Vehicle requirements for electric cargo bikes in commercial transport

Abstract

Facing problems such as population growth cities have to cope with lack of space and increasing emissions from the transport sector. The need for commercial transport is rising and new sustainable mobility solutions have to be considered. One example is the deployment of electric cargo bikes. To develop a new vehicle concept the heterogeneous user characteristics need to be analysed to identify requirements. By looking at driving profiles and transported goods use cases were developed and included freight transport i.e. the CEP segment, last mile delivery and service transport such as municipal, craftsmen or care services. The results showed that based on the user characteristics all focused segments are suitable for e-cargo bikes. The characteristics differ in particular in operating times, downtime and number of trips, which places higher demands on the charging system and management in the case of service transport due to longer and more frequent travel times.