E-bikes and E-scooters for Smart Logistics: Environmental and Economic Sustainability in Pro-E-bike Italian Pilots

Abstract

The paper presents the final results of the Italian pilots of Pro-E-Bike, a project funded under the Intelligent Energy Europe programme, started on April 2013 and ending on March 2016 (www.pro-e-bike.org). The project promotes clean and energy efficient vehicles, analyses the performance of electric bicycles and electric scooters for the delivering of goods in urban areas and tests the use of these vehicles in seven European countries with thirty-nine companies, both freight transport operators, companies that deliver their own products and services providers, in order to demonstrate that light electric vehicles can replace traditional combustion engine ones contributing on mitigating logistic impacts in urban areas. Pilots enabled the demonstration of measurable effects in terms of reduction of CO2 emissions and energy savings in urban transport: related data about environmental and social effects resulted by the introduction of e-bikes and e-scooters are shown, with a particular focus on the economic sustainability of these replacements.