Overview
Although daily use and trip patterns in commercial transport fit Electric Vehicles (EVs), and vehicle technology is available, the use of EVs in urban freight and city logistics is well below the potential identified in various projects. The challenge for politicians, and all involved actors, is to define measures and policies to foster the use of EV in commercial transport, urban freight, and city logistics. The project EUFAL aims at contributing to solve this challenge via a process of mutual adaptations: electrification of existing vehicle fleets in logistics systems as well as optimization of logistics systems for efficient use of EVs.
To support this, the project will develop a platform of exchange which should be used by actors from industry, policy, and research. The project will gather knowledge from three different stages of EV system development with the support of five different countries. The platform of exchange will provide support in decision making processes for companies willing to use EVs. This will include all necessary information as well as scientific analysis for strategical decision and successful use cases. Operational support for the use of EVs is often available. Companies, however, do need help in upstream processes in the first hand. EUFAL will provide targeted, sophisticated solutions that help companies deploy EVs in commercial fleets. The platform will provide the basis knowledge and tools needed for future EV implementations.
In Austria we will focus on the tool framework of the platform of exchange by developing the next stage of the optimization platform DYNATOP which originally developed in the project SELECT and is used for optimizing routes of delivery vehicles in urban areas. In a very early stage of EV development with a stock of less than 500 EVs, Turkey will be one of the bases for use case analysis to identify main business processes around the operational phases and to describe main challenges faced by the actors involved in implementation of EVs. The study will be further expanded by analysis of use patterns of complete corporate fleets to identify potentials for EVs, an assessment of national framework and business environment that influence the deployment of EVs in urban commercial transport, identification of tools for a successful implementation, and development of an action plan for a robust transformation to further stages. Other contributing countries are: Germany, Denmark, Poland and Turkey. Details in the full proposal.