Decarbonisation of Urban Freight Transport Using Electric Vehicles and Opportunity Charging

Tharsis Teoh, Oliver Kunze, Chee-Chong Teo and Yiik Diew Wong
Additional contact information
Tharsis Teoh: Civil Engineering and Geosciences, Delft University of Technology, 2628 CN Delft, The Netherlands
Oliver Kunze: Resource and Risk Management, Neu-Ulm University of Applied Sciences, 89231 Neu-Ulm, Germany
Chee-Chong Teo: School of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 639798, Singapore
Yiik Diew Wong: School of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 639798, Singapore

Sustainability, 2018, vol. 10, issue 9, 1-20

Abstract: The high costs of using electric vehicles (EVs) is hindering wide-spread adoption of an EV-centric decarbonisation strategy for urban freight transport. Four opportunity charging (OC) strategies—during breaks and shift changes, during loading activity, during unloading activity, or while driving on highways—are evaluated towards reducing EV costs. The study investigates the effect of OC on the lifecycle costs and carbon dioxide emissions of four cases of different urban freight transport operations. Using a parametric vehicle model, the weight and battery capacity of operationally suitable fleets were calculated for ten scenarios (i.e., one diesel vehicle scenario, two EV scenarios without OC, and seven EV scenarios with four OC strategies and two charging technology types). A linearized energy consumption model sensitive to vehicle load was used to calculate the fuel and energy used by fleets for the transport operations. OC was found to significantly reduce lifecycle costs, and without any strong negative influence on carbon dioxide emissions. Other strong influences on lifecycle costs are the use of inductive technology, extension of service lifetime, and reduction of battery price. Other strong influences on carbon dioxide emissions are the use of inductive technology and the emissions factors of electricity production.

Keywords: urban freight transport; battery electric vehicle; opportunity charging; carbon dioxide emissions; lifecycle costs; parametric vehicle model; evaluation framework (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (25)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/9/3258/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/9/3258/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:10:y:2018:i:9:p:3258-:d:169342

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().