Amazon expands e-cargo bike delivery fleet across London and Manchester

The company has also announced that its micro-mobility expansions has extended across France and Italy

Amazon has announced the expansion of its five-year, £300m investment into its UK transport network ahead of Black Friday. The e-commerce company has unveiled new e-cargo bike hubs in Manchester, and Wembley and Southwark in London.

The e-cargo bikes and walkers are expected to make more than two million deliveries a year and replace the need for conventional van and road transport deliveries. Amazon has confirmed that the new hubs will more than triple the e-cargo bike fleet making deliveries to Amazon’s customers across the capital.

“With more than €1bn committed to electrifying and decarbonising our European transportation network over the next five years, including more than £300m in the UK alone, we remain laser-focused on reaching net carbon zero by 2040,” Amazon’s UK country manager John Boumphrey said.

“These new hubs will not only bring our customers more electric-powered deliveries, but also support local authorities looking for ways to reduce congestion and find alternative transportation methods. We look forward to expanding our e-cargo bike fleet further in the coming months.”

The company has also announced that its micro-mobility expansions has extended across France and Italy, meaning e-cargo bikes and on-foot deliveries are now operational from hubs in more than 20 cities across Europe.

The e-commerce giant is aiming to deliver 50% of its shipments using net-zero carbon methods by 2030. As international shipping and aviation are more challenging to decarbonise than road transport, Amazon has been investing in electric road transport for short-term emissions reductions while backing longer term R&D on aviation and maritime. Earlier this year, Amazon launched its first five pure electric HGVs in the UK.

Amazon notes that more than 1,000 electric delivery vans are in operation across the UK, as well as those electric HGVs.

Earlier this year, Amazon launched its first fleet of electric cargo bikes in the UK in London.

With the first e-cargo bike hub, plus its existing fleet of electric delivery vans and on-foot delivery workers, Amazon estimates that it will make more than five million zero-emission last-mile deliveries in central London each year from 2023.

Within cities like London, electric micro-mobility is particularly important, given the Capital’s 2030 net-zero target and its clean air targets. Businesses also see electric mobility as a way to minimise costs by avoiding Ultra-Low Emissions Zone (ULEZ) costs. Around 2,000 e-cargo bikes were sold in the UK for commercial use by the Bicycle Association’s figures.

Amazon has confirmed that it has made more than five million deliveries so far in 2022 using its e-cargo bikes and electric van fleet within ULEZ.

Sadiq Khan announcement 

In related news, London Mayor Sadiq Khan has announced plans to create 100 electric vehicle (EV) charging bays across 25 “strategic locations” across Greater London in 2023. The bays will be located on some of the capital’s busiest streets.

The tender process for the first batch of sites will kick off at the end of November for charge point operators to bid for. Operators need only bid if they can provide rapid charging solutions.

Announcing the initiative at The Evening Standard’s ‘Plug it in Summit’, Khan reiterated that Greater London already hosts around 11,000 public EV chargers but said that faster deployment will be needed for the city to meet its 2030 net-zero ambitions.

He said: “I am in no doubt that the shift to EVs is imperative to cleaning up our air and bringing down harmful emissions. As a city, we’ve travelled an impressive distance in a relatively short period of time in terms of rolling out the necessary infrastructure and encouraging the uptake of EVs.

“But the gravity of the threats we face from the climate crisis and toxic air pollution demand that we now redouble our efforts and go even further, even faster.”