Reinventing the concept of an Urban Consolidation Centre using Light Electric Freight Vehicles

Cities place an increasing demand on urban logistics to provide them with goods. In order to fulfill this need in a financially feasible and sustainable way, the concept of the Urban Consolidation Centre ( UCC)has been used. Although there are some successful implementations of a UCC, most projects are terminated after a short time. In order to increase the appeal of a UCC, the delivery to the final customers from the UCC can be done using light electric freight vehicles (LEFV). These LEFV provide numerous operational benefits due to their smaller size while being more sustainable than regular delivery vans. LEFV have several operational limitations as well, mainly concerning their range and loading capacity. In order to successfully combine a UCC with LEFV, smaller inner city microhubs have to be added to the supply chain to provide forward bases of operation for LEFV. Goods are consolidated at the UCC, after which they are shipped to a microhub near the delivery area. From here, LEFV carry out the final delivery to the customer.