almost 100,000 EVs from Amazon

Amazon and Global Optimism announced The Climate Pledge, a commitment to meet the Paris Agreement 10 years early.

Amazon became the first signatory of this pledge. The Climate Pledge calls on signatories to be net zero carbon across their businesses by 2040—a decade ahead of the Paris Accord's goal of 2050.

By joining The Climate Pledge and agreeing to decarbonise on a faster time horizon, signatories will play a critical role in stimulating investment in the development of low carbon products and services that will be required to help companies meet the pledge. Amazon's previously announced investment in Rivian is an example of this. Rivian is a producer of emissions-free electric vehicles with its headquarters in Plymouth, Michigan and a manufacturing plant in Normal, Illinois. The $440 million investment will accelerate the production of electric vehicles critical to reducing emissions from transportation.

To further advance this goal, Amazon announced the order of 100,000 electric delivery vehicles from Rivian, the largest order ever of electric delivery vehicles, with vans starting to deliver packages to customers in 2021. Amazon plans to have 10,000 of the new electric vehicles on the road as early as 2022 and all 100,000 vehicles on the road by 2030 - saving 4 million metric tons of carbon per year by 2030.

Jeff Bezos, Amazon Founder and CEO, said, “I've been talking with other CEOs of global companies, and I'm finding a lot of interest in joining the pledge. Large companies signing The Climate Pledge will send an important signal to the market that it's time to invest in the products and services the signatories will need to meet their commitments.”

Last week Rivian announced that it had secured an equity investment of $350 million from Cox Automotive. In April this year, the EV start-up had raised $500 million from Ford. Rivian had also secured a series funding of $700 million at the beginning of the year, which was led by Amazon.