Light Electric Freight Vehicles

LEFVs appearing in Amsterdam over the last 5-6 years include electric cargo bikes, mopeds, tricycles, and small electric distribution vehicles. Deliveries cover not just parcels, but also fresh goods, construction materials and service-driven movements (e.g., plumbers). However, although city deliveries are expected to grow by 19%, businesses active in the sector believe that the market will remain small, with only around 3-4% of addresses that can be delivered to efficiently.

Then there are other factors to take into consideration, such as: theft and damage to the vehicles and injuries to drivers; leasing costs compared with traditional vans; special training needs for cargo bike users; and requirement from insurers for a driving license for small electric distribution vehicles.

From the delivery persons perspective, there is little incentive to change – by comparison, vans have temperature control, and are safe, dry and (relatively) spacious.   

From the operators’ perspective, all the benefits from building up an efficient network of multiple delivery vehicles fed from a micro-hub depot may be lost due to the cost of the hubs’ square meters. Then the only way to reduce costs would be with the use of standardized containers, which in turn might impact on the efficiency of the network.

In conclusion, LEFVs will not meet the goal of no-emission city logistics for Amsterdam. Which means the search for sustainable, economically viable, and practical solutions continues.

“You must have a complete supply chain approach, because maybe the biggest impact, also from a cost perspective, will not be in the last mile, but in the first mile.”

“You see a lot of research also on.... bigger vehicles going into town, and using them as drone stations.”

If even Amsterdam, with 99% of addresses accessible for delivery vehicles, and a network of waterways as an alternative to road-based deliveries, cannot see a future in which LEFVs solve the no-emission city logistic challenge, what is the hope for other cities without these advantages? Research into alternative and combined solutions are more necessary than ever. Could the future be underground? A radical approach underway in Switzerland to get transport trucks off the road is to replace them with an underground network of self-driving pods. Exploratory drilling and geological measurements for the first stretch of tunnels began in 2023.