Electric Vehicles in Logistics and Transportation: A Survey on Emerging Environmental, Strategic, and Operational Challenges

TLDR

Logistics and transportation systems increasingly incorporate electric vehicles, but this shift introduces strategic, planning, and operational challenges such as the need for strategically located recharge stations and the limited driving range that constrains efficient routing. This survey identifies and reviews open research challenges surrounding the adoption of electric and hydrogen‑powered vehicles in logistics, focusing on environmental impacts and strategic, planning, and operational issues. The authors analyze how electric vehicle integration creates new variants of the vehicle routing problem and recommend metaheuristics and simheuristics as the most effective approaches to solve these complex optimization problems.

Abstract

Current logistics and transportation (L&T) systems include heterogeneous fleets consisting of common internal combustion engine vehicles as well as other types of vehicles using “green” technologies, e.g., plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and electric vehicles (EVs). However, the incorporation of EVs in L&T activities also raise some additional challenges from the strategic, planning, and operational perspectives. For instance, smart cities are required to provide recharge stations for electric-based vehicles, meaning that investment decisions need to be made about the number, location, and capacity of these stations. Similarly, the limited driving-range capabilities of EVs, which are restricted by the amount of electricity stored in their batteries, impose non-trivial additional constraints when designing efficient distribution routes. Accordingly, this paper identifies and reviews several open research challenges related to the introduction of EVs in L&T activities, including: (a) environmental-related issues; and (b) strategic, planning and operational issues associated with “standard” EVs and with hydrogen-based EVs. The paper also analyzes how the introduction of EVs in L&T systems generates new variants of the well-known Vehicle Routing Problem, one of the most studied optimization problems in the L&T field, and proposes the use of metaheuristics and simheuristics as the most efficient way to deal with these complex optimization problems.