Amazon's new electric delivery vans will soon be on the road in some US cities, possibly as early as today.

This new fleet of vehicles, designed in partnership with EV manufacturer Rivian, has been in the works for the past three years, to some extent. The two companies joined forces in 2019 when Amazon launched its Climate Pledge, which aims to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2040. Whether Amazon will meet that carbon-reduction goal remains to be seen, but the new fleet of EVs is certainly a step toward that goal.

The main point of EVs is that they are much cleaner and better for the environment than standard gasoline vehicles. So of course one of the main benefits of replacing a fleet of delivery trucks/vans with these vehicles is reducing the damage to the environment. There are a lot of Amazon delivery vehicles on the market and those emissions add up.

But delivery EVs also have other, less obvious benefits. There’s a greater focus on driver comfort and safety. Enhanced visibility and other built-in sensors should help keep pedestrians and other drivers safer on the road, too. And Amazon believes its newly integrated driver-assist technology will make routing packages (and, by extension, deliveries) easier, safer, and faster.