Paper Details

TRB 91st Annual Meeting (January 22-26, 2012)

Event Number:	474
Event Title:	Modeling Theories and Practices in Freight Planning and Logistics, Part 1 (Part 2, Session 518 )
Event Date:	Jan 24 2012 8:00AM- 9:45AM
Event Location:	Shoreham, Executive
Event Description:
Event Agenda:	The first of two sessions, this session follows the call for papers in modeling of freight planning and logistics. The call specially emphasizes new development in modeling theories and practices. The models cover freight planning and operations in both private and public sectors and various modes of transportation. They represent the current state of the art in freight planning and logistics operations.

Electric Commercial Vehicles: Study of Economic and Technological Factors Affecting Their Competitiveness (12-2678)

Electric commercial vehicles (ECV) have the potential to substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions, noise, and pollution in urban areas. In addition, ECVs have lower per-mile operating costs and potentially lower maintenance costs. However, the initial purchase cost of ECVs is significantly higher than the purchase cost of a conventional diesel vehicle. From a purely economic perspective, there is a cost tradeoff between the low operating and maintenance costs of ECVs and their high initial capital costs. In addition, ECVs have a limited range, in some commercial applications this may lead to a problem commonly known as “range anxiety”. In this paper, an optimization based model is utilized to analyze the competitiveness of ECVs. Utilizing realistic assumptions for a USA context and a wide range of scenarios regarding fleet utilization, fuel efficiency and ten additional parameters, this research finds the key economic and technological breakeven points where ECVs become competitive against conventional diesel counterparts.

Authors
     Feng, Wei , Portland State University
     Figliozzi, Miguel , Portland State University