An economic comparison between zero-emission vehicles for urban deliveries from the logistics company perspective

Abstract

Through the recent years, the sustainable eco-friendly vehicles have been demonstrated as an adequate solution for urban deliveries and restricted areas facing with traffic congestions and traffic zone limitation. Therefore, in this paper, we adopted a mathematical model, formulated as Electric Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows and Partial Recharging (EVRPTW-PR), which aims at selecting the best zero-emission vehicle for delivering goods in city logistics through a cost comparison. In this way, we compared two most emerging vehicles, i.e., e-cargo bikes and e-scooters, by minimizing the total costs related to the vehicles’ investment salary costs, drivers’ salary costs and energy costs. The comparison between these two types of vehicles encourages the adoption of zero-emission strategies for last-mile deliveries and helps the logistics companies to decide the type of vehicle that could fit with the environmental as well as economic aspect.