URBANIZED
Modular and Flexible Solutions for Urban-Sized Zero-Emissions Last-Mile Delivery and Services Vehicles
Alke' is industrial partner of URBANIZED project which brings together a European Network of 9 highly specialized partners from different fields. The main purposes of this project are:
- Reduce production costs by solving trade-offs between standardisation and customisation
- Increase uptake of zero-emission LCVs by offering superior solutions to those in use today
- Use modularity to build a mixed fleet that is both “one size fits all” and “designed for purpose”
Sustainable last-mile delivery is growing rapidly, making the management of logistics flows in urban areas a more complex process. With higher demand for flexibility in new solutions to optimise overall transport capacity, reduce operational costs, and limit negative impacts such as health and safety, logistics operators shouldn’t have to choose between “one size fits all” and “design for purpose”. URBANIZED confronts the challenges of balancing trade-offs in urban freight transport (UFT) services. Its multi-disciplinary consortium of 9 partners from 6 EU countries involves all relevant actors from the value chain, from academic, to industrial (TIER1, OEMs) and logistics operators, so Urbanized solutions can drive the sustainable urban transition by making zero-emissions vehicles the best option for everyone. Urbanized helps to cope with these challenges by developing a new generation of electric delivery vehicles with the following three main innovation lines:
| High-performance e-powertrain components and control architectures, through the use of advanced co-design approaches. Such a high-performance e-powertrain helps to reduce losses in the vehicle, which in turn reduces the total energy requirement per delivery. | |
| Interchangeable, plug & play cargo modules for different urban freight transport use case scenarios. Such modules help to quickly setup different cargo bodies, which allow a single vehicle to perform multiple kind of deliveries in an urban environment. | |
| Integrated energy and fleet management strategies using data, connectivity and machine learning algorithms. These strategies allow for seamless integration of the electric vehicles into current logistics plans, making it more suitable for urban deliveries. |
As for the third innovation line: energy and fleet management strategies are commonly referred to as Energy Management Systems (EMSs). To enable this innovation, four EMSs are to be developed in Urbanized:
| Eco-Driving, which provides a speed advice to the driver to optimize the energy consumption in the vehicle and reduce losses in the powertrain. | |
| Eco-Comfort, which provides temperature setpoints to the thermal systems in the vehicle to increase the efficiency of the thermal systems. | |
| Eco-Charging, which regulates the charging patters of a fleet of vehicles to reduce losses during the charging operation. | |
| Eco-routing, which plans the routes of a fleet of vehicles to minimize the amount of energy used while driving. |
These EMSs are to be implemented in a vehicle layer running onboard of the vehicle (Eco-Driving and Eco-Comfort), and in a fleet-level layer running on servers (Eco-Charging and Eco-routing), making the whole approach a multi-layer Energy Management System.
For more details on URBANIZED project see: www.urbanized.eu.
This Project has received funding from the European Community’s H2020 Programme under the grant agreement Nr. 101006943.
The sole responsibility for the content of this web page lies with the authors.
The URBANIZED project consists of 9 project partners:
