In order to ensure high-quality and on-time delivery in logistic distribution processes, it is necessary to efficiently manage the delivery fleet. Nowadays, due to the new policies and regulations related to greenhouse gas emission in the transport sector, logistic companies are paying higher penalties for each emission gram of CO2/km. With electric vehicle market penetration, many companies are evaluating the integration of electric vehicles in their fleet, as they do not have local greenhouse gas emissions, produce minimal noise, and are independent of the fluctuating oil price. The well-researched vehicle routing problem (VRP) is extended to the electric vehicle routing problem (E-VRP), which takes into account specific characteristics of electric vehicles. In this paper, a literature review on recent developments regarding the E-VRP is presented. The challenges that emerged with the integration of electric vehicles in the delivery processes are described, together with electric vehicle characteristics and recent energy consumption models. Several variants of the E-VRP and related problems are observed. To cope with the new routing challenges in E-VRP, efficient VRP heuristics and metaheuristics had to be adapted. An overview of the state-of-the-art procedures for solving the E-VRP and related problems is presented.

With the rise of the electric vehicle market share, many logistic companies have started to use electric vehicles for goods delivery. Compared to the vehicles with an internal combustion engine, electric vehicles are considered as a cleaner mode of transport that can reduce greenhouse gas emissions. As electric vehicles have a shorter driving range and have to visit charging stations to replenish their energy, the efficient routing plan is harder to achieve. In this paper, the Electric Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows (EVRPTW), which deals with the routing of electric vehicles for the purpose of goods delivery, is observed. Two recharge policies are considered: full recharge and partial recharge. To solve the problem, an Adaptive Large Neighborhood Search (ALNS) metaheuristic based on the ruin-recreate strategy is coupled with a new initial solution heuristic, local search, route removal, and exact procedure for optimal charging station placement. The procedure for the $\mathcal{O}\left(1\right)$ evaluation in EVRPTW with partial and full recharge strategies is presented. The ALNS was able to find 38 new best solutions on benchmark EVRPTW instances. The results also indicate the benefits and drawbacks of using a partial recharge strategy compared to the full recharge strategy.

Urban logistics encompass transportation and delivery operations within densely populated urban areas. It faces significant challenges from the evolving dynamic and stochastic nature of on-demand and conventional logistics services. Further challenges arise with application doctrines shifting towards crowd-sourced platforms. As a result, “traditional” deterministic approaches do not adequately fulfil constantly evolving customer expectations. To maintain competitiveness, logistic service providers must adopt proactive and anticipatory systems that dynamically model and evaluate probable (future) events, i.e., stochastic information. These events manifest in problem characteristics such as customer requests, demands, travel times, parking availability, etc. The Stochastic Dynamic Vehicle Routing Problem (SDVRP) addresses the dynamic and stochastic information inherent in urban logistics. This paper aims to analyse the key concepts, challenges, and recent advancements and opportunities in the evolving urban logistics landscape and assess the evolution from classical VRPs, via DVRPs, to state-of-art SDVRPs. Further, coupled with non-reactive techniques, this paper provides an in-depth overview of cutting-edge model-based and model-free reactive solution approaches. Although potent, these approaches become restrictive due to the “curse of dimensionality”. Sacrificing granularity for scalability, researchers have opted for aggregation and decomposition techniques to overcome this problem and recent approaches explore solutions using deep learning. In the scope of this research, we observed that addressing real-world SDVRPs with a comprehensive resolution encounters a set of challenges, emphasising a substantial gap in the research field that warrants further exploration.

In this paper, we present a method for computing speed profiles by processing GPS data collected by vehicles in an urban area. The vehicles were tracked during a five year period on the road network of the capital city of Croatia (Zagreb). Traffic congestions in Croatia appear almost exclusively in urban areas, therefore Zagreb was chosen for this study as it is by far the largest city. The profiles for the roads were computed for each day of the week, where each day was segmented into five minute intervals. As there are no congestions during the night, the free flow speed for the roads was determined by averaging vehicle speeds which were recorded during that time. The speed profiles were clustered using G-means, a variant of the k-means clustering algorithm, to reduce storage space and to categorize roads observed in future research based on their profile. By applying this algorithm we reduced the number of total speed profiles by more than 90%. The profiles were developed as part of the SORDITO project, with the goal of developing algorithms for vehicle route optimizations.