Beer is one of the industries most vulnerable to climate change, and to the beer industry’s credit, there’s been no debate that it’s a problem. The industry has simply gotten to work, from smaller brewers greening their whole operation to giant macrobrewers cutting out their water waste. Anheuser-Busch, one of the biggest brewing companies in the world, is taking yet another step, by taking the gas out of its trucks and replacing it with batteries.
Anheuser-Busch is buying 40 of Tesla’s semis, according to Engadget, and will be using them for the “shorter” delivery runs from breweries:
Anheuser-Busch plans to use the Tesla trucks for shipments to wholesalers lying within 150 to 200 miles of its 21 breweries and they’ll become part of the approximately 750-strong truck fleet it currently uses to ship its product. As of now, the company hasn’t decided whether it will buy the trucks, lease them or have one of its dedicated carriers do so.
For longer deliveries, the brewery is looking into buying semis from Tesla competitor Nikola, which is hoping to wean the trucking industry off diesel fuel in favor of hydrogen. This may not seem like a lot, at the moment, but in truth, it’s a fairly big deal. The true business of the beer industry, beyond a certain point, is logistics; you have to get large amounts of heavy objects to a lot of places as quickly and cheaply as possible within a set time limit, and you have to do it constantly.
So for one of the biggest breweries in America to give Tesla that endorsement is attention-getting for people who aren’t brewers. Everybody who ships things on a regular basis will be watching closely, and depending on what they see, Tesla may find itself moving a lot more semis.
(via Engadget)