Dynamic route planning and multi-use strategies for the economic use of e-vehicles in urban logistics
Topics like climate protection and sustainable transport solutions motivate DAKO to push ahead with electromobility projects in the commercial vehicle sector. Building on the results of the SMART CITY LOGISTIK project, DAKO joined forces with other partners from Thuringia and Saxony in the follow-up project SMART DISTRIBUTION LOGISTIK (SDL) to shed light on the organisation of the entire electromobile distribution chain using the example of media logistics. The project was successfully completed in April 2020.
About the project
The media logistics industry has been in a state of upheaval for several years and is fundamentally restructuring its business processes as a result. In this area of conflict, the use of electrically powered vehicles enables the optimisation of delivery processes. The SDL project thus aimed to develop an adaptive ICT system platform, through which the use of at least 40 electric vehicles for the delivery of newspapers, advertising materials and mail in three mixed fleets could be planned, controlled and holistically optimised in field trials. The intelligent system solution is intended to lower the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) of the vehicles and especially that of electric vehicles, so that they are economical from the first year of use.
After a successful application in the technology competition “ICT for Electric mobility III” from the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology, the consortium led by DAKO started its project work in May 2017 and received a funding pledge of approximately 4 million Euros to implement the development idea. The total volume of the project amounted to just under 7 million Euros.
The project’s consortium looks back on a successful three-year development period and has delivered results both from the perspective of development activities and with regard to the goals for implementation they achieved during the project period. The results from the development in this respect are offered on the market as a stand-alone product. In this way, a wide range of users from the logistics sector can benefit from the optimisation features and, in particular, the TCO-based evaluation model for the economic use of electric vehicles. In addition, the solution created will be further developed in the follow-up project SMART MULTI-USE LOGISTIK.
Alongside DAKO, the consortium consists of four other IT and logistics companies (Sächsische Zeitung GmbH, LVZ Logistik GmbH, EPSa Elektronik & Präzisionsbau Saalfeld GmbH, eLOG Systembetrieb GmbH) as well as Friedrich Schiller University Jena and the University of Applied Sciences Erfurt.