|
[Image: Amazon]
Amazon: cargo bikes in, robots out
Amazon will spend €1bn to add thousands of electric delivery vehicles and micromobility hubs across UK and the continent, as well as installing fast charging points at warehouses.
“The company currently has around 3,000 zero-emission last-mile delivery vans in Europe. Amazon doesn’t say what percentage of its vans are electric, but does say that these zero-emission vans delivered 100 million packages last year. This investment will allow the company to expand that number to 10,000 vans across Europe by 2025.”
Not just vans:
“Amazon also has “micro-mobility” delivery hubs in 20 European cities that enable delivery by cargo bike and on foot, and it plans to double this network of hubs. Amazon will also buy larger, heavy-duty electric trucks for “middle-mile” shipments. These are vehicles like the Tesla Semi, Freightliner eCascadia, and Volvo VNR electric that move large amounts of goods from ports to distribution centers. Finally, the investment will also cover installation of thousands of chargers at the company’s facilities around the continent.”
More detail on the micromobility hub plans:
“Amazon currently has micromobility hubs in more than 20 cities across Europe, including London, Munich and Paris, and expects to double that figure by the end of 2025. These smaller, centrally-located delivery stations enable deliveries via e-cargo bike and on-foot to bring packages to customers more sustainably.”
However, the home delivery robots are being retired (Starship might be happy at the news?), and 400 people will move to other Amazon teams.
Meanwhile, Uber turns to autonomous vehicle startup Nuro for Eats deliveries - Nuro’s vehicles are designed to carry packages and to travel on public roads.
“Uber Eats customers will be charged the same for delivery, regardless of if it’s a Nuro bot or a human gig worker. However, there may be some cost savings as Nuro bots can’t accept tips.”
Which seems a little unfair to the cute Nuro robotcars. Maybe people will chuck cash inside before the door shuts.
Can insurance fix climate change?
2019: Rising sea levels a manageable concern for re/insurers, says climate expert.
2022: “AXIS Re will completely exit its Property Reinsurance business, which it says is part of its approach to lower volatility from catastrophe risk”.
Insurers have to calculate the likelihood of Bad Things happening, a job that’s getting harder as we dump more carbon/heat into the world (more heat = more change = tougher to predict). So you could think of insurance as an early warning system for climate change. When insuring your house on the coast gets more expensive or impossible, your insurer is telling you it’s getting too risky to live there.
It’s not just buildings insurance. From Jan 2023 re-insurer MunichRe will no longer insure new oil and gas projects. There’s a good explainer of what that means here but basically: high carbon fuel projects are going to find it increasingly hard to get insurance. Insurers raising premiums or turning down oil business may strongly nudge energy firms in a lower carbon direction. (MunichRe’s slogan is “Not if, but how”, maybe they’ll update it to “Not if, but why”.)
Does it make sense to think of climate action *as* insurance?
Products and energy
On the other hand, here’s an useful explanation of just how much modern *stuff* is made from oil and gas industry byproducts:
“Almost all synthetic materials in modern life start near the top of the ladder and are engineered downward in a controlled burn. This makes intuitive sense. The embedded energy to run the process is at least partially inherent in the starting material. Certain high-value materials are worth pushing up the ladder to obtain, but industry evolved the way it did for a reason – it is easier to slowly slide down than climb up.”
This is why swapping out carbon fuels for wind turbines is going to be a long slog. More reading: Vaclav Smil.
Food news
Dairy co-op Arla to pay farmers more for milk if climate targets met.
Making the Case for Intercropping - more than one crop in a field at a time decreases the need for fertilisers.
Dry weather sees Evesham vertical farm's produce demand soar - thanks to weather getting more unpredictable.
Supermarket push to cut waste hits Fareshare food bank donations - demand for food banks surges but reducing waste vs charitable giving is a difficult dynamic.
Facebook meh-taverse
Facebook’s Horizon Worlds metaverse thing has 300,000 users and is gradually rolling out across Europe - “Build the World of Your Dreams”. Some insiders are a bit “grumpy about” it, and apparently it is riddled with bugs (which to be fair to organisations building new things is actually pretty common).
But what isn’t common is that even the employees who are building it are barely using it, says the exec in charge:
“A key issue with Horizon’s development to date, according to Shah’s internal memos, is that the people building it inside Meta appear to not be using it that much. “For many of us, we don’t spend that much time in Horizon and our dogfooding dashboards show this pretty clearly,” he wrote to employees on September 15th. “Why is that? Why don’t we love the product we’ve built so much that we use it all the time? The simple truth is, if we don’t love it, how can we expect our users to love it?””
2 weeks after those internal memos the Facebook metaverse overlords commanded its people to fall in love with Horizons:
“Everyone in this organization should make it their mission to fall in love with Horizon Worlds. You can’t do that without using it. Get in there. Organize times to do it with your colleagues or friends, in both internal builds but also the public build so you can interact with our community.”
Yes, a command is definitely the best way to get people to fall in love with something! Sometimes products have fatal flaws that everyone on the team can see but don’t want to discuss, usually because they hope the flaw can be overcome with hard work and inspiration. A cultural blindspot.
In the case of Horizons though, perhaps it is that the teams working on it can see the flaws, and rather than try overcome them by applying their genius they just think meh and go off to do something else instead.
Various things
“For this crew, the early success of their past companies or careers is usually prologue, and their skills will, of course, transfer to any area they choose to conquer (including magically solving free speech). But what they are actually doing is winging it” - reading the WhatsApp transcripts in the Elon Musk vs Twitter lawsuit.
Gen Z has cancelled the thumbs-up emoji because it's 'hostile'.
Paint one wind turbine blade to save birds and bats - it reduces collisions.
From the Scottish news desk: slightly blootered Glasgow pair heroically try pizza from a vending machine, in the wall of an abandoned shop. It is not a good pizza.
Co-op news
How our users influenced our new forms guidance - part of Co-op’s much larger Experience Library.
Co-op trials reduced lighting in stores to lower energy costs - convenience store lucky dip! Have Co-op ever trialled doors on the fridge displays?
Thank you for reading
Thank you friends, readers and contributors. Send ideas, questions, corrections, improvements, etc by replying or to @rod on Twitter. If you’ve enjoyed reading, please tell a friend! If you want to find out more about Co-op Digital, follow us @CoopDigital on Twitter and read the Co-op Digital Blog. Previous newsletters.
|
