Amazon expects its electric vehicle (EV) fleet in India to cross 20,000 over the next year, from more than 15,000 currently, as it expands electric trucking and charging infrastructure, a senior executive said on Tuesday.
The e-commerce giant is working with vehicle manufacturers and financing partners to make electric vehicles commercially viable for its delivery network. It is also increasing the utilisation of existing vehicles through better route planning.
“We have 15,000 EVs…So when you meet next time this year, it will be much higher than 20,000,” Abhinav Singh, vice-president (operations) for APAC, Middle East, Africa and Turkey at Amazon, said in an interview with Business Standard. He clarified that this was an expectation, not a formal target. Amazon had achieved its earlier goal of 10,000 electric vehicles by 2024, a year ahead of its 2025 deadline.
Singh was speaking on the sidelines of Amazon’s announcement on Tuesday that it would deploy 3,000 electric trucks in partnership with Tata Motors over three years. Amazon’s carrier partners (third-party companies) will own and operate the vehicles, while the company will provide freight demand and work with manufacturers and financing companies to support their deployment.
EVs cost 20-25 per cent more upfront than conventional diesel vehicles, but their daily operating costs are 10-15 per cent lower, Singh said.
“The base case for electric vehicles, it has to start with the TCO,” Singh said, referring to total cost of ownership, or the overall cost of buying and operating a vehicle. He said the economics improve when trucks carry goods for more kilometres instead of making empty trips or remaining idle.
Amazon is trying to improve vehicle utilisation by connecting multiple deliveries and routes. The company has established 10 charging yards across India, including near major logistics centres in Delhi, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Chennai and Jaipur. Each yard can charge 35 trucks simultaneously, Singh said.
Charging takes between 45 minutes and 1.5 hours, depending on the vehicle and battery size. Amazon plans to expand the infrastructure according to freight demand rather than follow a fixed target for the number of charging yards.
“It is a function of where I can get the math to work out,” Singh said, explaining the approach to adding charging capacity. The company evaluates whether routes have sufficient freight demand and return loads to make electric trucks viable. This can be difficult on routes where vehicles carry goods in one direction but find little cargo to transport on the return journey.
Amazon is also working with Tata Motors on electric trucks designed specifically for e-commerce cargo, he said.
Singh said e-commerce shipments are often large in volume but relatively light in weight, making the space available inside the container important. The companies are working on vehicle configurations, battery sizes and driving ranges suited to different transportation requirements.
Amazon and Tata Motors are also developing a larger 32-foot truck variant with a dedicated sleeping area for a second driver, separate from the driving cabin. “To ensure safety of the driver and give them the right amount of rest, we are actually inventing with them a different cabin,” Singh said. Amazon is also working with Tata Motors on double-axle configurations for operations that require vehicles to carry heavier loads.
Singh said Amazon had invested around Rs 2,800 crore in its network expansion and operations earlier this year, in addition to more than Rs 2,000 crore in the previous year. The cumulative investment was nearly Rs 5,000 crore over two years. He clarified that this included fleet operations and was not spending exclusively on electric vehicles or charging infrastructure.
Amazon is also relying on railways and biofuels to reduce transportation emissions. Singh said rail transport produces about one-third of the carbon emissions per tonne compared with road transport. The company began working with Indian Railways in 2019 and now uses more than 160 trains or routes, he said, though he declined to disclose the volume of freight transported by rail.
