Which low environmental impact vehicles for freight distribution in big cities?

Freight distribution in cities is mostly done by road and is responsible for 30 to 40% of the energy consumed by transport and these percentages grow when certain pollutant, such as PM, are considered. City logistics is mostly organised on a private basis and each logistics operator has its own clients, vehicles and storage areas. No cooperation exists between operators to rationalise the distribution trips. Urban penetration of freight by rail is scarce and inner-city rail road terminals, wherever there were any, are being dismissed because the increasing cost of inner city land is making more convenient to sell land inside the cities and to make new terminals outside of them. Consequently urban freight distribution by heavy duty vehicles is becoming more and more common. In this framework a joint research team of ENEA (the Italian national energy and environmental research agency) and CTL (the recently started excellence centre on freight transport and logistics) organised several acquisition campaigns to monitor the present situation of city logistics in Rome under many aspects including energy consumption and environmental impact with the aim of defining strategies and tools to make it more sustainable. The acquisition campaigns were made collecting in real time a number of parameters from the vehicles distributing goods to supermarkets in Rome either fresh food from the new “fruit and vegetable gross market” 2 km east (Guidonia) of the outer road ring of Rome (GRA) and from a logistic platform 15 km south (Pomezia-Santa Palomba) of GRA or other goods from one of the few remaining inner city rail terminals (San Lorenzo). Such campaigns showed how size and power of the presently used vehicles are dimensioned on the “outer city” leg of the trip because inside the city much smaller and less powerful vehicles can be employed. It would be therefore possible, if city logistics were re-organised, to employ hybrid vehicles. In details a 9 kW generator series hybrid can easily substitute a 120 kW conventional vehicle. The approach to make city logistics more sustainable must definitely be an integrated technological and regulatory approach. Under the vehicle technology point of view hybrids have either to be dimensioned for outer-city trips, like the dual mode Microvett Daily or the regulatory framework should promote the introduction of logistic platforms inside the urban ring in which case electric vehicles either pure or hybridised with small size generator or FC, (5-10 kW), like the MicroVett Neo FCHV, could have a real chance as proven by another Microvet experience in the city of Vicenza