It pays off fast. For my situation in Washington, I'd be paying ~$4.50/gal for an ICE car that gets ~28mi/gal, or ~$0.11/KWh (at the tier-2 rate) for an EV that gets 3.5mi/KWh.

For the ICE car, that's ~6.2 mi/dollar, for the EV it's ~31.8 mi/dollar. ~5x cheaper per mile to drive the ICE. I drive ~15k miles per year, so ~$2.4k in gas, or $470 in electricity - saving ~$2k/year.

This doesn't take into account the lower total cost of ownership of EVs in general. They're simple. They don't need oil changes. The transmission can't go out.

And that's just for me driving once or twice a day; I'm sure the Amazon drivers are putting factors more miles on their cars, so a faster break-even point.

> The transmission can't go out.

Are transmission failures really that common? In nearly fifty years of driving and owning eight different cars I've never had a transmission failure. One of the cars (Volvo Amazon estate car) did 350k miles including the previous owner rallying it for a couple of years. Apart from fixing a leaking radiator when I bought it I never had any problems with the motor or gearbox. We scrapped it just because my wife wanted a newer more comfortable car.

I’ve owned 3 cars in my life, one of them driven into the ground, one high mileage and given away when we moved to the city, and the third we still own. A transmission is the one thing I’ve never had to fix. Now that’s just me. Obviously transmissions do fail, but I’d bet in aggregate, it’s not nearly the most pressing issue. But it is the second most complicated set of moving parts in the car, so when it goes, it’s not cheap.

All that said, electric cars really shine in city driving. No transmission to go, and regenerative braking to save the pads. It’s valid to call it out if that’s your use case like these Amazon trucks.

A lot of the major cars makers have had years of bad transmissions. Just Google “ transmission failure class action” with manufacturer names and you’ll see how many settle. But not all years and not at the same time across manufacturers, so it’s easy to miss bad ones.

A bad transmission design can really leave a mark, particularly when the company using it tries to sweep it under the rug. Talk to owners of vehicles with Ford's "Powershift" dual-clutch automatic transmission and you'll hear nothing but horror stories.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_PowerShift_transmission

I had a Chrysler van and had to replace the transmission twice. Glad to hear you've had better luck than I.

their minivans are notorious for transmission problems

My mom didn't even get one home from the dealership when it seized up on the highway. Something about the solenoid pack but don't take my word for it, I was all of 8.

There was (is?) a time where if you replaced the tranny fluid with anything BUT the exact Chrysler one, it would kill it dead pretty quick. Some people would buy up minivans with dead transmissions at 80k miles or whenever the quick lube place told them to flush the tranny, then clean it out and put the right fluid in and it'd work fine again.

In my anecdotal experience I've found it to be not uncommon in work trucks used for commercial duty over 200k miles. Not sure about in the delivery van space.

It's a different level of wear and tear than a normal commuter passenger vehicle.

I think the bigger savings on a delivery van would be brakes. In constant stop-start driving using the motor for regenerative braking is both an efficiency saver and reduces wear and tear on the mechanical brakes.

"efficiency saver" kinda downplays the fact that the energy is being recovered which was previously just wasted. Not throwing all that energy away is material at Amazon scale.

I come from a country where most people drive manual transmissions, and the rule of thumb is that you're replacing the clutch at 150-250k kilometers. Automatics have torque converters instead of clutches, so that's probably a non-issue. I do imagine that they're much more integrated, and without a sacrificial clutch plate to take load shocks, the entire system will give out after a certain distance. This is all conjecture though.

From my experience I've never had a tranny fail that wasn't beat to death unmercifully.

Clutches wear out, and it is possible to wear out an automatic transmissions' clutches, but I've never had it happen.

Every car I've sent to the junkyard has had a working transmission.

Automatics used to have torque converters. These days they've got multiple clutches are are mechanically more efficient and have more gears than a manual transmission. I still like my manual transmission car though.

Sounds about right. When my '96 BMW 328 finally met the pothole from hell, I was on my 5th clutch at a little over 500,000 miles.

My 1990 Nissan pickup made 380,000 km on its original clutch. 2.4 liters of 4 cylinders totally underpowered will do that. At least a starter every 100k and alternator every 150k though !

You probably don't make as many deliveries as an Amazon driver, who are constantly stopping and parking and starting and backing out of tight spots.

I had a 2002 Saab 9-5 Sedan automatic transmission blow out on the day I bought it. ODO said about 300k km (190k miles give or take). The dealer replaced the car with a younger 9-5 Wagon with lower mileage so I'm kinda glad it did.

That 2002 model is supposed to be a lemon transmission-wise though (even so, 300k seems decent as far as lifespans go).

My Chevy cavalier died due to a transmission issue at around 125k miles. The Schuylkill expressway in rush hour didn't help. Very clonky shifts near the end and it would stall out when trying to find the right gear.

My dad had to replace the transmission in his last two mustangs twice in each. It never fully failed, but it was a nightmare to drive.

You never owned a Chrysler product, did you? They were notorious for taking a transmission from a much smaller car or truck and putting it into a bigger one because on average they would last the life of the 3-yr/36k mile warranty, and not much longer. Same with things like shocks and struts and springs.

GM on the other hand went the exact opposite direction most of the time and put an overengineered heavy duty transmission with maybe slightly cheaper internals into their smaller vehicles.

> GM on the other hand went the exact opposite direction most of the time and put an overengineered heavy duty transmission with maybe slightly cheaper internals into their smaller vehicles.

Eh, the owners of 80's era Chevy Celebrities/Pontiac 6000s/Oldsmobile Cieras/Buick Centuries might like a word.

They were, but not really any more. The problems have largely been engineered out.

Transmissions are tough because they endure a lot of extreme forces. Shift points have the risk of slamming components together.

The one car that I sold because it died on me was due to transmission failure. I’m also at 8, and do not expect either of my current cars to ever have a transmission failure.

Transmissions tend to have a lot of things that move around. Gears might be ok for a long time by themselves, but when there's gear selection, you get extra wear and tear when things don't meet up quite right. And everything gets hot, so you need lubricant/cooling and that can get gunked up by the wear and tear...

And then sometimes things aren't built as designed. The ford HF35 hybrid transmission should be pretty reliable as designed, but many of them were built with bearings (or something) that went bad, leading to an early salvage date for many C-Maxes.

It’s even better for delivery vans, too: EVs thrive in repeated stop-start conditions, which is what Amazon cans frequently do.

It seems like only a matter of time before other similar vehicles that are more industrial make this shift (eg, garbage/recycling trucks). Imagine no more super loud garbage trucks in the mornings…

Given the loudest part of garbage trucks around me is their brakes, I'm thrilled at the prospect of them getting regen.

Where I live the biggest noise is from the loading mechanism and the built in press.

That's not quiet, either. But the sounds from the brakes carry much further, at least for my city's fleet.

I chatted with a friend who used to be a garbage man in a mid-sized west coast city. Most drivers in our area have a daily route, and when they are done, they are done, but paid for the whole's day work.

So they have an incentive to floor the throttle, and slam the brakes. The drivers don't pay for fuel or brake pads out of their salary, the company does, but if they drive like a maniac, they can finish a few hours earlier.

Are accelerometer logs widespread now? Even with 100 USD phone hardware, companies could check drivers are not causing too much wear or causing disomfort to passengers.

Probably not on the radar for many waste companies and municipalities. I'm pretty sure the passengers won't complain, either.

We've had electric garbage trucks in Copenhagen since last year. It's a small but nice improvement.

https://group.vattenfall.com/press-and-media/newsroom/2023/s...

Where I am the electricity I use is makes it about 1/3 the cost to drive an EV over gas.

But for Amazon their drivers are constantly doing stop/starts, which is horrible for fuel efficiency.

So I bet their numbers are way better. And I wasn’t including maintenance which as you mentioned should be tremendous.

Washington is sort of a best case though- you have pretty darn cheap electricity over there.

Energy costs in most of the US are favorable to this math. The cost of energy supply should be pushed down as renewable deployment continues indefinitely.

https://www.globalenergyinstitute.org/average-electricity-re...

California has a lot of renewables, but retail prices have increased rapidly.

Unconstrained distribution costs because of lack of political will to aggressively regulate (PG&E, etc). Mostly a California problem, as long as PG&E is permitted to extract executive comp and profits while minimizing infrastructure investment. Supply costs are plunging during the day due to utility scale solar output.

The reason PG&E rates are skyrocketing in California - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40128003 - April 2024 (26 comments)

After 111 years, SF finally moving to oust PG&E and create a public-power system - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39587901 - March 2024 (13 comments)

https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-insight... | https://archive.today/PeDeH ("April 2024: CAISO sets back-to-back solar peak records in April; power spot prices plunge")

> Spot power prices have been trending lower year on year on lower natural gas spot prices and more renewable generation supply, including hydropower following years of drought.

> CAISO has 19.011 GW of installed solar generation capacity, which accounts for the majority of renewable resources on the grid at 62%, according to the Key Statistics report. Solar capacity has increased nearly 15% compared to a year ago and 26% from two years ago.

> There are currently 28.6 GW of solar projects in the CAISO generation queue, including 13.8 GW that have executed interconnection agreements and nearly 4.5 GW of those have on-line dates expected listed for 2024. Only two solar projects slated to come online in 2024 do not have batteries connected.

https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/US-CAL-CISO ("ElectricityMaps.com: California CAISO Zone")

California has a PG&E regulatory capture problem.

Electricity is very cheap next door in Arizona

Would be a no-brainer to cover warehouses and parking lots with solar and charge the fleet yourself for even less.

Even if you’re not charging the fleet, you can power the warehouse.

As long as you’re using less electricity from the grid overall per day, you’ll save money in the long run.

Except the vehicles are probably in use during the daytime.

It’s common to have a mix where some trucks make 1 route per day and others do several. So you can optimize by rotating loading times, spare vehicles, and having some onsite batteries.

Solar > battery means DC fast charging gets to skip AC>DC losses which are significant. But you don’t need to use 100% of solar’s output to save a lot of money.

Agreed, starts to break down if you live in California and already own a hybrid.

Yeah, I wish I could get remotely close to that cheap electricity in CA.

Solar panels :) it even made sense (for me) in WA at $0.11/KWh.

I’ve already got them (and a battery), but it ain’t cheap! They’re also pressuring everyone to go electric/heat pump for everything, but then I’d have to start paying the extortionate electric rates here once again.

I think you have a typo in your comment. You said that it’s 5x cheaper for ICE, but I think you meant electric

You've no idea how spoiled you are with those prices. UK at current prices and exchange rates:

  Fuel:
  Petrol: (Gasoline) USD7.10/US Gallon
  Diesel: USD7.47/US Gallon

  Electricity:
  Domestic: USD0.36/KWh
  Charging network: USD0.70 - USD1.01/KWh

We also have on average a lot further to go :)

Then again, in San Francisco, I'm paying $0.51/kwh and $5.6/gallon

As a note, I am on a tariff that is 7p/KWh (US0.09), 'off-peak', between the hours of 23:00-05:30 which makes it more affordable.

The lower TCO depends on the intended lifetime of the vehicle. For delivery use cases where the expected lifetime is probably on the order of 5-10 years, it’s believable that TCO is lower.

But if the expected lifetime is “as long as I can drive it,” then TCO is probably not lower, simply because the maximum lifetime of an EV is lower than that of an ICE vehicle. At some point the car will fail – it will need battery replacement (every X years), or it will depend on obsolete infrastructure, etc.

You can drive a 1960 Cadillac today. Will you be able to drive a 2020 Tesla in 2084?

A use case like this is probably one of the best for EV's. Presumably Amazon will be able to have a centralized maintenance facility where new batteries can be installed. They'll be able to price in their own maintenance and resale value will be of no concern.

And they likely have the batteries on the shelf since it’s a fulfillment center and they sell them. Just buy them from their own warehouse. Brilliant.

> It’s amazing how fast we went from rarely seeing an electric Amazon van near me to seemingly most of them being EVs.

Interesting to hear you say that. I've been looking for them but I've still never seen an Amazon EV in the DC metro area.

I happen to live rather close to a large(?) Amazon fulfillment center they just built a few years ago. Our electricity isn’t very expensive either, though it’s not what hydro areas pay.

I don’t know if we’re a test site or it was just easy to get the power installed or what. Perhaps being a new facility meant they just needed new vehicles anyway so it made sense to not buy gas.

But once they started appearing they kept getting more common.

The ability to invest absurd upfront costs and (relatively) cheap access to capital is Amazon's competitive advantage