Background record: Amazon’s January 2025 order for 200 Mercedes-Benz eActros 600 tractors reset what ‘electric truck order’ means in Europe — at the time the largest single commitment in the segment’s history, destined for the company’s European middle-mile network.

Eighteen months on, the order reads differently: it was the first proof that the depot-distribution pattern scales to three digits (ING now estimates ~30% of e-truck sales go to retail and dense distribution networks), it gave Mercedes the reference customer that anchored its segment leadership (ICCT: ~40% of ZE heavy-truck registrations in H1 2026), and it set the frame for what followed — Simon Loos’s repeat orders, DB Schenker’s 150-truck MAN framework, Wibax’s 105 Scanias, Einride’s Amazon middle-mile collaboration.

For fleets benchmarking procurement timing: Amazon ordered when infrastructure was thinner and prices higher than today — scale bought it delivery priority and, reportedly, terms. The 2026 buyer’s market (more models, Chinese price pressure, richer incentives) is friendlier; the constraint that remains identical is the one Amazon solved first: depots and grid. Start there, as they did.