When a large business makes any significant investment decision, it has nothing to do with anything else but the perception of increased profit for the business.
Anything else is a side effect, always. If the action can be painted in a way that PR spins propaganda up that the people love or that quantified positive benefits from that PR result in net profits then we have successful alignment as a society (but the motive is never there). Amazon could have done this (or a partial) transition years ago but they didn't because it would have hurt their bottom line. Apparently now, this is more cost effective and the image/optics for the general public is more valuable.
Heck, most small investments big businesses make fit the same model but small investments get much less scrutiny (analysis) and typically give a better bang for the buck to society.
Now as to which is better for the environment... that's a very complicated matter and Amazon isn't concerned about that. If electric vehicles are better than we have proper alignment between goals to strive for in society and business actions. If not then we need to adjust incentives for businesses so they do get us to where we need to be.
Anything else is a side effect, always. If the action can be painted in a way that PR spins propaganda up that the people love or that quantified positive benefits from that PR result in net profits then we have successful alignment as a society (but the motive is never there). Amazon could have done this (or a partial) transition years ago but they didn't because it would have hurt their bottom line. Apparently now, this is more cost effective and the image/optics for the general public is more valuable.
Heck, most small investments big businesses make fit the same model but small investments get much less scrutiny (analysis) and typically give a better bang for the buck to society.
Now as to which is better for the environment... that's a very complicated matter and Amazon isn't concerned about that. If electric vehicles are better than we have proper alignment between goals to strive for in society and business actions. If not then we need to adjust incentives for businesses so they do get us to where we need to be.