Solving new urban freight distribution problems involving modular electric vehicles

Vehicle routing problem (VRP) have been intensively studied over the past few years. Indeed, a strong strand of research is devoted to aid freight companies or public authorities in making their decisions. Nowadays, new solutions are proposed that take into account new technologies enabling the design of electric vehicles which can be used in new mobility schemes or help fleet owners stay competitive when delivering freight. In this study, the aim is to investigate the innovative concept of modular electric vehicles for goods delivery in cities. More precisely, the vehicles considered in this study can be split into two or several modules which can be let at a dedicated location and retrieved later during a run for charging purposes or to gain agility. The objective is then to address the challenging issues associated with the use of these new modular electric vehicles for urban freight transport. It is a completely new problem integrating both the complexity of the original VRP and specific constraints induced by using modular electric vehicles in urban environment. This study presents a first formulation of this problem together with a complete effective solving approach which shows promising results.