Amazon grows its e-bike delivery team in New York City

Amazon has made two key hires to its e-bike supply group in New York Metropolis, together with a former Uber supervisor, signaling it could be wanting on the expertise as one other solution to provide sooner supply occasions. 

Alex Vickers joined Amazon in June to function a senior program supervisor on the corporate’s electrical bikes unit. He beforehand labored on the enterprise improvement group at Bounce, an e-bike rental firm which was Uber acquired in 2018 after which offered to mobility start-up Lime in May. Vickers introduced his transfer to Amazon in a LinkedIn post on Monday.

Amazon additionally employed Justin Ginsburgh in June to guide the e-bike group. Previous to Amazon, Ginsburgh co-founded New York Metropolis’s Citi Bike bikeshare service and had management roles at JetBlue and Lyft-owned bikeshare service Encourage, the place he labored alongside Vickers.   

Each Vickers and Ginsburgh are primarily based in New York Metropolis. It is unclear what number of workers are engaged on Amazon’s e-bike group, which is overseen by Amazon’s last-mile supply unit, or what Amazon’s plans are for the expertise. Representatives from Amazon did not instantly reply to a request for remark. 

The latest hires point out Amazon could also be seeking to e-bikes as one other mode of transportation for last-mile supply, the method of choosing up packages from supply stations and dropping them off at doorsteps, which is a crucial and expensive piece of the logistics puzzle for Amazon.

Amazon has invested closely to broaden its last-mile supply capabilities, launching Amazon-branded vans and a community of contracted Flex drivers, in addition to testing self-driving delivery robots and a fleet of delivery drones. It has additionally opened up hundreds of delivery stations throughout the nation over the previous few years, which assist guarantee its two-day, and more and more one-day, supply speeds.

Amazon has experimented with bike supply earlier than. It tested, then later shut down, bike supply for its Prime Now supply service in Seattle and New York Metropolis. 

The corporate has additionally been testing electrical cargo bikes for Entire Meals deliveries in New York Metropolis since final December, as a part of a city-run pilot program geared toward easing congestion and decreasing dependence on cargo vans for deliveries. Amazon continues to develop the group engaged on cargo bike supply in New York Metropolis, in accordance with a job itemizing posted in August.

Different corporations like DoorDash, Uber Eats, Postmates and Grubhub, use bike couriers in New York Metropolis, however they’re largely restricted to meals deliveries.