Implementing electric vehicles in urban distribution: A discrete event simulation

Abstract

Urban freight transport becomes increasingly important with the development of cities. However, it generates also inefficiencies on social, economic and environmental aspects. A possible solution is the use of urban distribution centres in order to rationalise the deliveries and to operate the last miles with clean vehicles. Electric vehicles are gaining attention lately but some barriers remain. Since costs barriers were already investigated, the paper aimed at evaluating the difference of performances between a centre using a diesel truck and a centre using an electric vehicle. In order to do so, the operations of an urban distribution centre were modelled in a discrete event simulation and different scenarios were evaluated. The results showed that replacing a conventional truck by an electric van generates more traffic due to the limited payload of the van. However, the limited range does not entail the daily operations of the vehicle since a single night charge is sufficient. Better, the depth of discharge is found to be limited to a minimum of 60%. The results on the battery are similar in the second scenario where the conventional truck is replaced by an electric truck. In that scenario though, no influences are identified on the logistics performances of the urban distribution center.