Amazon continued its push into the transportation space on Friday with some big news: the company is leading a $700 million investment round in Rivian, a United States-based EV startup that’s working to launch an all-electric pickup truck and SUV in 2020. The announcement follows last week’s news that Amazon was part of a group that raised $530 million for Aurora Innovation, an autonomous vehicle startup led by the former head of Google’s self-driving car project.
Built on the same technological platform, Rivian claims its vehicles — which will start around $70,000 — will be able to travel up to around 400 miles on a single charge, hit 60 miles per hour in under three seconds, and eventually be able to drive themselves in some capacity. The company boasts a number of top ex-engineers and designers from McLaren, and it’s spent years developing a unique approach to building high-capacity battery packs.