Amazon Electric Vans Powered By 17,000 EV Chargers

Amazon’s Maple Valley, Washington, warehouse is built for speed. At night, big rigs pull up to one end to unload boxes and padded mailers – some after a short drive from a bigger warehouse down the road, others following a flight in the hold of a cargo plane. Waiting employees scan, sort and load them into rolling racks.

Before 7 a.m. each day, many of those racks are wheeled out to dozens of vans lined up in four painted lanes. It’s the starting line at a Formula One race, but for $22-an-hour delivery drivers who ferry bottles of shampoo and packs of batteries to suburban Seattle doorsteps.