Ben & Jerry's goes EV with zero-emission Rivian scoopmobiles
The Vermont sweet treat maker is among the first high-profile customers for Rivian's commercial vans since the exclusive portion of its deal with Amazon ended in February.
The vans will debut at the South by Southwest entertainment festival that starts March 7 in Austin, Texas. The rest of this year, they'll travel across the country to community events for Rivian owners and around Vermont.
Sign up for the weekly Automotive News Mobility Report newsletter for the latest developments at the intersection of transportation and technology.
'Collaborating with the Ben & Jerry's team to build the next generation of electric scoop trucks has been an incredible experience,' Brian Gase, Rivian's senior director of prototype development, said in a statement. 'It's one of those projects that just makes the team smile.'
The Ben & Jerry's vans are based on Rivian's Delivery 500 model, which has an estimated range of 161 miles between charges.
Rivian has delivered thousands of vans to Amazon since 2022 and in February opened up sales to other businesses.
'Working with Rivian, an industry leader that is committed to sustainability is an ice cream dream come true,' said Sean Slattery, Ben & Jerry's U.S. integrated marketing project lead. 'Today, Rivian helped Ben & Jerry's reduce our reliance on fossil fuels in a small way, while making things a little bit cooler ... which, as an ice cream company, is extremely difficult to do.'
Have an opinion about this story? Tell us about it and we may publish it in print. Click here to submit a letter to the editor.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
12 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Amazon Shares Pay the Price of Remaining ‘Show-Me' Story With AI
(Bloomberg) -- In a stock market obsessed with artificial intelligence, Inc. is losing ground. A Photographer's Pipe Dream: Capturing New York's Vast Water System Chicago Schools Seeks $1 Billion of Short-Term Debt as Cash Gone A London Apartment Tower With Echoes of Victorian Rail and Ancient Rome Festivals and Parades Are Canceled Amid US Immigration Anxiety Princeton Plans New Budget Cuts as Pressure From Trump Builds The company's shares have been lagging the Nasdaq 100 Index for most of the year, and the gap has only widened in the two weeks since Amazon's July 31 earnings disappointment. The tech-heavy benchmark is up nearly 13% this year, more than twice Amazon's 5.5% gain. The shares are in the bottom half of Nasdaq 100 performers this year and they now trade near their biggest discount to the index on record, after spending most of the past two decades priced at a significant premium. Amazon is trading at about 26 times forward earnings estimates, compared with more than 27 times for the Nasdaq 100. The culprit for the latest decline was weaker-than-expected growth in Amazon's cloud-computing business, which sparked concerns that it's losing market share. It was one more concern for investors frustrated that Amazon's AI investments aren't doing enough to lift its financial results, the way they are for other tech giants like Microsoft Corp. and Meta Platforms Inc. Wall Street pros are even turning the company's traditional strength, the diversity of its businesses, against it, saying that Amazon's stock price is being held back by not being strictly an AI investment. 'For a lot of investors, Amazon just isn't a pure-play way to play a theme you believe in,' said Eric Clark, portfolio manager of the Rational Dynamic Brands Fund. 'People want purity in their investments. And if you want that, Amazon looks like a company that's watered down by all the different businesses.' Amazon still gets the majority of sales from e-commerce, but its aggressive investments in a wide range of businesses, from Amazon Web Services to Whole Foods, have long made the stock attractive to growth-minded investors. Last week, Amazon said it plans to more than double the number of cities where it offers same-day grocery deliveries. But with AI now dominating the conversation on Wall Street, that model is suddenly less appealing. While Amazon Web Services remains the leader in the business of renting computing power, its 17% revenue growth in the second quarter was dwarfed by smaller rivals. Sales at Microsoft's Azure unit were up 39% and Google Cloud's sales rose 32%. In addition to Microsoft and Meta, investors have bid up the shares of Oracle Corp. and CoreWeave Inc., which are investing heavily to beef up AI computing capacity. Oracle recently took another major step into AI computing services, cutting a deal with OpenAI last month to supply 4.5 gigawatts of additional data center power in the US, and its stock price is up almost 50% this year. Nvidia-backed CoreWeave, which provides cloud computing services, has seen its shares more than double since its March initial public offering. 'This new cohort of hyperscalers are going to be the companies we're talking about in five years time,' said Clare Pleydell-Bouverie, co-manager of the Liontrust Global Innovation team. 'We're not seeing the same AI induced acceleration' from Amazon. Still, many investors remain confident that Amazon's investments will pay off in the long run by improving efficiency and customer targeting across its businesses. The stock remains one of the most popular on Wall Street, with more than 90% of the 82 analysts who cover it rating it a buy — and none recommending selling. That's a higher buy percentage than Meta or Alphabet Inc., according to data compiled by Bloomberg. For Clark, Amazon looks 'under-appreciated' right now, but it's only a matter of time until its AI investments start boosting its bottom line, especially in cloud computing. 'It isn't a good idea to bet against AWS,' he said. Top Tech Stories Apple Inc. is expanding iPhone production in India at five factories, including a pair of recently opened plants, as it seeks to lessen its reliance on China for US-bound models. SoftBank Group Corp. agreed to buy $2 billion of Intel Corp. stock, a surprise deal to shore up a struggling US name while boosting its own chip ambitions. OpenAI is launching an affordable new subscription plan in India, seeking to expand its artificial intelligence offerings in one of the world's biggest internet service markets. Apple Inc. will no longer be forced to provide a so-called backdoor to American users' data to the UK government, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said Monday in a post on X. The Trump administration is in discussions to take a stake of about 10% in Intel Corp., according to a White House official and other people familiar with the matter, a move that could see the US become the beleaguered chipmaker's largest shareholder. Earnings Due Tuesday Earnings Postmarket: Keysight --With assistance from David Watkins. Foreigners Are Buying US Homes Again While Americans Get Sidelined What Declining Cardboard Box Sales Tell Us About the US Economy Women's Earnings Never Really Recover After They Have Children Americans Are Getting Priced Out of Homeownership at Record Rates Yosemite Employee Fired After Flying Trans Pride Flag ©2025 Bloomberg L.P. Sign in to access your portfolio
Newsweek
15 minutes ago
- Newsweek
Rivian Signals It Wants to Move Even More Upscale
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. The immediate future of Rivian relies heavily on lower-cost electric vehicles than the R1S SUV and R1T truck of today. But, a more luxurious Rivian is on the horizon, a company spokesperson told Newsweek at The Quail, A Motorsports Gathering. The new Rivian R2 SUV is coming to market later this year, expected to be priced to start at less than $50,000. The smaller R3 SUV will arrive after R2 and is expected to cost even less. Clues about the future of Rivian's flagship models are hiding in plain sight. The company has released more powerful and pricier versions of the R1T (starting MSRP $70,990) and R1S ($76,990) since its debut. They now top out well over $110,000 when all the options boxes are checked. At The Quail, the company showed the R1S Quad Pebble Beach, which was auctioned off earlier in the week at the Broad Arrow Monterey Jet Center Auction for $175,000, $45,000 more than its auction estimate. Proceeds from the auction benefited the WaterAid and #TeamWater charities. Rivian R1S Quad Pebble Beach pictured on the Monterey Peninsula. Rivian R1S Quad Pebble Beach pictured on the Monterey Peninsula. Rivian The SUV was exclusively commissioned by the company for the auction. It's a study in bespoke materials, paint and processes. The car is coated in a Monterey Silver paint finish, a seven-step process that required the company to paint the body in white the color black before adding shimmering green-gold hues and clear coat. A traditional R1S features a two-step paint process. Its wheels are a bespoke, two-tone, hand-painted finish. "These wheels were specifically designed for this truck," Jeff Hammoud, Rivian's chief design officer, told Newsweek, noting that it's very difficult in a mass production process to create a similar effect. The elegance of the exterior is accentuated by a colorful and hand-crafted interior, much of which was inspired by the sunset over the Pacific Ocean. Floor mats that are hand-dyed using paint spray feature a blue-to-orange ombre look, which carries over to the speaker housings and other gear and button surrounds. "This was actually hand-stained by my team," Hammound said, pointing to the mats, explaining that it took many trials to figure out just the right way to apply the coloring. The Pebble Beach project started in April. Noting the time it takes to create a single bespoke model, Hammound said that the goal of the team is to do one per year, at least for now. "We love this car. We like the interior colors. We love the exterior color... It gets the customers excited about a new color space that maybe we wouldn't have tried had we had to think about mass production," he said. "Being able to try something a little bit different and not worrying about exactly selling 1000s of these gives us the courage to maybe try something we wouldn't necessarily do." But, don't look for Rivian to get into bespoke commissions much further anytime soon. "We really try to focus more on curated color and material trends. A lot of brands really lean into customization. But for us being a direct-to-consumer brand, you want people to be able to go on our website [and] really easily understand the product... People absolutely love to be able to go in and customize every single detail," the design chief said. "But for us, we're always trying to find that balance between giving customer choice [and] making sure that we're making it easy for the customer to understand and giving them what they want... In terms of us having some crazy configurator that you can customize every detail, that's not something that we want to do," he continued.
Bloomberg
15 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
Amazon Shares Pay the Price of Remaining ‘Show-Me' Story With AI
In a stock market obsessed with artificial intelligence, Inc. is losing ground. The company's shares have been lagging the Nasdaq 100 Index for most of the year, and the gap has only widened in the two weeks since Amazon's July 31 earnings disappointment. The tech-heavy benchmark is up nearly 13% this year, more than twice Amazon's 5.5% gain.
