Amazon has ordered 10 battery electric trucks from Lion Electric, and the first two will be delivered this year. Amazon plans to use Lion’s trucks in its middle-mile trucking operations, transporting items within the company’s network.

Lion will provide a training session for Amazon’s drivers, and will also establish a maintenance program for the trucks. The trucks will be manufactured at Lion’s Canadian facility, which has a current capacity to produce 2,500 electric trucks per year. Lion is also planning to open a larger manufacturing facility in the US.

Quebec-based Lion Electric manufactures electric Class 5 to Class 8 commercial trucks, as well as buses and minibuses for the school, paratransit and mass transit segments. The company has delivered over 300 all-electric school buses in the US and Canada. Lion designs and builds all its vehicles’ components, including chassis, battery packs, truck cabins and bus bodies. 

Marc Bedard, CEO and founder of Lion, said, “This vehicle delivery for Amazon represents a very significant milestone for Lion. Designing and manufacturing all-electric vehicles is a challenging and lengthy process. We’ve been at it for more than 10 years now; we know what works in practice, but also what only works on paper. We are in a unique position to disrupt the heavy-duty truck segment by offering an unmatched all-electric product, as we have already done in the school bus segment.”