Electric commercial vehicles in mid-haul logistics networks

Recent research on electric commercial vehicles (ECVs) has mostly been limited to short-haul applications and single planning perspectives. Especially in mid-haul logistics networks where recharging on routes is necessary, integrated planning approaches become inevitable due to interdependent decisions on network design and vehicle operations. This chapter provides an overview of planning approaches for ECVs that have been presented so far and presents a generic modeling approach for integrated TCO analysis, taking strategic network design and operational vehicle routing and recharging decisions into consideration. This approach is then applied to a real-world case study of a large German retail company. We discuss results with respect to the competitiveness of ECVs compared to ICEVs. Herein, we study economic and ecological benefits. Furthermore, we analyze battery degradation effects from a technical point of view. Results show that ECVs are on the verge of breaking even in mid-haul logistics for certain application cases.