Rivian has yet to sell a car, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been making any progress. One of the brand’s current products, a delivery van for Amazon, has been in development for some time. We’ve previously only seen renders and clay models, but now we’re seeing it for real. It moves, it has a complete interior and exterior, and it looks like a supersized Honda E.
We know all of this thanks to a video posted on Amazon’s YouTube channel where the company reveals the van and details some of its delivery drivers’ reactions to the vehicle. Along with their impressions, there’s some B-roll of the van driving down country lanes, and a few brief highlights of the vehicle’s features.
Interestingly, the vehicle seems to have very little Rivian branding at all. The steering wheel has an Amazon logo on it, as does seemingly every other surface where a logo could be embossed—even inside the headlights. But beyond the branding, we can see the van has a touchscreen-based infotainment system, a digital dashboard and controls on the steering wheel for the driver. Everything else that’s plainly evident is a physical feature of the van’s design, like its large rear cargo area, wraparound windshield and futuristic styling. As far as the technical specs of the van go, they’re still unclear.
Amazon plans on purchasing 100,000 of these vehicles from Rivian, which is a big part of the company’s intention to be carbon neutral by 2040. The tech giant has also invested heavily in the brand to get these new vehicles, contributing nearly $1 billion to the company’s efforts in 2019. There’s yet to be an exact date announced for when these cute, Honda E-looking vans will hit the streets, but the video indicates that they will be hitting the road in 2021, which could mean anything from this coming January to December of next year. Until then, you’ll just have to join The Drive in attempting to count all of the Amazon badges on this thing. We could be here for a while.
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