Overview
With only a few electric vehicles currently in use in commercial transport, little is known about their costs, usability and requirements, and how to optimize logistics concepts involving them, especially in an urban context. As a consequence, businesses considering introducing electric vehicles in their fleets are faced with many unknown factors in their decision. Furthermore, there are not many supporting tools for optimising routings and charging these vehicles on the market right now. This gap is filled by this pilot project, which is especially aimed at supporting small and medium sized businesses in their decision-making process regarding the use of electric vehicles.
It is the aim of the “Smart e-User” project to identify potential user groups for the use of electric vehicles within urban commercial transport (up to 3,5t) and to develop and test software for the optimisation of their routing and loading schemes within the Berlin area.
With a focus on city logistics, Smart e-User integrates electric vehicles into current transport structures of the project’s industry partners in Berlin. These partners represent possible user groups for commercial transport by electric vehicles within urban areas. A neutral platform for a dynamic dispositioning and battery charging system will be developed for these partners and applied within the project. The pilot is accompanied, analysed and evaluated in order to identify further potential user groups for both electric vehicles and disposition software. Further development needs toward vehicles and software will also be identified.
Within the project, DLR is responsible for the empirical research in relation to the identification of potential user groups and their profiles (planning of tours, maintenance cycles, energy supply, costs, etc.). The findings of the project will feed into the development of an optimised dynamic dispositioning system.