Rivian Amazon Prime delivery van details found in NHTSA VIN document

Rivian filed papers with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that shone a touch more light on vehicles that will be more important to Rivian in the short-term than its R1T pickup and R1S SUV. Those would be the 100,000 Electric Delivery Vans (EDV) arriving initially and exclusively in the service of Amazon Prime shipping. Picked up by the Rivian Owners Forum, the VIN documents now with NHTSA identify a "Z" variant for Amazon and an "S" variant for Service. The latter could indicate that fleets and the buying public will get a crack at the electric haulers once Amazon's exclusive deal runs out.

There will eventually be three variants, all known by how many cubic feet of cargo space they provide. The first two to start spreading Amazon smiles will be the EDV 500 and EDV 700, followed at some point by an EDV 900. Drivetrains will come in three flavors, either single-motor front-wheel drive, dual-motor front-wheel drive, and dual-motor all-wheel drive. Rivian hasn't shared all the specs about the batteries that will power those motors. The carmaker's IPO filing said the two smaller vans have been engineered to go 150 miles on a charge, although internal testing showed the EDV 700 able to go 201 miles on a charge. The EDV 900 is thought to have the smallest battery and a shorter range of 120 miles, being aimed at markets with high population densities where a few stops at skyscraper apartment buildings can empty out a van. 

The vans share basic components with Rivian's retail pickup and SUV, but they'll be built on a separate "low-feature-content" line at the Normal, Illinois, plant. Even their skateboards differ from the consumer models, the workhorse Amazon vans sitting on a Rivian Commercial Vehicles steel ladder-frame platform as opposed to the aluminum skateboard underpinning the R1T and R1S.

Rivian spoke to Amazon drivers to figure out how to give them a better tool for the job. For comfort, the drivers get features like climate-controlled seats with heated armrests, handles and steps made for easier ingress and egress in any weather, lots of lighting, and an infotainment touchscreen. For safety, there's a hinged door on the driver's side that protects better in a side-on crash than a sliding door, and radar and camera arrays enable ADAS like automatic emergency braking and lane-keep assist.

The first 300 units of the EDV 500 are expected to show before the end of this year in 15 major U.S. markets. By the end of 2022, Rivian said it expects to have 10,000 vans in Amazon service in 500 and 700 capacities, reaching a total of 100,000 vans covering all three trims by 2025. The EDV 500 will make the trip overseas, being produced in right- and left-hand drive, and Rivian apparently hopes the van will make it into a "Cars" movie.

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